Mental fatigue has been shown to hinder physical performance, especially in endurance-based sports. However, little research has been done concerning the impacts of mental fatigue on shorter maximal effort movements commonly encountered in sports activities, such as the depth jump. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of mental fatigue on depth jump performance and lower limb kinematics in Division I female soccer players. Eighteen participants performed depth jumps before and after a mentally fatiguing Stroop task. Multiple paired t tests were used to examine differences in dependent variables across conditions. The findings revealed a decrease in jump height (p = .002), propulsive impulse (p = .004), and peak hip adduction angles on the left (p = .003), while knee kinematics remained unchanged. This study challenges previous research on maximal anaerobic exercises, revealing mental fatigue’s potential influence on jumping and landing movements. However, mixed results in lower limb kinematics warrant further investigation. The study provides insights into the intricate relationship between mental fatigue and athletic capabilities, emphasizing the need for tailored interventions and further exploration of sport-specific movements.

Abstract Transportation for older adults residing in rural areas is particularly vital for maintaining their everyday activities including access to health services and community activities. Given unique features of rural areas (e.g., limited public transportation, greater distances to travel but less traffic), autonomous vehicles (AV) can be an innovative solution to rural older adults. Nevertheless, attitudes toward AV can be a significant barrier for older adults to adopt it. In fact, older adults in rural areas tend to hold different attitudes toward and experiences with new technologies. The current study explored how individual difference variables (i.e., age group, gender, technology proficiency, & personality traits) predict attitudes toward AV in rural areas. We first conducted a factor analysis on a 16-item attitude survey (collected from rural areas in USA) which uncovered three factors: concern with AV, willingness to adopt AV, confidence on human driving over AV. ANOVAs on the attitudinal factors showed that older adults (60+ yrs, n = 45) had a lower willingness to adopt AV than young adults (17-21 yrs, n = 47) despite a lower confidence on human driving over AV. There was no age group difference in concern with AV. Multiple regressions supported that technology proficiency can be another significant predictor of willingness to adopt AV over and above other individual difference factors (i.e., age groups, gender, & personality). These results indicate that older adults in rural areas have complex and ambivalent attitudes toward AV, which suggest different approaches to the dissemination of AV technology for them.

In the present study, we examined three experimental cognitive interventions, two targeted at training general cognitive abilities and one targeted at training specific instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) abilities, along with one active control group to compare benefits of these interventions beyond expectation effects, in a group of older adults (N = 230). Those engaged in general training did so with either the web-based brain game suite BrainHQ or the strategy video game Rise of Nations, while those trained on IADL skills completed instructional programs on driving and fraud awareness. Active control participants completed sets of puzzles. Comparing baseline and postintervention data across conditions, none of the preregistered primary outcome measures demonstrated a significant interaction between session and intervention condition, indicating no differential benefits. Analysis of expectation effects showed differences between intervention groups consistent with the type of training. Those in the IADL training condition did demonstrate superior knowledge for specific trained information (driving and finances). Twelve months after training, significant interactions between session and intervention were present in the primary measure of fraud detection, as well as the secondary measures of the letter sets task and Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test. However, the specific source of these interactions was difficult to discern. At 1-year follow-up those in the IADL condition did not maintain superior knowledge of driving and finances gained through training, as was present immediately postintervention. Hence, the interventions, when compared to an active control condition, failed to show general or specific transfer in a meaningful or consistent way. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Models for diagnostic reasoning in radiology have been based on the observed behaviors of experienced radiologists but have not directly focused on the thought processes of novices as they improve their accuracy of image interpretation. By collecting think-aloud verbal reports, the current study was designed to investigate differences in specific thought processes between medical students (novices) as they learn and radiologists (experts), so that we can better design future instructional environments. Seven medical students and four physicians with radiology training were asked to interpret and diagnose pediatric elbow radiographs where fracture is suspected. After reporting their diagnosis of a case, they were given immediate feedback. Participants were asked to verbalize their thoughts while completing the diagnosis and while they reflected on the provided feedback. The protocol analysis of their verbalizations showed that participants used some combination of four processes to interpret the case:gestalt interpretation, purposeful search, rule application,andreasoning from a prior case.All types of processes except reasoning from a prior case were applied significantly more frequently by experts. Further, gestalt interpretation was used with higher frequency in abnormal cases while purposeful search was used more often for normal cases. Our assessment of processes could help guide the design of instructional environments with well-curated image banks and analytics to facilitate the novice's journey to expertise in image interpretation.

Using the coincidental timing of a national survey conducted in Japan before and after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, this study reports a rare natural experiment that explored how the experience of a nuclear disaster influenced technology adoption in middle-aged and older adults. We conducted path analyses assessing how technology or nontechnology adoption intention and behavior changed before and after the nuclear disaster and whether age could moderate the potential change over and above other relevant factors. Our models supported that Japanese middle-aged to older adults reported fewer technology adoption behaviors after experiencing of the earthquake. However, the negative impact of the earthquake was not more pronounced in older adults. Our results suggest that researchers need to pay more attention to the issue of how loss of trust and/or perceived risk affect technology adoption interacting with other relevant factors, particularly, age-related factors and abilities.

