Biomedical subjects

Paul Verhaeghen

Publications and source records attributed to Paul Verhaeghen.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Adult age and digit symbol substitution performance: a meta-analysis.

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of the effects of age, education, and estimated year of measurement on scores from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised Digit Symbol Substitution Test. Analysis of effect sizes for age reported in 141 studies published between 1986 and 2002 indicated a mean standardized difference of -2.07. Age accounted for 86% of the variance in a regression model using age, education, and year submitted as predictors of Digit Symbol scores. There was no association between years of education or year submitted and Digit Symbol scores for younger adults or older adults.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Trait anger, anger expression, and ambulatory blood pressure: a meta-analytic review.

A meta-analysis of 15 studies was conducted to investigate the relationship between trait anger and ambulatory blood pressure. Overall, the experience of anger was significantly and positively associated with systolic blood pressure (r+ = 0.049), but not reliably associated with diastolic blood pressure (r+ = 0.028). After removing an outlier, the expression of anger was found to have a reliable inverse relationship with diastolic blood pressure (r+ = -0.072). No reliable relationship between expression of anger and systolic blood pressure (r+ = -0.041) was found. These results continue to support the modest role of self-reported trait anger and anger expression in blood pressure levels. Several suggestions for future research are discussed, including increasing the focus on the complexity and synergism of these effects.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Subitizing speed, subitizing range, counting speed, the Stroop effect, and aging: capacity differences and speed equivalence.

Thirty younger and 29 older adults were tested on reaction times for set size of a display of 1 to 9 digits. On half of the trials, the nominal value of the digits was equal to the size of the set displayed; on the other half, the value differed by 1 from the set size (Stroop interference). We found evidence for age differences in subitizing span (2.83 vs. 2.07). Once individual differences in subitizing range were taken into account, no age differences were found in the rate of either subitizing or counting, and no individual differences were apparent in subitizing speed. There was no age difference in the susceptibility to the Stroop effect. The results suggest that, with advancing age, the size of the focus of attention may shrink, but speed of access to elements in the focus of attention may remain constant.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

The fate of cognition in very old age: six-year longitudinal findings in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE).

The authors report full-information longitudinal age gradients in 4 intellectual abilities on the basis of 6-year longitudinal changes in 132 individuals (mean age at T1 = 78.27, age range = 70-100) from the Berlin Aging Study. Relative to the cross-sectional parent sample (N = 516, mean age at T1 = 84.92 years), this sample was positively selected because of differential mortality and experimental attrition. Perceptual speed, memory, and fluency declined with age. In contrast, knowledge remained stable up to age 90, with evidence for decline thereafter. Age gradients were more negative in old old (n = 66, mean age at T1 = 83.04) than in old (n = 66, mean age at T1 = 73.77) participants. Rates of decline did not differ reliably between men and women or between participants with high versus low life-history status. They conclude that intellectual development after age 70 varies by distance to death, age, and intellectual ability domain.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2003

Aging and vocabulary scores: a meta-analysis.

Vocabulary scores were examined in a total of 210 articles, containing 324 independent pairings of younger and older adults, from the 1986-2001 issues of Psychology and Aging. The average effect size, favoring the old, was 0.80 SD. Production tests yielded smaller effects (0.68 SD) than multiple-choice tests (0.93 SD). Both age and education were found to be partially independent determinants of performance in production tests; age effects disappeared in multiple-choice tests as soon as education was taken into account. In addition, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised Vocabulary subtest (D. Wechsler, 1981) was also found to be sensitive to the Flynn effect (J. R. Flynn, 1987; i.e., increasing test scores with advancing birth year). The results question the approach of using age-group equality in vocabulary scores as a check on sample equivalence.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Aging and dual-task performance: a meta-analysis.

The relations between dual-task effects and aging were examined through a meta-analysis of 33 studies (with 48 independent participant groups) using latency as the dependent measure and 30 studies (with 40 independent participant groups) focusing on accuracy. Brinley plots and state traces were derived, and a model to explicate different types of complexity (additive and multiplicative) was developed. The effects of dual-task processing on latency were additive, and this additive cost was larger in older adults than in younger adults and larger than predicted from general slowing. This cost was small and independent of task complexity. The effects of dual-task processing on logit-transformed accuracy were likewise additive, but no specific age deficit was associated with this dual-task cost.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Aging, executive control, and attention: a review of meta-analyses.

We review the results of a series of meta-analyses by the first author and colleagues, examining age-related differences in selective attention (Stroop-task survey and negative-priming task survey) and in divided attention (dual-task survey and task-switching survey). The four task families all lent themselves to state trace analysis, in which performance in baseline conditions was contrasted with performance in experimental conditions separately for college-aged subjects and for elderly subjects. These analyses found no age-related deficits specific to selective attention or local task-switching. Age deficits were found for dual-task performance and global task-switching. Unlike selective attention and local task-switching costs, dual-task and global task-switching costs were found to be additive in both young and old subjects, unmodulated by task difficulty. These forms of executive intervention then did not alter computational processes already present in the simple tasks, but rather added one or more additional processing steps or stages to the processing stream. The cost was greater in older adults, but was limited to those experimental conditions that activated multiple task sets.

Aging↗

PubMed2002

Cognitive efficiency modes in old age: performance on sequential and coordinative verbal and visuospatial tasks.

In an experiment using a large set of verbal and spatial tasks requiring low or high degrees of executive control, 3 distinct age-related effects were found. The smallest effect (no slowing) was tied to lexical tasks with low executive involvement, the largest deficit (age-related slowing factor of 2.2) was tied to visuospatial tasks with high executive involvement, an intermediate level of deficit (slowing factor of 1.7) was found for visuospatial tasks with low executive load and verbal tasks with high executive load. These age-related dissociations were incompatible with any "common cause" formulation. The mechanism responsible for the dissociation between verbal and visual tasks, and between low and high executive load remains to be determined. The latter may reflect capacity limits.

Adult↗