Designing Feedback Visualizations for Anti-Hypertensive Medication Adherence for Older Adults.

Adhering to anti-hypertensive medications contributes to control of blood pressure and improved health outcomes. However, adherence rates among older adults are low. Patient monitoring of medication taking helps increase adherence and technology has great potential to support self-monitoring, in part by providing visual feedback about medication taking performance.

Health Literacy, Processing Capacity, Illness Knowledge, and Actionable Memory for Medication Taking in Type 2 Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Analysis.

Background: Patient knowledge about the purpose of medications is crucial to ensure safe and correct use, so it is an important index of adherence in patients with chronic illness.

Objective: We examined how health literacy and its components (processing capacity and knowledge about illness) influence memory for medication purposes.

Design: We conducted a cross-sectional study to examine memory for medication purposes in relation to health literacy, processing capacity, and illness knowledge among patients with diabetes in outpatient clinics.

A Framework for Design of Conversational Agents to Support Health Self-Care for Older Adults.

Objective: We examined the potential of conversational agents (CAs) to support older adults' self-care related to chronic illness in light of lessons learned from decades of pedagogical agent research, which investigates the impact and efficacy of CAs for a wide range of learners.

Background: The role of CAs in education (i.e.

Preliminary evaluation of a self-guided fall risk assessment tool for older adults.

Falls are a major health problem for older adults with significant physical and psychological consequences. The first step of successful fall prevention is to identify those at risk of falling. Recent technology advancement offers the possibility of objective, lowcost and self-guided fall risk assessment.

Pharmacy-Based Approach to Improving Heart Failure Medication Use by Older Adults with Limited Health Literacy: Learning from Interdisciplinary Experience.

Heart failure is a chronic disease requiring careful attention to self-care. Patients must follow instructions for diet and medication use to prevent or delay a decline in functional status, quality of life, and expensive care. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in heart failure patients' knowledge of important care routines, their cognition, and their health literacy, which predict the ability to implement self-care.

Publishing papers that matter.

Daniel G. Morrow introduces himself as the fifth editor of the ). The journal is the premier outlet for "use-inspired basic research" (Stokes, 2011) in the psychological sciences.

A Multi-faceted Approach to Promote Comprehension of Online Health Information Among Older Adults.

Purpose Of The Study: Older adults' self-care often depends on understanding and utilizing health information. Inadequate health literacy among older adults poses a barrier to self-care because it hampers comprehension of this information, particularly when the information is not well-designed. Our goal was to improve comprehension of online health information among older adults with hypertension who varied in health literacy abilities.

Effects of a Patient-Provider, Collaborative, Medication-Planning Tool: A Randomized, Controlled Trial.

Among patients with various levels of health literacy, the effects of collaborative, patient-provider, medication-planning tools on outcomes relevant to self-management are uncertain. . Among adult patients with type II diabetes mellitus, we tested the effectiveness of a medication-planning tool (Medtable) implemented via an electronic medical record to improve patients' medication knowledge, adherence, and glycemic control compared to usual care.

Multifaceted Prospective Memory Intervention to Improve Medication Adherence.

Objectives: To test whether a multifaceted prospective memory intervention improved adherence to antihypertensive medications and to assess whether executive function and working memory processes moderated the intervention effects.

Design: Two-group longitudinal randomized control trial.

Setting: Community.

Adult age differences in information foraging in an interactive reading environment.

When learning about a single topic in natural reading environments, readers are confronted with multiple sources varying in the type and amount of information. In this situation, readers are free to adaptively respond to the constraints of the environment (e.g.

Cognition and Health Literacy in Older Adults' Recall of Self-Care Information.

Purpose Of The Study: Health literacy is associated with health outcomes presumably because it influences the understanding of information needed for self-care. However, little is known about the language comprehension mechanisms that underpin health literacy.

Design And Methods: We explored the relationship between a commonly used measure of health literacy (Short Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults [STOFHLA]) and comprehension of health information among 145 older adults.

Information Foraging Across the Life Span: Search and Switch in Unknown Patches.

In this study, we used a word search puzzle paradigm to investigate age differences in the rate of information gain (RG; i.e., word gain as a function of time) and the cues used to make patch-departure decisions in information foraging.

Exploring relationships of human-automation interaction consequences on pilots: uncovering subsystems.

Objective: We attempted to understand the latent structure underlying the systems pilots use to operate in situations involving human-automation interaction (HAI).

Background: HAI is an important characteristic of many modern work situations. Of course, the cognitive subsystems are not immediately apparent by observing a functioning system, but correlations between variables may reveal important relations.

Training versus engagement as paths to cognitive enrichment with aging.

