Biomedical subjects

Scott B Maitland

Publications and source records attributed to Scott B Maitland.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Sexual consent behaviors in same-sex relationships.

Consent is a key issue in defining sexual coercion yet few researchers have analyzed sexual consent attitudes and behaviors and, to date, there has been no published research examining sexual consent within same-sex relationships. The main objective of this study was to identify which behaviors people use to ask for and to indicate sexual consent to their same-sex partner(s). A Same-Sex Sexual Consent Scale was developed to measure both initiating and responding consent behaviors in same-sex relationships. Data were collected using an on-line survey from 257 participants (127 men, 130 women). The participants reported using nonverbal behaviors significantly more frequently than verbal behaviors to indicate consent. Exploratory factor analysis for the Initiating and Responding subscales resulted in four factors for each subscale. The four factors for the Initiating Subscale were nonverbal behaviors involving touch, no resistance behaviors, verbal behaviors, and nonverbal behaviors without touch. The factors for the Responding Subscale were no resistance behaviors, verbal behaviors, nonverbal behaviors, and undressing behaviors. There were no significant differences in the initiating behaviors used by men who have sex with men (MSM) and women who have sex with women (WSW); however, when responding to initiating behavior, MSM reported using significantly more nonverbal signals than did WSW. The scale that was developed in this study should be useful for other researchers who wish to study the topic of sexual consent.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Episodic memory change in late adulthood: generalizability across samples and performance indices.

Younger adults recall more information from episodic memory tasks than do older adults. Because longitudinal studies are rare and often incompatible, the extent of actual late-life memory change is not well established. We assemble two different longitudinal samples of normal older adults, each of which is tested twice at a 3-year interval, using a large battery of episodic memory indicators. Together, two-wave data from both the Victoria Longitudinal Study in Canada (n = 400) and the Kungsholmen Project in Sweden (n = 168) cover a 40-year span of adulthood, ranging from 54 to 94 years of age. Principal memory tasks include categorizable word lists, story recall, and random word lists, as well as indicators of cognitive support. Overall, an examination of performance on sets of common and complementary episodic tasks reveals that, for both samples, actual 3-year changes are modest and that, when decline occurs, it is gradual. The exception-greater decline for more supported tasks-suggests that these may be especially sensitive to late-life changes.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Selective sex differences in declarative memory.

Sex invariance of a six-factor, higher order model of declarative memory (two second-order factors: episodic and semantic memory; and four first-order factors: recall, recognition, fluency, and knowledge) was established for 1,796 participants (35-85 years). Metric invariance of first- and second-order factor loadings across sex was demonstrated. At the second-order level, a female advantage was observed for both episodic and semantic memory. At the first-order level, sex differences in episodic memory were apparent for both recall and recognition, whereas the differences in semantic memory were driven by a female superiority in fluency. Additional tests of sex differences in three age groups (35-50, 55-65, and 70-85 years of age) indicated that the female superiority in declarative memory diminished with advancing age. The factor-specific sex differences are discussed in relation to sex differences in hippocampal function.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Selective adult age differences in an age-invariant multifactor model of declarative memory.

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test competing models of declarative memory. Data from middle-aged participants provided support for a model comprised of 2 2nd-order (episodic and semantic memory) and 4 1st-order (recall, recognition, fluency, and knowledge) factors. Extending this model across young-old and old-old participants established support for age invariance. Tests of group differences showed an age deficit in episodic memory that was more pronounced for recall than for recognition. For semantic memory, there was an increase in knowledge from middle to young-old age and thereafter a decrease. Overall, the results support the view that episodic memory is more age sensitive than semantic memory, but they also indicate that aging has differential effects within these 2 forms of memory.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Interrelations between subjective health and episodic memory change in Swedish and Canadian samples of older adults.

Recent research has documented associations between subjective health ratings and objective indicators of disease and death. Less is known about relations between subjective health ratings and level of cognitive performance in older adults. In this study, we explored whether subjective health ratings are related to episodic memory performance, both concurrently and across a three-year longitudinal interval. Persons aged 75-84 years, and participating in the Swedish Kungsholmen Project (n = 105) or the Canadian Victoria Longitudinal Study (n = 71), were examined. Results showed that in both samples, while the cross-sectional relationship was non-significant, longitudinal change in perceptions of subjective health were related to change in episodic memory performance. Next, the two samples were combined in additional analyses. Here, results further revealed that the associations between longitudinal change in subjective health and memory performance generalized across samples independently of demographic, changing physical health status, and subjective memory decline differences. Thus, the present findings suggest that subjective health may be added to the growing number of individual-difference variables that are predictive of episodic memory change in very old age.

Aged↗

PubMed1998

Longitudinal invariance of adult psychometric ability factor structures across 7 years.

The hypothesis that psychometric ability tests retain equivalent factor structures across a 7-year interval was examined in a sample of 984 persons (disaggregated into 6 cohort groups: M ages at first test = 32, 46, 53, 60, 67, and 76), assessed in 1984 and 1991 as part of the Seattle Longitudinal Study. A best fitting measurement model was estimated for 20 psychometric tests marking the 6 primary abilities of Inductive Reasoning, Spatial Orientation, Perceptual Speed, Numeric Facility, Verbal Ability, and Verbal Recall. Gender was partialed out at the variable level by including a gender factor. Weak factorial invariance over time was demonstrated for all cohorts. Configural invariance could be demonstrated across all cohort groups. However, weak factorial invariance across groups could be accepted for all but the youngest and oldest groups. Latent means were modeled for the accepted solutions across time and cohort groups.

Adult↗