Jane S. Saczynski

The Revised Observed Tasks of Daily Living: A Performance-Based Assessment of Everyday Problem Solving in Older Adults

The Revised Observed Tasks of Daily Living (OTDL-R), a performance-based test of everyday problem solving, was administered to a sample of community-dwelling older adults. The OTDLR included nine tasks, representing medication use, telephone use, and financial management. The OTDL-R had a desirable range of difficulty and satisfactory internal consistency and showed a relatively invariant pattern of relations between measured tasks and the underlying latent dimensions they represent across White and non-White subsamples. The OTDL-R also correlated significantly with age, education, self-rated health, a paper-and-pencil measure of everyday problem solving, and measures of basic cognitive functioning. Thus, the OTDL-R is a reliable and valid objective measure of everyday problem solving that has great practical utility for assessing performance in diverse populations.

Spontaneous Production and Use of Mnemonic Strategies in Older Adults

Mnemonic strategy use in older adults has been measured a number of ways, and although strategy measurement has received considerable attention, little work has been done to compare various types of subjective strategy reporting. The authors compared self-generated and endorsed strategies for memory tasks in a sample of 85 African-American and Caucasian older adults and investigated demographic characteristics related to each strategy measurement and the relationship between strategy use and memory performance. Across memory measures, significantly more strategies were endorsed than self-generated. Race, favoring Caucasians, was the most salient demographic predictor of mnemonic strategy usage. Although strategic behavior was associated with ability performance on most memory measures, specific strategies for optimal performance were identified for number and story recall only. Findings highlight the importance of measuring both self-generated and endorsed strategies and confirm previous work on the relationship between strategy use and memory performance.

The effect of social engagement on incident dementia and hippocampal volume: The Honolulu-Asia aging study

2.91 (95% CI 1.10-7.71, p 0.03), the effect was strongest in those under the age of 75 years with a RR of 3.37 (95% CI 1.30-8.73, p 0.01). Whereas DM did not increase the risk of incident AD in the Framingham cohort overall, it emerged as a potentially important risk factor in individuals without the APOE 4 allele or elevated tHcy. Our data suggest that the impact of DM on AD risk may be more evident in the absence of other major risk factors.