Jan D. Sinnott

Everyday Thinking and Piagetian Operativity in Adults

Everyday, familiar materials and formal materials were used to test the Piagetian classification and formal operational abilities of highly educated adults of both sexes. 30 subjects were in their 30s, and 30 were of retirement age. These adult subjects did not show mastery of the tasks, and the materials used influenced scores. Results were discussed from the point of view of a new model of adult lifespan development related to formal operational activities in adults and related to the experience-structure dialectic in mature adult thought.

Development and yearning: Cognitive aspects of spiritual development

Spirituality is important to humans but gets little attention in experimental studies of life span cognitive development. One way to integrate such studies is to examine cognitive aspects of spiritual development using complex postformal Piagetian models. Four possible points of interface within postformal models are: developmental stages; elements of emotion and will; multiperson cognition; and forms taken by the processes used. Testable hypotheses are outlined and some possible difficulties to be expected within such research are discussed.

On Missing Links and Such: Interfaces between Cognitive Research and Everyday Problem-Solving.

In this article, based on a symposium presented at the Gerontological Society meeting in 1982, several reconceptualizations of adult cognitive development and its relations with everyday problem-solvi

The Theory of Relativity

The relativity theory in physics is reviewed for the purpose of suggesting a relativistic metatheory for life span developmental psychology. Developmentalists might find this metatheory useful in describing complex individual biological, social, and psychological development in a historical context. Some expected uses of the approach in episte-mological and developmental studies are outlined.

Older men, older women: Are their perceived sex roles similar?

Men and women age 60 or older responded to Bem Sex-Role Inventory “masculinity” and “femininity” scale items on two separate administrations of the test. In the first, they described their own attributes; in the second, they described what others expected them to be like. Item analyses determined that the two sexes were more alike than different in sex-role-related attributes and perceived social expectation that they adopt both M and F attributes. Conflicts between actual and expected attributes were more frequent on “masculine” items. Those conflicted on “feminine” items tended to report depression.

Dialectics of Decision Making in Older Adults

The dialectics of decision making were studied for a cohort of 109 older adults who described a decision-making response to a major change in their lives in the past year. Analysis of the responses re

Piagetian Logical Abilities and Older Adults’ Abilities to Solve Everyday Problems

The relationship between performance on Piagetian matrix and formal operations tasks and everyday problem solving has been studied, since both types of tasks appeared to utilize similar operations. Ad

Stress, Health, and Mental Health Symptoms of Older Women and Men

The objectives of this inquiry were to examine Langner mental health symptomatology screening scores in a community-dwelling sample of older adults, and to explore relations between Langner scores, health, and stress. Older adults (N = 364), who were participants in a study of sex roles, were interviewed in their homes concerning mental health symptoms, health, recent life stress, sex-role conflict, and demographic factors. Respondents reported relatively few symptoms. Symptoms were related to health and independent reports of nervousness and depression in both sexes, and to age in men, but not to stress and conflict in either sex. Mental health symptom screening devices may not mean the same thing for male and female older clients and should be used with caution until behavioral validation can be done.

Postformal Thought and Adult Development

Adulthood may be described as a stage of life in which we wrestle with the mystery of existence, in the midst of life’s chaos, in the here-and-now rather than in some perfect potential future. The unique qualities of adulthood can be difficult to describe developmentally. Adults are neither changing toward some defined endpoint, nor changing away from some past perfection. Instead, healthy adults keep a dynamic homeostasis; they balance. They change as if in a dance, or as if practicing an Eastern art such as tai chi, moving through forms and paces. In dancing, what matters and what is enjoyable—the whole purpose in fact—is movement in the present moment, and, of course, not falling over. In dancing, the process itself is the goal. To choose to dance is to pick a form and simply do it; the walk within the dance does not “get” anywhere! But for those of us in Western cultures, especially those of us who study human behavior and are enculturated to seek goals and linear causes, the metaphor of the “dance” of development might become an irritating metaphor, too, because Westerners want to know where the dance of adult development is going. If we do demand to know the destination (in terms of life trajectory), the dance seems to be going to a destination no grander than death. Aware of this, the conscious development of adults seems to include the ability to take part enthusiastically in the dance of life for its own sake, with an awareness of mortality.

Acceptability Ratings of Psychotherapeutic Treatments for Elderly Individuals

Adults age 60 and older were presented with written scenarios depicting a 75-year-old woman with a behavioral problem The client in the case varied by cognitive capacity (impaired or intact), behavior problem (physical aggression, verbal disruption, or noncompliance), and living situation (nursing home or family home) Participants rated six types of psychotherapy treat ments with Kazdins Treatment Evaluation Inventory: person-centered therapy, strategic family therapy, transactional analysis, play reading, group therapy, and purposeful activity. All treat ments were considered acceptable by these older respondents; however, person-centered therapy was rated the most acceptable. These treatments were also rated as slightly more acceptable for cognitively intact case clients than for impaired ones. Treatment ratings varied according to the case clients living situation (i.e., nursing home or family home).