A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improves across the adult life span. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that this pattern of findings reflects the prioritization of emotional goals. Given that goal-directed behavior requires attentional control, the present study was designed to investigate age differences in selective attentio...

The cross-sectional trajectory of global self-esteem across the life span was examined administering the Rosenberg and Single-Item Self-Esteem scales to Estonians (N = 29,463) who were either randomly selected from the National Census to represent the population or self-recruited through the Internet. The results (a) challenge the recent conclusion of a universal age trajectory of self-esteem, ...

This study examined possible age-related differences in recall, guessing, and metacognition on free recall tests and forced recall tests. Participants studied categorised and unrelated word lists and were asked to recall the items under one of the following test conditions: standard free recall, free recall with a penalty for guessing, free recall with no penalty for guessing, or forced recall....

Task switching requires the ability to flexibly switch between task rules and responses, and is sensitive to developmental change. We tested the hypothesis that developmental changes in task switch performance are associated with changes in the facilitating or interfering effect of the previously retrieved stimulus-response (S-R) association. Three age groups (7-8-year-olds, 10-12-year-olds and...

BACKGROUND Based on the Self-determination theory process model, this study aimed to explore relationships between the latent constructs of psychological need satisfaction, autonomous motivation and exercise behaviour; the mediational role of autonomous motivation in the association of psychological need satisfaction with exercise behaviour; as well as gender and age differences in the aforemen...

The present study examined how younger and older adults remember price information. Participants studied grocery items that were priced at market value or were well above or below market value. Although younger adults displayed better recall performance for unrealistic prices than older adults, there was no age difference for realistic prices, and both groups were equally accurate at rememberin...

The current study examined 3- and 7-year-olds' performance on two types of episodic foresight tasks: A task that required 'cool' reasoning processes about the use of objects in future situations and a task that required 'hot' processes to inhibit a salient current physiological state in order to reason accurately about a future state. Results revealed that 7-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds o...

In the present paper, necessary and sufficient conditions are established for a function involving divided differences of the digamma and trigamma functions to be completely monotonic. Consequently, necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for a function involving the ratio of two gamma functions to be logarithmically completely monotonic, and some double inequalities are deduced for bou...

The extent to which cortical plasticity is retained in old age remains an understudied question, despite large social and scientific implications of such a result. Neuroimaging research reports individual differences in age-related activation, thereby educing speculation that some degree of plasticity may remain throughout life. We conducted a randomized longitudinal dual-task training study to...

3 experiments examined serial pattern learning in younger and older adults. Unlike the usual repeating pattern, the sequences alternated between events from a repeating pattern and those determined randomly. The results indicated that no one was able to describe the regularity, but with practice every individual in all 3 age groups (including old old) became faster, more accurate, or both, on p...