Researchers and clinicians routinely rely on patients' retrospective emotional self-reports to guide diagnosis and treatment, despite evidence of impaired autobiographical memory and retrieval of emotional information in depression and anxiety. To clarify the nature and specificity of these impairments, we conducted two large online data collections (Study 1, N = 1,983; Study 2, N = 900) examining whether depression and/or anxiety symptoms would uniquely predict the use of self-reported episodic (i.e., remembering) and/or semantic (i.e., knowing) retrieval when rating one's positive and negative emotional experiences over different time frames. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six time frames (ranging from at this moment to last few years) and were asked to rate how intensely they felt each of four emotions, anxious, sad, calm, and happy, over that period. Following each rating, they were asked several follow-up prompts assessing their perceived reliance on episodic and/or semantic information to rate how they felt, using procedures adapted from the traditional "remember/know" paradigm (Tulving, 1985). Across both studies, depression and anxiety symptoms each uniquely predicted increased likelihood of remembering across emotion types, and decreased likelihood of knowing how one felt when rating positive emotion types. Implications for the theory and treatment of emotion-related memory disturbances in depression and anxiety, and for dual-process theories of memory retrieval more generally, are discussed.

SummaryStereotypes can harm human performance, especially when activated in individuals with diminished working memory capacity (WMC). Performance implications for the stereotype of poor driving in older adults were investigated. Using a sample of older adults, WMC (the ability to maintain task goals and ignore distractions) and driving performance [brake reaction time (RT), following distance, and crashes] were assessed, the latter using a high‐fidelity simulator. Elderly participants under stereotype threat with reduced WMC exhibited slower brake RTs and longer following distances compared with a control condition that was not threatened. This driving profile was characteristic of cognitive distraction. Stereotype threat has clear consequences for human performance in a common real‐world task—driving—that is critical to public safety. Furthermore, these findings suggest caution in how the media and public policy communicate information about older adult driving.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

OBJECTIVE:The current study used a research domain criteria (RDoC) approach to assess age differences in multiple indicators of attention bias and its ties to anxiety, examining stimulus domain and cognitive control as moderators of older adults' oft-cited positivity effect (bias towards positive and away from negative stimuli, when compared to younger adults). METHOD:38 Younger adults and 38 older adults were administered a battery of cognitive control and trait and state anxiety measures, and completed a dot-probe task to assess attention bias, during which reaction time and fixation duration (using eye-tracking) were recorded for negative and neutral social (a salient threat domain for younger adults) and physical (a salient threat domain for older adults) stimuli. RESULTS:Mixed-effects models demonstrated that older adults were faster to react to dot-probe trials when the probe appeared in the place of negative (vs. neutral) physical stimuli, but displayed no difference in reaction time for social stimuli. Also, older (vs. younger) adults with lower levels of cognitive control were less negatively biased in their visual fixation to social stimuli. A negative reaction time attention bias on the dot-probe task predicted greater trait anxiety among participants with low levels of cognitive control, with a more complex pattern predicting state anxiety. CONCLUSION:Older adults do attend to social and physical stimuli differently. When stimuli concern a social threat, older adults do not preferentially attend to either neutral or negative stimuli. However, when stimuli concern physical threat, older adults preferentially attend to negative stimuli. Threat biases are associated with anxiety at all ages for those with low cognitive control.

Evidence is mixed regarding the circumstances in which anxiety predicts more versus less unwanted thought recurrence. This study examined subjective, self-reported suppression effort as a mediator of the relationship between anxiety symptoms and both the frequency and duration of unwanted thought recurrence during a thought suppression paradigm. Additionally, a moderated mediation model examined whether initial instructions to suppress versus monitor thoughts, and state and trait differences in cognitive resources, moderated the mediating effects of effort. Amazon Mechanical Turk volunteers (N=939) were instructed to either suppress or monitor an emotionally aversive thought for a one-minute period, followed by a second period during which all participants monitored. Trait cognitive resources were measured at baseline via a working memory task, and state cognitive resources were manipulated between-subjects via a depleting Stroop task. Results indicated that self-reported effort mediated the relationship between anxiety symptoms and both the frequency and duration of thought recurrence, but in opposite directions—such that anxious individuals' greater effort predicted higher frequency (i.e., more initial activation) but lower duration (i.e., faster override) of the target thought. No moderation effects were found. Implications for the role of self-reported suppression effort as a “double-edged sword” in the context of anxiety are discussed.

