Psychology and Aging

Enhancing the impact of psychological research on aging and adult lifespan development.
In this editorial, I outline two key changes to the submission guidelines, and I present my vision as the new editor for Psychology and Aging, the premier outlet for psychological research on aging and adult lifespan development. To enhance the impact of research published in the journal, my editorial team and I will accept articles that make strong theoretical contributions, are methodologically rigorous and transparent, use open science practices, contribute cumulative knowledge to the field, and have important practical implications. We will continue to publish high-quality empirical articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, as well as theory development and methodological articles from all areas of psychology and related disciplines that focus on basic principles of aging and adult lifespan development or that investigate these principles in applied settings. Now entering its fifth decade of publication, Psychology and Aging is the ideal outlet for theoretically and methodologically rigorous and transparent research that offers significant insights into the dynamic process of human aging and lifespan development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Advancing with age: Older adults excel in comprehension of novel metaphors.
Older adults may experience certain forms of cognitive decline, but some forms of semantic memory remain intact in older age. To address how metaphor comprehension changes with age and whether metaphor comprehension relies more heavily on analogical reasoning (supported by fluid intelligence) or on conceptual combination (supported by crystalized intelligence), we compared performance of younger and older adults. In two experiments, healthy older adults (54–88 years) scored lower on a measure of fluid intelligence (Ravens Progressive Matrices) but higher on a measure of crystalized intelligence (Mill Hill Vocabulary Test) relative to younger adults (18–34 years). Groups were equally successful in comprehending relatively easy metaphors (Study 1), but older adults showed a striking advantage over younger adults for novel literary metaphors (Study 2). Mixed-effects modeling showed that measures of fluid and crystalized intelligence each made separable contributions to metaphor comprehension for both groups, but older adults relied more on crystalized intelligence than did younger adults. These age-related dissociations clarify cognitive effects of aging and highlight the importance of crystalized intelligence for metaphor comprehension in both younger and older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Age and sex differences in emotion perception are influenced by emotional category and communication channel.
Sex differences in verbal and nonverbal emotion processing in older individuals are underexplored despite declining emotional performance with age. This study aimed to investigate the nature of sex differences in age-related decline in emotion perception, exploring modulatory effects on communication channels and emotion categories. Seventy-three older adults (43 female participants, aged 60–89 years) and 74 younger adults (37 female participants, aged 18–30 years) completed a task to recognize basic emotions (i.e., anger, happiness, neutrality, sadness) expressed by female or male encoders through verbal (i.e., semantic) and nonverbal (i.e., facial and prosodic) channels. Female participants consistently demonstrated an overall advantage in emotion perception and expression across both age cohorts. In older adults, this superiority was heightened in decoding angry and sad faces, as well as angry prosody and happy and sad semantics. However, older individuals exhibited decreased sensitivities to angry semantics, sad prosody, and neutral prosody from female encoders, whereas they showed heightened sensitivities to happy faces from female encoders and angry faces from male encoders. Both older and younger adults displayed age-related changes in sex interactions specific to emotional categories and channels. But neither own-sex nor opposite-sex bias was systematically observed across the two age groups. These results suggest that explicit emotion processing involves an intricate integration of individual and contextual differences, with significant age and sex interplay linked to specific emotions and channels. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Negative images, regardless of task relevance, distract younger more than older adults.
Older adults, compared to younger adults, tend to prioritize positive information more and negative information less. We recently observed this “positivity effect” pattern in an emotion-induced blindness task, which measures attention allocated to task-irrelevant emotional stimuli in the way participants are distracted by them. Older adults were less distracted by negative images compared to younger adults. This could represent an age-related priority shift away from negative emotions. However, it could also be that older adults simply do not see negative images presented at a fast rate. A similar possibility is that older adults to fail to engage with negative stimuli because of their complex nature, rather than due to age-related changes in emotional preference per se. In the present study, we tested this possibility by manipulating the required degree of engagement with emotional distractors. Participants completed a modified emotion-induced blindness task, with emotional distractors that were either task irrelevant (younger: n = 48; older: n = 46) or task relevant (younger: n = 48; older: n = 45). The task relevance of distractors did not affect performance. Even though older adults could quickly perceive the negative images, they were less distracted by them compared to younger adults. Current theories of the positivity effect fail to fully account for these positivity effect patterns in attention, especially those that propose mechanisms requiring a substantial time to enact. The current results may require rethinking previous accounts of the positivity effect and highlight the benefits of probing the positivity effect in early cognitive processing stages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
When and how perceived control buffers against cognitive declines: A moderated mediation analysis.
