Journals of Gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences

OBJECTIVES: While research has shown that the replay of encoding-specific gaze patterns during retrieval, known as gaze reinstatement, facilitates memory retrieval, little is known about whether it differentially associates with the negativity preference in memory (defined as enhanced memory for negative stimuli relative to neutral stimuli in this study) among younger and older adults. The present study aims to address this research gap. METHODS: Thirty-three older adults (16 female; aged 58-69 years, M = 63...

OBJECTIVES: Although higher activity diversity is associated with higher well-being at the between-person level, it is unknown whether a day with higher activity diversity is related to higher well-being within persons. Within 24 hours per day, there is a limited number of activities on which individuals could spend their time and energy. Personal resources could influence the expenditure of energy and thus the experience with daily activities. This study examined daily associations between activity diversity and well-being and whether age and self-related health moderated the associations...

OBJECTIVES: Personality traits are broadly related to medical conditions, but there is limited research on the association with the risk of arthritis. This multi-cohort study examines the concurrent and prospective associations between personality traits and arthritis risk. METHOD: Participants (N > 45,000) were mostly middle-aged and older adults from six established longitudinal cohorts. Baseline assessments of personality traits, covariates (age, sex, education, race, ethnicity, depressive symptoms, body mass index, and smoking), and arthritis diagnosis were obtained in each sample...

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to investigate the association between negative aging stereotypes and goal pursuit in daily life among older adults. We also explored the roles of stereotype threat and stereotype challenge reactions in mediating this association. Additionally, this study investigated whether variations in these associations exist among older adults based on their self-integrity levels. METHODS: Participants were 100 older adults who completed daily measures assessing negative aging stereotype experiences, threat and challenge reactions, goal pursuit activities, and self-integrity over a week...

OBJECTIVES: The fourth age is considered a life stage with a high likelihood of age-related losses. However, very old age extends over decades, and little is known about how transitions that may happen during this age period (e.g., developing support needs or adopting caregiving roles) or lack thereof might change perceptions of age-related gains or losses. Many subjective age scales assume implicitly that they work across advanced old age, but data to support this assumption are scarce...

OBJECTIVE: Drawing on the intergenerational solidarity framework and life course perspective, the authors assessed how mother-child closeness across different life stages is associated with adult children's time and financial assistance to mothers in later life. METHOD: Using children's reports of their perceived closeness to mothers from waves 1 to 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and mothers' reports about adult children's time and financial assistance from wave 2 of the Add Health Parent Study (AHPS) in the United States, the authors investigated how mother-child closeness during adolescence, emerging adulthood, and young adulthood is related to midlife adult children's support with a focus on difference between mother-daughter (N = 934) and mother-son (N = 899) dyads...

OBJECTIVE: An increasing proportion of older Canadians are pursuing sport. The objective of this study was to examine the experiences of older Canadian women in curling. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 participants. Interviews were transcribed and coded using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Participants simultaneously resisted, accepted, and ultimately redefined conceptualizations of personal aging in the context of curling...

OBJECTIVES: Household consumption significantly impacts the quality of life and successful aging of older adults. However, prior research has often overlooked the connection between household consumption and long-term care insurance (LTCI). This study aims to investigate the influence of LTCI on consumption patterns within older Chinese households. METHODS: We used harmonized data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and merged it with data from cities that implemented LTCI in China...

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the cognitive functioning of formerly incarcerated older adults compared to their never-incarcerated counterparts, focusing on immediate and delayed verbal recall. METHODS: Data are from 2,003 respondents who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health - Parent Study (AHPS) (ages 47-82; mean age 62). AHPS participants were administered word recall memory exercises to the parent respondent from the Rey Auditory-Verbal administered Learning Test, including (a) 90-second (immediate or short-term verbal memory), (b) 60-second recall tests (delayed or long-term verbal memory), and (c) combined word recall on the 90- and 60-second tests...

OBJECTIVE: Role theory suggests occupying simultaneous family caregiving and employment roles in midlife may exert positive and negative effects on psychological health. However, there is a lack of causal evidence examining the degree to which combinations of these roles influence psychological health at the intersection of gender and racial identity. METHODS: Longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (2004-2018) are used to estimate a series of individual fixed effects models examining combinations of employment status and parental caregiving situation on CES-D depression scores among Black and White men and women aged 50-65...

