Depressive Symptoms are Associated with Decline Over Time in Verbal Fluency Performance in Female but Not Male Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

Objective: The current study was designed to examine associations between depressive symptoms and longitudinal declines in category and letter fluency performance in a gender-stratified sample of older adults.

Method: Participants were community-residing older adults (females:  = 289; males:  = 233) followed annually (2011-2018) as part of a cohort study conducted at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS).

Effects on Memory of Early Testing and Accuracy Assessment for Central and Contextual Content.

Memory for an event is influenced by many factors including retention interval, frequency of assessment, and type of information assessed concerning the event. We examined the usefulness of observer memory for contextual information in assessing accuracy of memory for central information. Participants viewed a video of a purse being stolen and were asked questions concerning the perpetrator and surrounding context of the event, including where and when the event occurred and who else was present.

Associative structure of second-order conditioning in humans.

Second-order conditioning (SOC; i.e., conditioned responding to S2 as a result of S1-US pairings followed by S2-S1 pairings) is generally explained by either a direct S2→US association or by an associative chain (i.