Effects of challenging and supportive instructions on verbal learning in older persons

Implications of Geropsychological Research for the Instruction of Older Adults

After summarizing the findings of laboratory experimental geropsychological research pertinent to the instruction of older adults, this review focused on delineating the explicit implications of the research for adult education. Thirty-six implications were culled from the literature and categorized under ten instructional variables. In addition, the relevance of these implications for managing the functions of instruction enumerated by Gagne was demonstrated. Additional research was advocated that (1) ascer tains the impact of organizational aids on the learning of textual material; (2) explicates age functions by systematic intervention research; (3) examines tasks/situations in which older adults per form as well as or better than young adults; and (4) tests hypo theses derived from laboratory work in real-life situations.

Effects of age and anxiety on episodic memory: Selectivity and variability

Selective age-related differences in source memory relative to item memory, and individual differences in memory performance in relation to anxiety were explored with high- and low-anxious subjects screened from normal young and elderly adults. They were read false facts about the locations of well-known and unknown sights in a male or female voice. Intentional and incidental learning instructions were administered for source memory. Selective age-related deficits in source memory were observed under both encoding conditions. Higher level of anxiety was related to lower memory performance only in the old group; this relation was stronger in source recall. The findings suggest that the presence of such selectivity is unrelated to the tradeoff between item encoding and source encoding. Anxiety affects the variability, and mediates the selectivity of age effects on episodic memory.

The Effects of Praise and Reproof on the Performance of Middle Aged and Older Subjects

Aged (n=33) and middle-aged (n-33) Ss were compared on a digit symbol substitution task under three conditions of verbal feedback incentive: praise, reproof, and neutral comment. Elderly Ss appeared to show decrement while middle-aged Ss showed increment under the censure condition. Elderly Ss showed early gains with praise but these were not significantly sustained through later trials as compared to controls. An analysis of “fast” and “slow” responders suggested that the fast-responding aged showed greatest decrement with censure while the middle-aged slow responders showed a tendency toward an increment with censure.

Anxiety and problem solving in middle-aged and elderly adults

This study was designed to examine effects of differences in age, health, education, and sex on state and trait anxiety, and to assess interrelations between anxiety and performance on reasoning and problem solving tests. A significant main effect of health status was obtained for trait anxiety, but age, education, and sex effects were nonsignificant for both anxiety variables. Anxiety ratings were inversely correlated with performance on tests of reasoning and problem solving (traditional and practical Piagetian tasks, matrices, and similarities), but the pattern of intercorrelations was stronger within the middle-aged (40-59 years) as opposed to the elderly (60-79 years) groups. The findings fail to support the hypothesis that anxiety increases with age, or that the elderly are disproportionately affected by anxiety in testing situations.

Learning and reaction time performance in older veterans: relationship to attitudes and life satisfaction

Young (age 20-35) and old (age 55-70) veterans were tested on serial learning and reaction time tasks. Life satisfaction, attitudes toward older people, and physical and mental status were also assessed. Younger veterans showed better performance on both learning and psychomotor tasks than did older veterans. However, positive attitudes toward aging, and greater life satisfaction were associated with better performance on the behavioral tasks in the older group. Certain aspects of physical and mental status were also associated with better learning and reaction time scores in the elderly. These results suggest that age-related behavioral decrements may be related to psychosocial variables but that physio-medical factors may play a mediating role.

Effect of Motivating Instructions on Verbal Learning According to Age and Race

Young and old white ( n = 48) and black ( n = 48) women were compared on a paired-associate learning task. The groups were divided as to a motivational instructional condition of support, challenge, or neutral. Both the younger and the white groups had more correct responses and learned in fewer trials. A three-way interaction suggests that old blacks make more errors of omission and commission under supportive instructions, whereas young whites do best under challenge. Various trends and implications for these findings were discussed.

The effects of age on perceptual problem-solving strategies

Witkin's Embedded Figures Test (EFT) was used to measure the changes with age in field dependence and problem-solving ability Qualitative data concerning problem-solving strategies and quantitative data were collected. EFT was administered to 12 females in each of the following decades: 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60, 70s. All subjects were moderately to well educated, healthy, and relatively active members of the community. All had at least 20/33 corrected or uncorrected vision. An interview was held with each participant after completion of the EFT. ANOVA of time scores indicated that significantly (p less than 0.01) more time is needed to solve the items with an increase in age; a Tukey (a) test revealed a significant (p less than 0.05) increase between the 40s and 60s age groups. With an increase in age a significant (p less than 0.01) decline in the number of items solved was found. Partial correlations revealed that age is the most important factor, vis-á-vis general intelligence, visual acuity, and the personality factors measured by the Eysenck Personality Inventory. The relative stability of performance up through 49 and after 50 implies a decline in field independence rather than in higher-order cognitive processes.

Test anxiety in elderly and young adults

Test anxiety in elderly and young adult college students was measured by the Anxiety Achievement Test following a free-recall memory experiment. As expected, the elderly had higher levels of debilitating test anxiety than the younger adults. A large proportion of older persons showed behavioural manifestations of test anxiety either by refusing to participate in the study, or by their reactions during the testing. Test anxiety was related to memory performance among both age groups, suggesting than an older person's performance on a cognitive task may be influenced by affective reactions to the testing situation itself.