Age-related perceptual and cognitive declines are associated with difficulties performing everyday tasks required to remain independent. Encouraging improvements in cognitive abilities have been shown for various short-term interventions but there is little evidence for direct impact on independence. This project compares the effect of broad and directed (narrow) technology-based training on basic perceptual and cognitive abilities in older adults and on the performance of simulated tasks of daily living including driving and fraud avoidance. Participants (N = 230, Mean age = 72) were randomly assigned to one of four training conditions: broad training using either (1) a web-based brain game suite, Brain HQ, or (2) a strategy video game, Rise of Nations, or to directed training for (3) Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) training using web-based programs for both driving and fraud avoidance training, or (4) to an active control condition of puzzle solving. Training took approximately 15-20 h for each intervention condition across four weeks. Before training began, participants received baseline ability tests of perception, attention, memory, cognition, and IADL, including a driving simulator test for hazard perception, and a financial fraud recognition test. They were tested again on these measures following training completion (post-test). A one-year follow-up from training completion is also scheduled. The baseline results support that randomization was successful across the intervention conditions. We discuss challenges and potential solutions for using technology-based interventions with older adults. We also discuss how the current trial addressed methodological limitations of previous intervention studies.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the neural basis of superior memory despite its potential in providing important insight into efforts to improve memory in the general population or to offset age-related cognitive decline. The current study reports a rare opportunity to reproduce and isolate specific neural activities directly associated with exceptional memory. To capture the brain processes responsible for superior memory, we returned to a laboratory task and analytic approach used to explore the nature of exceptional memory, namely, digit-span task combined with verbal protocol analysis. One participant with average memory received approximately 50 h of digit-span training and the participant’s digit-span increased from normative (8 digits) to exceptional (30 digits). Event-related potentials were recorded while the participant’s digit span increased from 19 to 30 digits. Protocol analysis allowed us to identify direct behavioral indices of idiosyncratic encoding processes underlying the superior memory performance. EEG indices directly corresponding to the behavioral indices of encoding processes were identified. The results suggest that the early attention-related encoding processes were reflected in theta and delta whereas the later attention-independent encoding processes were reflected in time-domain slow-wave. This fine-grained approach offers new insights into studying neural mechanism mediating superior memory and the cognitive effort necessary to develop it.

Age-related perceptual and cognitive declines are associated with difficulties performing everyday tasks required to remain independent. Encouraging improvements in cognitive abilities have been shown for various short-term interventions (e.g., the ACTIVE trial, digital games, aerobic exercise) but there is little evidence for direct impact on independence. This project compared the effect of broad and directed (narrow) technology-based training on basic perceptual and cognitive abilities in older adults and on the performance of simulated tasks of daily living including driving and fraud avoidance. Participants (N = 230, Mean age = 72) were randomly assigned to four training conditions: broad training using either 1) a web-based brain game or 2) the video game, or to directed training for 3) Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) training using web-based programs for both driving and fraud avoidance training, or 4) to an active control condition of puzzle solving. Training took approximately 15–20 hours for each intervention condition across four weeks. Before training began, participants received baseline ability tests of perception, attention, memory, and cognition, activities of daily living, as well as a driving simulator test for hazard perception, and a financial fraud recognition test. They were tested again on these measures following training completion (post-test). A one-year follow-up from training completion is scheduled. The baseline results support that randomization was successful across the intervention conditions and IADL measures that we developed for the current project were shown to be reliable. We also discuss project challenges and expected results from post-test.

In the mid-1980s, Dario Donatelli (DD) participated in a laboratory study of the effects of around 800h of practice on digit-span and increased his digit-span from 8 to 104 digits. This study assessed changes in the structure of his memory skill after around 30years of essentially no practice on the digit-span task. On the first day of testing, his estimated span was only 10 digits, but over the following 3 days of testing it increased to 19 digits. Further analyses of his recall performance and verbal reports identified which mechanisms of the original memory skill he could retrieve or reacquire over the 3days of practice. We discuss theoretical implications for the retention of skilled memory performance, the effects of age-related changes in memory on it, and for the future study of the effects of disuse on exceptional performance and complex skill.

This study examined how age, depressive symptoms, demographic variables, frailty, and health factors jointly influence episodic memory across the lifespan in two large, diverse samples. Hierarchical regression analyses from both samples showed that depressive symptoms negatively impacted episodic memory performance with the effect being more pronounced for older adults. Health and frailty tended not to be associated with episodic memory. However, the main effect of depressive symptoms tended to remain significant over and above other predictors, while the interaction with age was weakened with the addition of demographic variables. The unique contribution of this study is demonstrating that the relationship between depressive symptoms and episodic memory is moderated by age across relatively large non-clinical lifespan samples of adults. The findings indicate the importance of measuring and studying depressive symptoms during the course of aging in order to better understand the complex relationship between age, affect, physical functioning, and memory.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) hold considerable promise for maintaining aging adults' mobility as they develop impairments in driving skill. Nonetheless, attitudes can be a significant barrier to adoption as has been shown for other technologies. We investigated how different introductions to AV, video with a driver in the front seat, the rear seat, and a written description, affected attitudes, as well as how individual difference variables such as age, gender, prior knowledge, and personality traits predict attitudes within a middle-aged (Median age = 34, IQR = 20, n = 441) Amazon Mechanical Turk sample. The 16-item attitude survey uncovered three factors: Concern with AV, Eagerness to Adopt AV technology, and Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control. ANOVAs showed that only age (younger less concerned) and gender, (females more concerned) were significant factors in Concern with AV. Only gender affected Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control, with males more willing. Multiple regressions that included previous knowledge level and personality traits showed a different pattern. Female gender and greater conscientiousness were associated with greater Concern about AV. Prior knowledge of AV was associated with less concern. Emotional stability and openness to experience were positive predictors of Eagerness to Adopt AV, whereas conscientiousness was a negative predictor. Prior knowledge and openness to experience, positively, and extraversion, negatively, were associated with being willing to relinquish driving control. These results suggest that different information dissemination campaigns are needed to persuade consumers to adopt AV technology. We discuss potential approaches.