OBJECTIVES: Political participation differs across the age range, but little is known about these patterns outside of developed countries. Political context is a particularly important consideration for all political behavior in Africa, where only a few countries are fully democratic. Drawing from political opportunity structures theory, we investigate how political freedom conditions the age-based pattern of electoral and non-electoral political engagement, as well as protesting. METHODS: This study merges the fifth, sixth, and seventh rounds of the Afrobarometer datasets, spanning 36 African countries, with country-level data on political freedom from Freedom House...

OBJECTIVES: This study provides one of the first national longitudinal studies of the association between caring for grandchildren (i.e., grandparenting) and the risk of dementia in the U.S., with a focus on gender-specific variations. METHOD: We estimated discrete-time event history models, drawing upon data from the Health and Retirement Study (2000-2016). The analytic sample included 10,217 community-dwelling White and Black grandparents aged 52 years and older at baseline...

OBJECTIVE: A growing body research shows that early life exposure to war has adverse effects on later life health. Research has emphasized the importance of exposure timing implicating domain-specific developmental processes and associated critical/sensitive periods. This study looks at the impacts of early childhood war exposure and the repercussions for later life physical and functional health, with a focus on time of exposure as a source of variability. METHOD: We use residential histories from the Survey of Health Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) linked to external data on the location and timing of hostilities to examine the impact of early life exposure to World War II on later life physical and functional health...

OBJECTIVES: Self-reported survey data is essential for monitoring the health and wellbeing of the population as it ages. For studies of aging to provide precise and unbiased results, it is necessary that the self-reported information meets high psychometric standards. In this study, we examined whether the quality of survey responses in panel studies of aging depends on respondents' cognitive abilities. METHOD: Over 17 million survey responses from 157,844 participants aged 50 years and older in 10 epidemiological studies of aging were analyzed...

OBJECTIVES: Decades of research indicate that volunteering is associated with better health for the volunteer beyond the selection effects based on health. However, little is known about potential heterogeneity in health outcomes associated with volunteering in the context of good or poor health. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the frailty index (FI) to investigate the volunteering-health nexus across the population frailty distribution ranging from fit to frail. METHODS: Using nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study (person N = 34,986; 198,218 person-wave observations), we estimated unconditional quantile regression models with panel fixed effects to estimate changes in FI associated with changes in the share of volunteers in the population across the frailty distribution observed across the study period (1998-2020)...

OBJECTIVES: Despite the cultural importance of marriage as a social support system and its well-established link to mental health, older Hispanic adult populations, which are the largest racial and ethnic minoritized groups, remain understudied. The current study examined how positive and negative dimensions of marital quality are associated with depressive symptoms. METHODS: Data from Hispanic adults aged 51 years and older (n = 1,012) were obtained from the 2016 and 2018 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) waves...

OBJECTIVES: We assess how age, the presence of mature adults aged 45+ years, and recent deaths in rural households are associated with COVID-19 preventative actions and the likelihood of getting vaccinated against the virus in Malawi during early stages of the pandemic. METHODS: We draw upon data from 2,187 rural Malawians who participated in a 2020 COVID-19 Phone Survey. We estimate the log odds of engaging in "low-cost" and "high-cost" COVID-19 preventative actions based on age, gender, household composition, and recent household deaths...

Racial disparities in adverse health outcomes with aging have been well described. Yet, much of the research focuses on racial comparisons, with relatively less attention to the identification of underlying mechanisms. To address these gaps, the Research Centers Collaborative Network held a workshop on aging, race, and health disparities to identify research priorities and inform the investigation, implementation, and dissemination of strategies to mitigate disparities in healthy aging. This article provides a summary of the key recommendations and highlights the need for research that builds a strong evidence base with both clinical and policy implications...

OBJECTIVES: Women tend to ruminate more than men, and are generally more hypervigilant to the emotions of others in order to maintain positive social ties. Thus, compared to men, women may ruminate more when their social partners have greater life stresses. However, the literature on stressful events typically focuses on individuals' experiences and perceptions of stressors experienced by specific social ties such as spousal partners and adult children. The purpose of this study was to examine links between perceptions of a broad array of family and non-family social partner stresses and daily rumination among older men and women...

OBJECTIVES: Purpose in life has been associated with diverse health outcomes, however, few studies have examined its associations with progressive motor decline in older adults. We tested if higher purpose would be associated with lower likelihood of incident parkinsonism as well as with lower levels and slower rates of increase in parkinsonian signs. METHODS: Participants were 2,626 older adults from the Rush Memory and Aging Project and Minority Aging Research Study followed for an average of 7...