The population of older adults is growing rapidly and there will be an increased need for psychological services for this population. Current estimates indicate a significant workforce gap such that all psychologists, regardless of specialty area, will likely be called upon to work with older adults. Education and experience in the care of older…

Students attending a lecture usually have a wide range of prior knowledge about the topic in question. Rather than seeing this as a problem, lecturers can take advantage of such differences. This article shows how students' misconceptions about old age were used to inform a lecture on the topic. Prior knowledge can thus be used to aid teaching and…

Involving undergraduate students in cognitive aging research requires extra efforts not associated with graduate assistants. However, if the researcher acknowledges the limited experience of undergraduates in structuring their participation, the rewards are copious for the students and researcher alike. This paper describes undergraduate student…

In collaboration with distinguished scholars and National Institute on Aging (NIA) staff, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a research training program in aging for psychology faculty from 4-year colleges. The goal of the program was to build and sustain a community of college faculty committed to conducting aging research, incorporating…

Seeking to extend curricula in a Psychology of Aging course, an online Internet test that assesses user's implicit attitudes was used as part of a learning activity to enhance students' awareness of age-bias in social perceptions. A pretest-posttest methodology examined the efficacy of this learning activity in three separate investigations.…

A National Institute on Aging-funded pilot project to study advice-giving by older adult mothers to their middle-aged daughters was undertaken in a medium-sized teaching-intensive university. The student body and community are highly diverse, and many undergraduates are first-generation college students. In this context, undergraduate psychology…

This study considered two types of age discrimination (youth and elder) and related scale scores for 108 psychology students and 81 nursing students. The current study found that although the nursing students had a significantly larger number of courses related to aging, both nursing and psychology students reported low levels of age…