While a training model of cognitive intervention targets the improvement of particular skills through instruction and practice, an engagement model is based on the idea that being embedded in an intellectually and socially complex environment can impact cognition, perhaps even broadly, without explicit instruction. We contrasted these 2 models of cognitive enrichment by randomly assigning healthy older adults to a home-based inductive reasoning training program, a team-based competitive program in creative problem solving, or a wait-list control. As predicted, those in the training condition showed selective improvement in inductive reasoning.

Memory and comprehension for health information among older adults: distinguishing the effects of domain-general and domain-specific knowledge.

While there is evidence that knowledge influences understanding of health information, less is known about the processing mechanisms underlying this effect and its impact on memory. We used the moving window paradigm to examine how older adults varying in domain-general crystallised ability (verbal ability) and health knowledge allocate attention to understand health and domain-general texts. Participants (n = 107, age: 60-88 years) read and recalled single sentences about hypertension and about non-health topics.

Factors affecting usage of a personal health record (PHR) to manage health.

As the health care industry shifts into the digital age, patients are increasingly being provided with access to electronic personal health records (PHRs) that are tethered to their provider-maintained electronic health records. This unprecedented access to personal health information can enable patients to more effectively manage their health, but little is actually known about patients' ability to successfully use a PHR to perform health management tasks or the individual factors that influence task performance. This study evaluated the ability of 56 middle-aged adults (40-59 years) and 51 older adults (60-85 years) to use a simulated PHR to perform 15 common health management tasks encompassing medication management, review/interpretation of lab/test results, and health maintenance activities.

Aging and individual differences in binding during sentence understanding: evidence from temporary and global syntactic attachment ambiguities.

We report an investigation of aging and individual differences in binding information during sentence understanding. An age-continuous sample of adults (N=91), ranging from 18 to 81 years of age, read sentences in which a relative clause could be attached high to a head noun NP1, attached low to its modifying prepositional phrase NP2 (e.g.

Improving comprehension of medication information: implications for nurse-patient communication.

Older adults with chronic illness have complex medication regimens that require an understanding of a wide range of information. The impact of patient characteristics (e.g.

A multifaceted prospective memory intervention to improve medication adherence: design of a randomized control trial.

Adherence to prescribed antihypertensive agents is critical because control of elevated blood pressure is the single most important way to prevent stroke and other end organ damage. Unfortunately, nonadherence remains a significant problem. Previous interventions designed to improve adherence have demonstrated only small benefits of strategies that target single facets such as understanding medication directions.

Recruitment of Older Adults: Success May Be in the Details.

Purpose: Describe recruitment strategies used in a randomized clinical trial of a behavioral prospective memory intervention to improve medication adherence for older adults taking antihypertensive medication.

Results: Recruitment strategies represent 4 themes: accessing an appropriate population, communication and trust-building, providing comfort and security, and expressing gratitude. Recruitment activities resulted in 276 participants with a mean age of 76.

Effect of health literacy on drug adherence in patients with heart failure.

Study Objective: To assess the effect of health literacy on drug adherence in the context of a pharmacist-based intervention for patients with heart failure.

Design: Post hoc analysis of a randomized controlled trial.

Setting: Inner-city ambulatory care practice affiliated with an academic medical center.

An EMR-based tool to support collaborative planning for medication use among adults with diabetes: design of a multi-site randomized control trial.

Patients with type II diabetes often struggle with self-care, including adhering to complex medication regimens and managing their blood glucose levels. Medication nonadherence in this population reflects many factors, including a gap between the demands of taking medication and the limited literacy and cognitive resources that many patients bring to this task. This gap is exacerbated by a lack of health system support, such as inadequate patient-provider collaboration.

The process-knowledge model of health literacy: evidence from a componential analysis of two commonly used measures.

We investigated the effects of domain-general processing capacity (fluid ability such as working memory), domain-general knowledge (crystallized ability such as vocabulary), and domain-specific health knowledge for two of the most commonly used measures of health literacy (S-TOFHLA and REALM). One hundred forty six community-dwelling older adults participated; 103 had been diagnosed with hypertension. The results showed that older adults who had higher levels of processing capacity or knowledge (domain-general or health) performed better on both of the health literacy measures.

Health care research that delivers: introduction to the special issue on cognitive factors in health care.

Research that addresses human factors issues in health care has made good progress since the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine report on medical error (Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 1999), yet patient safety remains a persistent challenge for the health care system. While this challenge reflects many factors, we focus on the need for research that is sufficiently comprehensive to identify threats to patient safety, yet specific enough to explain how provider and patient factors interact with task and health context to engender these threats. Such research should be theory-based, yet also problem-driven; exert experimental control over theoretically relevant variables, yet also involve participants, tasks, and contexts that represent the problems of interest.

Predispositional engagement, activity engagement, and cognition among older adults.

We investigated interrelationships between the predisposition toward approaching experiences in a mindful and creative way, participation in specific activities, and cognition among older adults. Participants were administered a battery measuring cognition (i.e.