When and how perceived control buffers against cognitive declines: A moderated mediation analysis.

Although perceived control is a well-established predictor of cognitive aging, less is known about how and under what developmental circumstances these beliefs about personal influence may protect against cognitive declines. Our study examined light physical activity (LPA) as an unexplored mechanism that may link changes in two facets of perceived control (personal mastery, perceived constraints) to longitudinal trajectories of cognitive functioning. We also examined whether mediated pathways were moderated by age (i.

Increased frequency of light physical activity during midlife and old age buffers against cognitive declines.

Although it is well established that moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) buffers against declines in cognitive health, less is known about the benefits of light physical activity (LPA). Research on the role of LPA is crucial to advancing behavioral interventions to improve late life health outcomes, including cognitive functioning, because this form of physical activity remains more feasible and amenable to change in old age. Our study examined the extent to which increases in LPA frequency protected against longitudinal declines in cognitive functioning and whether such a relationship becomes pronounced in old age when opportunities for MVPA are typically reduced.

Individual Differences in Patterns of Developmental Opportunity and Constraint During COVID-19: Implications for Longitudinal Well-Being.

Individual differences in sociodemographic characteristics and trait-like perceptions of opportunities and constraints may shape responses to adversities such as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, little is known about how these factors combine to form multifaceted profiles of developmental opportunity and constraint or the implications of such profiles for longitudinal well-being following major life stressors. Using a national sample of U.

Context-Dependent Shifts in Self-Regulatory Personality Processes During COVID-19: Changes in Control Predict Dynamic Shifts in Goal Reengagement Capacity.

The ability to reengage with new attainable goals after major setbacks is a core self-regulatory trait linked to health and well-being. Yet little is known about the extent to which such goal reengagement capacities may shift over time in response to changing contextual circumstances. Using a nationally-representative sample of U.

Goal adjustment capacities in uncontrollable life circumstances: Benefits for psychological well-being during COVID-19.

Goal adjustment capacities (i.e., goal disengagement and goal reengagement) are core self-regulatory resources theorized to buffer psychological well-being during intractable life circumstances.

Pathways connecting family socioeconomic status in adolescence and sleep continuity in adult Black and White men.

Objective: To evaluate the roles of parenting and adolescent characteristics during ages 13 to 16 in connecting family socioeconomic status (SES) during adolescence with adult sleep in Black and White men.

Design: Longitudinal school-based community study beginning in 1987-1988 when participants were enrolled in the first or seventh grade.

Setting: Pittsburgh, PA.

Conscientiousness and Cardiometabolic Risk: A Test of the Health Behavior Model of Personality Using Structural Equation Modeling.

Background: High trait conscientiousness is associated with lower cardiometabolic risk, and health behaviors are a putative but relatively untested pathway that may explain this association.

Purpose: To explore the role of key health behaviors (diet, physical activity, substance use, and sleep) as links between conscientiousness and cardiometabolic risk.

Methods: In a cross-sectional analysis of 494 healthy, middle-aged working adults (mean age = 42.

Prospective Associations of Parenting and Childhood Maltreatment with Personality in Adolescent Males.

This longitudinal study examines whether early experiences with caregivers between the ages of 10 and 12 are associated with later adolescent personality at age 16 using both parent and child reports. Lower positive parenting was prospectively associated with higher neuroticism and lower extraversion and conscientiousness for both parent and self-reports of personality, as well as lower openness and agreeableness by parent report. Substantiated maltreatment was prospectively associated with greater neuroticism and lower agreeableness and conscientiousness assessed by parent report.

Big 5 personality traits and intraindividual variability in sleep duration, continuity, and timing.

Objectives: The personality traits of conscientiousness and neuroticism have been consistently linked to mean-level, self-reported sleep duration and continuity. The present study expands this literature by using actigraphy sleep assessment to examine how personality is related to both mean-level and the intraindividual variability in sleep duration, continuity, and timing.

Design: One-week ecological sleep assessment.

Sleep: A Pathway Linking Personality to Mortality Risk.

Personality and sleep predict longevity; however, no investigation has tested whether sleep mediates this association. Thus, we tested this effect across a 20-year follow-up (N = 3,759) in the Midlife Development in the United States cohort (baseline = 47.15) using proportional hazards in a structural equation modeling framework.

Prospective associations among objectively and subjectively assessed sleep and the metabolic syndrome.

Objective: Subjective sleep disturbances have been associated with greater risk for concurrent and incident metabolic syndrome (MetS). Previous studies have not examined prospective associations among polysomnography-assessed sleep and the MetS, despite knowledge that self-reported sleep is subject to reporting bias, and that subjectively and objectively assessed sleep are weakly correlated.

Method: In the current study, objectively-assessed (polysomnography) and subjectively-assessed (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, PSQI) sleep was measured in 145 adults at two timepoints, separated by 12-30 years.

Prospective Associations of Adolescent Conscientiousness With Psychological Resources and Metabolic Syndrome in Black and White Men.

