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Biomedical subjects

J T Erber

Publications and source records attributed to J T Erber.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Age and forgetfulness: perceivers' impressions of targets' capability.

In a person perception paradigm, 72 young and 72 old adult Ss listened to tape recordings of a nonforgetful, moderately forgetful, or highly forgetful female target person being interviewed for a volunteer job. Ss then rated their opinion of the target's memory and how likely they would be to assign the target to easy and difficult tasks. Overall, Ss gave higher memory opinion ratings to old than to young targets. As expected, they were more likely to assign tasks to nonforgetful than to forgetful targets. However, they were more egalitarian than was hypothesized in their task assignment ratings for forgetful young versus forgetful old targets.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Dimensions of self-report about everyday memory in young and older adults.

This study investigated the relationship between several aspects of memory self-report, objective memory, attitude toward intellectual aging, self-rated health, and self-rated depression in young and older adults. Participants completed a self-report depression scale, and then rated their discomfort with eight categories of everyday forgetting and their attitudes toward intellectual aging. One week later, they rated how frequently they experience the same categories of forgetting, and then completed a battery of objective memory tests analogous to those categories. Ten days later, they rated their willingness to participate in both memory improvement classes and nonmemory classes. Older adults reported significantly more frequent failures but less discomfort with the failures than the young adults. Frequency, discomfort, and self-reported depression were all positively correlated in the older group, but not the young group. Young and old adults were equally positive about participating in memory classes, which both age groups preferred to nonmemory classes; the correlation between willingness to participate in memory classes and objective memory approached significance in the young, but not in the old. Attitude toward intellectual aging was correlated with frequency of and discomfort with forgetting in the older group.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Here's looking at you: the relative effect of age and attractiveness on judgments about memory failure.

Young and elderly females read vignettes describing short-term, long-term, and very long-term memory failures. Each vignette was accompanied by a photograph of an attractive or unattractive young or elderly female target person. Subjects judged each vignette for possible attributions for the target's failure (ability, effort, task difficulty, luck, and attention). They also rated whether the failure was a sign of mental difficulty and whether medical and/or psychological evaluation was indicated. Failures of elderly and unattractive targets were attributed to lack of ability. Failures of young targets were attributed to lack of effort and lack of attention, whereas failures of attractive targets were attributed to task difficulty and lack of attention. Elderly and unattractive targets were judged as having greater mental difficulty and need for evaluation than young and attractive targets. In an a priori comparison, age predominated over attractiveness in memory failure judgments. Subjects, particularly the young, considered very long-term failures more indicative of mental difficulty and need for evaluation than short-term or long-term failures.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Everyday memory failure: age differences in appraisal and attribution.

A person perception paradigm was used to test 86 young and 84 older Ss for evidence of a double standard in appraising everyday memory failures of young and older targets. Vignettes were judged on separate Likert scales for possible attributions for the failure (ability, effort, task difficulty, chance, and 2 measures of attention), signs of mental difficulty, need for memory training, and indications of need for professional evaluation. Results confirmed a double standard used by young and old: The failures of older targets were judged as signifying greater mental difficulty and greater need for memory training than were the identical failures of young targets. Older Ss were more lenient overall than young Ss in their appraisals. Young Ss judged target persons' memory failures as signifying more mental difficulty, and they more readily recommend professional evaluation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Age, gender, and individual differences in memory failure appraisal.

Young adults (22 men and 24 women) and older adults (24 men and 24 women) rated 12 gender-neutral vignettes describing short-term, long-term, and very-long-term memory failures. Vignette target persons were young (21-32) or older (65-75) men or women. Subjects of both age and gender groups used a double standard: Failures of older targets of both genders were rated as signifying greater mental difficulty than failures of young targets; failures of young targets were attributed to lack of effort and attention. Young subjects judged very-long-term failures more harshly than did older subjects. Subjects' objective memory performance, self-rated memory failure frequency, memory failure discomfort, and depression made little difference in their target person ratings.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Age differences in a controlled-lag recognition memory task.

Sixty subjects, 30 young and 30 old, were treated for word recognition using a controlled-lag method. A significant age differences was found for both recognition and for a subsequent recall task. Young subjects were superior to old on both recognition and recall. The greater the lag between the two presentations of a word, the greater the number of errors for both age groups. Most errors were made towards the beginning of the list, with a sharp drop in the middle, and a slight increase in the end. The older people took more time to complete the recognition task than the young.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

Age differences in learning and memory on a digit-symbol substitution task.

Fifteen young (18 to 28 years) and fifteen old (65 to 75 years) persons were given ten 30-second trials on a modified Digit-Symbol task. Both immediate and delayed (24-hour) recall and recognition measures were used to determine how well they remembered the digit-symbol pairs. Both age groups showed similar, significantly improvement over the 10 trials, although the performance level of the young group was higher throughout. The young group showed significantly higher recall and recognition (both immediate and delayed) for the digit-symbol pairs and were more likely to report the use of mnemonic techniques in learning the pairs.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Young and older adults' metaphor interpretation: the judgments of professionals and nonprofessionals.

Thirty young and 30 older adults provided interpretations for eight metaphors presented in written form. In Part A of the study, five experienced English teachers rated all interpretations (blind with regard to age of respondent) on a 7-point scale anchored with the terms "literal" and "poetic". The professionals' ratings were no different for the young and older adult subjects' responses, suggesting maintenance with age of this ability. In Part B of the study, 16 young and 16 older adult nonprofessionals rated a statistically representative subset of the metaphor interpretations (again, blind with regard to age of respondent). Their 7-point rating scale was anchored with the global terms "very poor" and "excellent". There was no overall difference in young and older nonprofessional adults' judgments. However, there was a Rater Age x Respondent Age interaction. The older nonprofessionals gave equivalent ratings to the metaphor interpretations of young and older adult respondents. The young nonprofessionals assigned significantly higher ratings to the young respondents' metaphor interpretations than to the older respondents' metaphor interpretations.

Adult↗