Biomedical subjects

L T Szuchman

Publications and source records attributed to L T Szuchman.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Ain't misbehavin': the effects of age and intentionality on judgments about misconduct.

In 2 person perception experiments, young and older perceivers read a scenario about a young or old female target who leaves a store without paying for a hat. In Experiment 1, the target claims she forgot she was wearing the hat when questioned by the manager. Perceivers thought the manager would have greater sympathy, less anger, and would recommend less punishment when the target was old. In Experiment 2, the target clearly forgot to pay for the hat, clearly stole it, or had ambiguous intentions. In the ambiguous condition, perceivers attributed the young target's behavior more to stealing and the old target's behavior more to forgetting. In the forget condition, young perceivers had equal sympathy for the young and old targets and held them similarly responsible, but older perceivers had greater sympathy for the forgetful old target and held her less responsible than they did the forgetful young target.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Forgetful but forgiven: how age and life style affect perceptions of memory failure.

Young and older perceivers read a narrative in which a forgetful young or old target was described as having either a young or old life style. Perceivers attributed memory failures more to mental difficulty for old targets but to lack of effort for young targets, regardless of life style. Life style did make a difference in perceivers' memory opinion and sympathy for the old but not for the young targets. Perceivers had a less negative memory opinion when the old target had an old rather than a young life style. Also, the old target with the old life style elicited a greater degree of sympathy in young perceivers, but a lesser degree of sympathy in older perceivers.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1993

Age and forgetfulness: young perceivers' impressions of young and older neighbors.

Previous person perception research has indicated that people use an age-based double standard when judging targets who experience single instances of memory failure. The two experiments reported here extend the investigation by assessing whether perceivers evidence a similar bias in judging both the memory capability and personal traits of targets who vary in age and degree of forgetfulness. In the first experiment 179 young adults rated how likely they would be to choose a certain type of neighbor, described in a two-page vignette, to perform memory tasks. The neighbor's (i.e., target person's) age and degree of forgetfulness were manipulated. Participants gave higher choice ratings to nonforgetful than to forgetful targets. Also, they gave higher choice ratings to old over young targets. In the second experiment ninety young adults rated the degree to which they considered targets (described in the same vignettes used in the first experiment) to possess specific traits (e.g., responsible) that were both desirable and relevant to performing memory tasks. Nonforgetful targets received higher ratings than forgetful targets and older targets received higher ratings than young targets. The perception that older targets possess such traits to a greater degree than young targets may explain the initial finding that respondents were more likely to choose old over young targets to perform memory tasks.

Adolescent↗

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↗

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↗

PubMedDate not supplied

How physicians appraise everyday memory failures of patients across the adult life span.

A person-perception paradigm was used to investigate how primary care physicians appraise young, middle-aged, young-old, or old-old hypothetical patients (targets) who experience incidences of everyday memory failure. The physicians distinguished among targets who experienced short-, long-, and very long-term types of failure. However, their ratings of the point at which they would recommend intervention and of the referrals they would make in response to the three types of failure were not affected by the age of the target. The physicians' responses are compared with prior research results obtained for lay subjects' appraisals of young versus older targets' memory failures. The implications for primary care physicians' views of the significance of everyday memory failures in older adults are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Memory performance in relation to age, verbal ability, and activity.

Young and old adults completed a vocabulary test, the Activities Frequency Inventory (AFI), the Activity Preference Scale (APS), and memory tests that sampled six domains of everyday memory. The young adults' memory performance was significantly higher than the old adults'. Memory was better for the high-APS young than for the low-APS young and for the high-AFI old than for the low-AFI old. However, the age gap in memory performance was not closed when a subsample of active elderly was compared with a subsample of inactive young. Also, in regression analyses, neither activity measure added significantly to the vocabulary measure in predicting memory performance for either age group.

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↗