Objective: Conscientiousness predicts better psychological resources as well as lower cardiovascular mortality and lower metabolic syndrome (MetS) risk. However, the benefits of conscientiousness might be amplified, disabled, or reversed in disadvantaged groups. This study is the first to test these competing hypotheses for prospective associations between adolescent conscientiousness and adult psychological resources and MetS.

The impact of frequent napping and nap practice on sleep-dependent memory in humans.

Napping benefits long-term memory formation and is a tool many individuals use to improve daytime functioning. Despite its potential advantages, approximately 47% of people in the United States eschew napping. The goal of this study was to determine whether people who endorse napping at least once a week (nap+) show differences in nap outcomes, including nap-dependent memory consolidation, compared with people who rarely or never nap (nap-).

Cardiovascular Stress Reactivity and Carotid Intima-Media Thickness: The Buffering Role of Slow-Wave Sleep.

Objective: Exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity to acute psychological stress has been associated with increased carotid intima-media thickness (IMT). However, interstudy variability in this relationship suggests the presence of moderating factors. The current study aimed to test the hypothesis that poor nocturnal sleep, defined as short total sleep time or low slow-wave sleep, would moderate the relationship between cardiovascular reactivity and IMT.

Animation Stimuli System for Research on Instructor Gestures in Education.

Education research has shown that instructor gestures can help capture, maintain, and direct the student's attention during a lecture as well as enhance learning and retention. Traditional education research on instructor gestures relies on video stimuli, which are time consuming to produce, especially when gesture precision and consistency across conditions are strictly enforced. The proposed system allows users to efficiently create accurate and effective stimuli for complex studies on gesture, without the need for computer animation expertise or artist talent.

Perceived sleep quality: The interplay of neuroticism, affect, and hyperarousal.

Introduction: Many adults experience poor sleep quality, and personality traits have emerged as important predictors of self-reported sleep. However, it is still unclear whether personality predicts sleep quality independent of other correlates, including mood, emotion regulation, and hyperarousal.

Aims And Method: The aim of this study was twofold.

To Nap, Perchance to DREAM: A Factor Analysis of College Students' Self-Reported Reasons for Napping.

Although napping has received attention because of its associations with health and use as a method to understand the function of sleep, to our knowledge no study has systematically and statistically assessed reasons for napping. Using factor analysis, we determined the underlying structure of reasons for napping in diverse undergraduates (N = 430, 59% female) and examined their relationships with self-reported sleep, psychological health, and physical health. The five reasons for napping can be summarized using the acronym DREAM (Dysregulative, Restorative, Emotional, Appetitive, and Mindful).

Autonomic activity during sleep predicts memory consolidation in humans.

Throughout history, psychologists and philosophers have proposed that good sleep benefits memory, yet current studies focusing on the relationship between traditionally reported sleep features (e.g., minutes in sleep stages) and changes in memory performance show contradictory findings.

Hand Gesture and Mathematics Learning: Lessons From an Avatar.

A beneficial effect of gesture on learning has been demonstrated in multiple domains, including mathematics, science, and foreign language vocabulary. However, because gesture is known to co-vary with other non-verbal behaviors, including eye gaze and prosody along with face, lip, and body movements, it is possible the beneficial effect of gesture is instead attributable to these other behaviors. We used a computer-generated animated pedagogical agent to control both verbal and non-verbal behavior.

Automatic detection of rapid eye movements (REMs): A machine learning approach.

Background: Rapid eye movements (REMs) are a defining feature of REM sleep. The number of discrete REMs over time, or REM density, has been investigated as a marker of clinical psychopathology and memory consolidation. However, human detection of REMs is a time-consuming and subjective process.

REM sleep rescues learning from interference.

Classical human memory studies investigating the acquisition of temporally-linked events have found that the memories for two events will interfere with each other and cause forgetting (i.e., interference; Wixted, 2004).

Personality and healthy sleep: the importance of conscientiousness and neuroticism.

Although previous research has shown personality and sleep are each substantial predictors of health throughout the lifespan, little is known about links between personality and healthy sleep patterns. This study examined Big Five personality traits and a range of factors related to sleep health in 436 university students (M(age) = 19.88, SD = 1.

Childhood sleep duration and lifelong mortality risk.

Objective: Sleep duration is known to significantly affect health in adults and children, but little is understood about long-term associations. This prospective cohort study is the first to examine whether childhood sleep duration is associated with lifelong mortality risk.

Method: Data from childhood were refined and mortality data collected for 1,145 participants from the Terman Life Cycle Study.

The benefit of offline sleep and wake for novel object recognition.

How do we segment and recognize novel objects? When explicit cues from motion and color are available, object boundary detection is relatively easy. However, under conditions of deep camouflage, in which objects share the same image cues as their background, the visual system must reassign new functional roles to existing image statistics in order to group continuities for detection and segmentation of object boundaries. This bootstrapped learning process is stimulus dependent and requires extensive task-specific training.