Previous studies have shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate poorer driving performance than their peers and are less likely to obtain a driver’s license. This study aims to examine the relationship between driving performance and executive functioning for novice drivers, with and without ASD, using a driving simulator. Forty-four males (ages 15–23), 17 with ASD and 27 healthy controls, completed paradigms assessing driving skills and executive functioning. ASD drivers demonstrated poorer driving performance overall and the addition of a working memory task resulted in a significant decrement in their performance relative to control drivers. Results suggest that working memory may be a key mechanism underlying difficulties demonstrated by ASD drivers and provides insight for future intervention programs.

Nationally, Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMV) license novice drivers based in part on on-road assessments. Intuitively it is assumed that such assessments are fair, reliable and valid measures of minimal driving competency. Upon further reflection, this would be difficult, given the subjectivity of a huge range of driving examiners that approach this assessment with different training backgrounds, life distractions and biases from examination to examination, the different road, traffic, lighting and weather conditions from one examination and DMV center to the next, and the minimal driving challenges in such assessments. For example, a typical on-road test involves only a 4 mile road segment with 2 left turns, 4 right turns, 1 lane change, pulling into a turn lane, and 1 speed limit change. It does not include highway driving nor defensive driving maneuvers. Additionally, such on-road assessments are both potentially dangerous and time demanding/expensive. A less expensive, safer, more challenging, objective, reliable, and valid procedure may be the use of Virtual Reality Driving Simulation (VRDS) that administers consistent and more extensive driving challenges to all examinees, which is evaluated in an objective manner based on normative data from current safe drivers. This presentation describes the experience and presents the data from a project where VRDSs were set up in two DMV facilities and a Research facility. The goals of this project were to determine whether VRDS assessments are just as reliable, discriminating and acceptable to the public as on-road assessments, and whether performance on the simulator predicts future on-road driving mishaps.

The present study reviews the literature on cell phone-distracted driving including the effectiveness of legislative efforts to reduce the behavior. It also reports results of descriptive analyses characterizing crashes and drivers involved in police-reported, cell phone-distracted crashes in California. Cell phone use in the U.S. is widespread and increasing. People tend to support legislative efforts to limit the use of cell phones while driving despite the fact that many continue to engage in the behavior. Empirical and observational research consistently shows a negative impact of cell phone use on driving performance and crash risk. The present study extracted data from the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System database pertaining to crashes that occurred between 2003 and 2011 in California. These data were examined at two levels: crash and driver. Crash analyses revealed that most crashes did not involve inattention. When they did, non-cell phone inattention was more common than cell phone inattention and hand-held phone use was more commonly associated with crashes than hands-free. The most common primary crash factor for cell phone-related fatal/injury crashes was traveling at an unsafe speed. A larger percentage of cell phone-related fatal/injury crashes occurred during the workweek than on the weekend, and more occurred in the afternoon than in the morning or night. Driver analyses revealed that 21 to 30 year-old drivers accounted for the largest percentage of drivers involved in cell phone-related fatal/injury crashes. Males accounted for more cell phone-related fatal/injury crashes than females. Finally, drivers reported as using a cell phone at the time of fatal/injury crashes were more likely to be found at fault, and were slightly more likely to be found at fault than those using hands-free devices.

Some studies have found that trying to suppress thoughts increases their long-term recurrence, a phenomenon associated with psychopathology, particularly obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, effect sizes in thought suppression studies have often been small and inconsistent. The present study sought to improve thought suppression conceptualization and measurement by examining two distinct dimensions of thought recurrence - frequency and duration of a thought's return - and how they evolve over time. After a thought focus period, 100 adults were assigned to either suppress or monitor the recurrence of an unpleasant thought for 4 min. Then, during a second four-minute period, all participants were asked to monitor the thought's recurrence. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that thought frequency declined across time and the rate of decline slowed as time went on. Initially, the extent of thought duration remained short and stable for those asked to suppress, and increased linearly over time for those asked to monitor. Later, this pattern reversed. Duration increased linearly for those initially asked to suppress but was short and stable for those who initially monitored. Accounting for change over time and means of measuring recurrence (frequency vs. duration) may help elucidate past mixed findings, and improve thought suppression research methodology.

The dual-systems model of adolescent risk-taking postulates that risk-taking during adolescence partially results from an imbalance in the development of the executive and the socio-emotional cognitive systems. While supported by behavioral and neuroanatomical data, translational research linking the model with real-world driving or laboratory driving simulation is sparse. This paper discusses the model as it relates to adolescent driving and reviews empirical studies that have applied it in a driving-specific context. While, the studies reviewed provided partial support, each lacked a critical component necessary to fully test the model. Thus, a strong test has yet to be implemented; however, the dual-systems model holds promise for advancing the understanding of teen driving risk and guiding applications for prevention and policy.

