READING IN LATE LIFE--THE ROLE OF CONTROL AND KNOWLEDGE

晚年阅读——控制和知识的作用

• 批准号: 6012587
• 负责人: LISA Soederberg MILLER
• 金额: $ 7.59万
• 依托单位: BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-01 至 2001-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6012587
• 关键词: behavioral /social science research tag; belief; clinical research; cognition; comprehension; human old age (65+); human subject; locus of control; memory; motivation; psychological aspect of aging; reading; young adult human (21-34)

There is growing interest in determining how older adults can mitigate age-related declines in processing resources through the use of compensatory factors. Two such factors that have been investigated independently are control beliefs and knowledge. Research has demonstrated that older adults who have greater perceptions of personal control and self efficacy show higher levels of cognitive performance. Similarly, knowledge has been shown to benefit older adults in many domains of cognitive functioning. Little research, however, has addressed the intersection of these two factors. The proposed research will demonstrate how knowledge and control beliefs work together to influence optimal performance of older adults during text processing, a cognitive domain central to daily functioning. Young and older adults varying in levels of background knowledge and control beliefs will read and recall challenging domain- related and unrelated passages using the "moving-window technique" to measure word-by-word reading times as an index of resource allocation. According to the "prior knowledge" hypothesis, the application of knowledge requires a large investment of processing resources. Therefore, older adults may be particularly challenged when applying their knowledge during text processing. To the extent that control beliefs motivate increased effort, it is expected that older adults who have high levels of internal control will allocate the resources necessary to apply their knowledge to challenging, domain-related texts. This investment of resources, in turn, will be evident in subsequent recall performance. Thus, this research will test the hypothesis that older adults will benefit from knowledge embedded in difficult texts primarily when they have stronger internal control beliefs.

人们越来越有兴趣确定老年人如何通过使用补偿因素来缓解与年龄相关的处理资源下降。 已独立研究的两个此类因素是控制信念和知识。研究表明，对个人控制和自我效能感更强的老年人表现出更高水平的认知能力。 同样，知识已被证明可以在许多认知功能领域使老年人受益。 然而，很少有研究涉及这两个因素的交叉点。 拟议的研究将展示知识和控制信念如何共同影响老年人在文本处理过程中的最佳表现，文本处理是日常功能的核心认知领域。背景知识和控制信念水平不同的年轻人和老年人将使用“移动窗口技术”来阅读和回忆具有挑战性的领域相关和不相关的段落，以衡量逐字阅读时间作为资源分配的指标。 根据“先验知识”假设，知识的应用需要大量处理资源的投入。 因此，老年人在文本处理过程中应用他们的知识时可能会面临特别的挑战。 就控制信念激发更多努力而言，预计具有高水平内部控制的老年人将分配必要的资源，将其知识应用于具有挑战性的、与领域相关的文本。反过来，这种资源投入也将在随后的召回绩效中得到体现。 因此，这项研究将检验这样一个假设：老年人主要在拥有更强的内部控制信念时，将从困难文本中嵌入的知识中受益。