Although perceived control is a well-established predictor of cognitive aging, less is known about how and under what developmental circumstances these beliefs about personal influence may protect against cognitive declines. Our study examined light physical activity (LPA) as an unexplored mechanism that may link changes in two facets of perceived control (personal mastery, perceived constraints) to longitudinal trajectories of cognitive functioning. We also examined whether mediated pathways were moderated by age (i.e., differed across the adult lifespan). We analyzed two-wave, 9-year data from the national Midlife in the United States Study (n = 2,456; Mage = 56 years, range = 30–84; 56% female) using autoregressive mediation and moderated mediation models. Mediation models showed that changes in personal mastery and perceived constraints predicted episodic memory and executive functioning via self-reported change in LPA. Only the mediated effects of constraints remained significant in a model that included both mastery and constraints as predictors. Moderated mediation models showed that, for episodic memory, the mediated pathways were strongest in old age and emerged only for constraints: For older but not younger adults, declines in constraints were associated with less decline in episodic memory, as mediated by increases in LPA. Results were consistent in sensitivity analyses that controlled for levels and change in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Findings inform lifespan theories of control and provide initial evidence that change in a largely overlooked health behavior (LPA) may underlie the link between perceived constraints and cognitive functioning, with this pathway becoming more pronounced in late life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Reminders eliminate age-related declines in prospective memory.
Prospective memory (PM)—the process of establishing intentions for future action and remembering to fulfill these intentions at the appropriate time—is necessary for many instrumental activities of daily living and for maintaining functional independence with increased age. Offloading PM demands onto the environment, such as setting a reminder alarm to take medication, offers an easy and effective way to mitigate age-related PM declines. However, a lack of basic knowledge about the cognitive and metacognitive processes that drive offloading decisions presents barriers to successful implementation. The present study addresses these issues by examining age differences in PM for offloaded (i.e., with reminders) and nonoffloaded (i.e., without reminders) intentions under low and high memory demands. With highly specific intentions that can be retrieved via bottom-up processes (Experiment 1), there were no age differences in PM without reminders, and younger and older adults equally benefitted from reminders under high memory load. With nonspecific intentions that require top-down attention for retrieval (Experiment 2), older adults had worse PM under high load without reminders. Critically, this age difference was eliminated with the use of reminders, likely due to increased reminder checking for older adults under high load. These findings suggest that offloading can circumvent cognitive capacity limitations and minimize computational effort to improve intention fulfillment in older adults. The theoretical and applied ramifications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Interplay of aging and practice in conflict processing: A big-data diffusion-model analysis.
We are continually required to exercise cognitive control in order to separate relevant and irrelevant information. Previous studies have produced mixed results as to whether cognitive control declines across adulthood and improves with practice. Moreover, little is known about the influences of aging and practice on the automatic and controlled processes underlying performance in conflict situations. This calls for analyses of extensive data using process models for conflict tasks, akin to earlier drift-diffusion model analyses of performance in cognitive nonconflict tasks. Thus, to understand how aging and practice influence cognitive control at the process level, we analyzed a large-scale data set (1,800 participants aged 21–80 years completing 60 blocklike online games of an arrow-based Eriksen flanker task). At the coarse-grained level of mean response times, the congruency effect increased across adulthood and decreased with practice following an initial increase. The finer-grained distributional response time and error rate data were closely fitted by the diffusion model for conflict tasks, which captures the dynamic interplay of automatic and controlled processing. Best-fitting parameter values revealed multiple, partially counteracting influences of aging and practice: Aging across adulthood slowed down both controlled and automatic processing (besides slowing down nondecisional processes and increasing decision caution). By contrast, practice selectively speeded up controlled processing (besides speeding up nondecisional processes and decreasing decision caution). Taken together, these findings suggest that aging and practice primarily alter the speed of controlled (aging and practice) and automatic processing (aging), rather than causing inhibitory adjustments in the strength of automatic processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Weight gain in anorexia nervosa across age groups in higher levels of care.