The purpose of the present study was to examine age differences in executive function as measured by novel driving-specific tests of executive function using a novel driving simulator. Developmental changes in executive function have been implicated as possible contributing factors to elevated crash statistics for both older adult (over age 65) and adolescent (between age 15 and 20) populations, however for different reasons. Poorer older adult driving performance has been partially attributed to general age-related cognitive decline in executive function mediated by age-related frontal-lobe atrophy and neural disconnection. Immature executive function has been implicated in poorer adolescent driving performance and is thought to be expressed in situations where the developmentally high sensitivity of the socio-emotional reward system out-competes the regulatory influence of the under developed executive system. Using a new, high fidelity, virtual reality driving simulator, the authors created driving-specific tests to assess executive function. These operational tests employed driving-relevant stimuli, with driving-relevant challenges, that required driving-relevant responses, in a driving-relevant context. Fifteen older adult and 20 adolescent drivers completed these driving-specific executive function tests. The authors hypothesized that poorer older adult driving performance would be reflected on these driving specific tests of executive function due to general cognitive decline and that, given the absence of social-emotional reward, adolescents would outperform older adults. Analyses of both bivariate correlations and group comparisons generally supported these predictions.

Summary Despite a large literature on implicit stereotypes, no one has scientifically documented the stereotype that older adults are dangerous drivers, even though its existence may impact older adults' driving performance through stereotype threat. The present studies are the first to use implicit tests to document the stereotype that older adult drivers are dangerous drivers. Experiment 1 (N = 159) documented a negative stereotype of older adult drivers in young and older adults by using a novel driving and age Implicit Association Test (IAT). Experiment 2 (N = 216) demonstrated that individual differences in working memory capacity moderate the degree to which young adults can willfully change this IAT score such that higher working memory capacity was associated with greater control of this negative stereotype of age and driving. This finding illustrates the potential utility of working memory capacity in interventions designed to reduce the impact of implicit stereotypes and negative attitudes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Intrusive thoughts and attempts to suppress them are common, but while suppression may be effective in the short-term, it can increase thought recurrence in the long-term. Because intentional suppression involves controlled processing, and many aspects of controlled processing decline with age, age differences in thought suppression outcomes may emerge, especially over repeated thought suppression attempts as cognitive resources are expended. Using multilevel modeling, we examined age differences in reactions to thought suppression attempts across four thought suppression sequences in 40 older and 42 younger adults. As expected, age differences were more prevalent during suppression than during free monitoring periods, with younger adults indicating longer, more frequent thought recurrences and greater suppression difficulty. Further, younger adults' thought suppression outcomes changed over time, while trajectories for older adults' were relatively stable. Results are discussed in terms of older adults' reduced thought recurrence, which was potentially afforded by age-related changes in reactive control and distractibility.

Theories of cognitive aging suggest diminished frontal lobe function and reduced attentional control could contribute to age-related changes in driving a motor vehicle. To address this possibility, the authors investigated the interrelationship among age, attentional control, and driving performance. Using a high-fidelity simulator, they measured individual differences in participants' abilities to maintain a prescribed following distance behind a lead vehicle, as well as their reaction time to press a brake pedal when this lead vehicle braked. Consistent with the literature on age-related changes in driving, following distance elongated with increased age, and brake reaction time slowed. Furthermore, regression analyses revealed the increase in following distance and the slowing in brake reaction time both co-varied with age deficits in attentional control. These results provide a novel demonstration of the inherent value of cognitive theory when applied to naturalistic settings, sharpening our understanding of the relevance of age-related deficits in attentional control for complex, real-world tasks like driving.

Older adult drivers' disproportionate involvement in traffic fatalities coupled with growing population projections for this age group present a need for public policy that regulates the safety of our roadways. Before such a policy can be developed, a highly predictive model of the cognitive factors responsible for successful driving performance is necessary. The present study investigated the relationship between age and cognitive control on simulated driving performance to develop a predictive model for individual driving ability. Visual attention and working memory capacity of young adult college students and community dwelling older adults were tested using Useful Field of View® and Operation Span which are thought to measure aspects of attention. These scores were correlated with participants' simulated driving performance. Preliminary results indicated that attentional measures are important predictors of driving performance. Results are discussed in terms of implications for public policy related to driving and aging.