Although previous research indicates that self-concept scores of elderly people are higher than both test norms and scores for younger groups, some researchers have hypothesized that the higher self-concept scores are the result of denial and are not an indication of true self-concept. To investigate the consistency of higher test scores across…

Although it has been suggested that contact with children is important for the satisfaction of the economic, emotional, and service needs of older parents, social gerontology research provides little direct evidence that childless elders or elders with few living children are less satisfied than others. To examine the effects of family size,…

While it is clear that health status is important in determining morale, and that social contact also contributes to morale, the interaction of health status and social contact on morale is not well understood. Elderly frail community residents (N=40) were interviewed twice in a 1-year period about their contact with friends, grandchildren,…

Information on male linkage is usually generalized from studies of female linkage and the saliency of the father-son tie in later life is unclear. The importance of the father-son tie was examined in 56 men aged 65 and older through a comparative analysis designed to compare the levels of association and helping between fathers and sons to those…

Using data collected through telephone interviews with a national sample of adults, this study searched for evidence as to whether interviewers have stronger effects on the responses given to a wide range of questions by older people than on the responses of younger people. Responses to 30 items for which significant interviewer effects had…

The marital relationship is a basic context of retirement, where spouses' separate perceptions of retirement, and of each other's views, are an essential part of the retirement experience. To explore this issue, 297 married men who had been retired for 6 years or less, all participants in the Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study, reported…

Research shows that subjective indices of social integration are related to general well-being. In order to study the relationship between social interaction and well-being, 31 healthy Caucasian adults, with a mean age of 73 years, were given two questionnaires. The first contained eleven subjective social interation variables and was derived from…

Older adults are significantly slower than young adults in the naming response in the Stroop Color Word Interference Test. Hypotheses attempting to explain this age-related difference in a perceptual-cognitive task have included orthogenic principle, response-competition, and cautiousness. This study examines whether there are any significant…

Survey data based on a random sample of retirement villages' residents in Florida (N=519) considered retirement plans. Individuals were more likely to have made detailed plans for: Health Insurance (85 percent); Income (71 percent); Will (70 percent); Housing (67 percent); Health Care (55 percent); Leisure Pursuits (39 percent). A retirement…

To explore the effects of depression and learned helplessness on cognitive task deficits, 66 community-residing elderly adults were categorized as depressed or nondepressed based on Beck Depression Inventory scores. After a pre-test battery measuring short-term memory and components of crystallized/fluid intelligence, the subjects responded to a…

Age-related deficits may exist in episodic memory (knowledge of the context in which an item appeared previously) and semantic memory (knowledge of an item's meaning independent of the context). In order to examine adult age differences in semantic priming effects and subsequent episodic retention for visually presented words, 24 young (18-22…

Widowhood may pose a threat to the adjustment and life satisfaction of older women. In order to examine the relationship between life satisfaction of elderly widowed black women and their involvement in formal and informal support systems, 65 women ranging in age from 64 to 92, were asked 326 questions by trained black interviewers. Interviewers…

The elderly have generally been portrayed as needy recipients of services; only recently has attention been paid to their contributory role. To explore the nature and characteristics of helping behavior among urban elderly, 117 residents of senior citizens' housing sites in Detroit completed the Altruism Scale for the Elderly and a second measure…

Researchers have divided nursing home residents into long-stayers and short-stayers. While long-stayers rarely return home, they do not necessarily stay long in one institution. Instead, they may transfer from nursing home to nursing home. Although many studies have examined the impact of relocation on nursing home residents, few studies have…

A study conducted in England (Goebel, 1982) showed that older English adults preferred middle-aged and older persons over young persons in important relationships. Since research has shown Americans to have negative attitudes toward the elderly, it was hypothesized that older Americans might not share the English sample's preferences. To examine…