Eating disorders (EDs) have historically been thought of as afflictions of younger women, but EDs do occur in midlife/older adults, and the incidence of EDs among older women may be increasing. The present study sought to examine outcomes for patients with anorexia nervosa needing to weight restore across four age groups: under 18, 18–25, 26–39, and 40+. Based on prior research, it was hypothesized that there would be no differences between the age groups in percent of expected body weight (%EBW) gained during treatment. Participants were 2,491 patients receiving treatment for an ED at a large multisite treatment facility offering higher levels of care. At this treatment facility, EBW is individualized for each patient, considering a patient’s premorbid body weight and historical weight trends. Adult patients ages 26–39 (t = −3.58, p <.001) and ages 40+ (t = −4.70, p <.001) had significantly lower improvements in %EBW compared to adult patients ages 18–25. Child and adolescent patients (under 18) had significantly greater improvements in %EBW than adult patients (t = 14.30, p <.001). Findings from the present study suggest that targeted treatments may need to be developed to increase weight gain in midlife/older adults. In addition, efforts may need to be strengthened to keep adults in treatment longer than they may initially want to, particularly when treatment and weight gain become difficult. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Affective response to daily physical activity in younger and older adults.
Many older adults do not meet the physical activity recommendations of the American Heart Association; hence, it is important to understand the factors that can facilitate regular physical activity in older adults. Notably, the role of affective response has been understudied. Mixed findings have been reported in terms of age effects in affective response to daily physical activity. This study aimed to determine age differences in affective response to daily physical activity and whether these differences are associated with overall physical activity levels. Further, the role of contextual factors in age differences in affective response following daily physical activity was examined. Younger (n = 59) and older adults (n = 60) completed 1 week of experience sampling during which they responded to daily prompts about their affect and physical activity. Overall physical activity levels were estimated via actigraphy. In both age groups, daily physical activity was similarly associated with greater high-arousal positive (HAP) affect relative to other activities. Across age groups, participants reported more HAP affect when engaging in daily physical activity in a group compared to alone. Greater duration and enjoyment of daily physical activity were more strongly associated with greater HAP affect in younger adults relative to older adults. Affective responses following bouts of daily physical activity did not predict overall physical activity levels for either age group. Overall, older adults may experience similar positive affective response to younger adults following daily physical activity relative to other activities. These affective responses may have a limited role in physical activity engagement in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Delayed onset of cognitive terminal decline in later born cohorts: Evidence from a longitudinal study of two cohorts born 29-years apart.
In this study, we evaluated birth cohort (i.e., generational) differences in the onset and rate of acceleration in cognitive decline prior to death (i.e., terminal decline [TD]). We obtained data from two cohorts, born in 1901–1902 (n = 755, 64% females) and 1930 (n = 347, 48% females), identified and sampled at age 70 from the same city population and assessed on the same cognitive tests at ages 70, 75, 79, 85, and 88. The 1901–1902 cohort was additionally assessed at ages 90, 92, 95, 97, 99, and 100. The outcome was defined at each measurement occasion by a composite score of three cognitive tests assessing spatial ability, perceptual and motor speed, and reasoning. Date of death was obtained from population register, with the last update in April 2023, covering over 99% and 38% of the cohort members, respectively. We fitted a random TD change point model to the data while accounting for sex and education. Findings revealed expected TD onset (as conditioned on male with formal education) 5.17 (95% highest density interval [2.54, 8.05]) years prior to death in the 1901–1902 cohort, with an acceleration in rate of decline by a factor of 4.43 within the TD phase. This estimate was delayed by 2.53 (95% highest density interval [5.68, 0.10]) years in the 1930 cohort, with an acceleration by a factor of 5.16 within the TD phase. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to present evidence indicating that today’s birth cohort experience, on average, a shorter TD phase in comparison to earlier born cohorts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychology and Aging - Vol 40, Iss 1