Publications by authors named "Patrick L Hill"

Purpose/objective: The present review examined the evidence for a potentially bidirectional association between mobility function and cognitive function in midlife and older adulthood.

Research Method/design: In 2023-2024, we conducted a scoping review by carrying out systematic searches on Google Scholar, PubMed, and PsycINFO for articles that included measures of mobility function and cognitive function.

Results: Of the 1,504 articles screened, 40 were included for review.

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  • The study focuses on the limited wellbeing research in individuals with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) and aims to identify challenges they face that are often overlooked in traditional mental health assessments.
  • In 2021, 288 adults with CMT participated in an online survey that included both established and new measures, followed by open-ended responses regarding their experiences.
  • The thematic analysis revealed nine significant challenges related to CMT, with anxiety, coping with loss of function, and difficulty finding knowledgeable healthcare providers being the most prevalent, highlighting the need for improved research and clinical practices.
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Individuals with a stronger sense of purpose in life experience better health across the lifespan. This chapter describes one mechanism linking purpose to health, namely stress reactivity. Across survey, experimental, and daily diary studies, research demonstrates that sense of purpose may yield a homeostatic function, insofar that it helps individuals stay the course to progress toward their purpose in life.

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  • A study examined how inflammation might contribute to chronic pain and fatigue in older adults by analyzing the relationship between inflammatory markers (IL-6, CRP, TNFα) and reported symptoms over time.
  • Researchers collected blood samples and health assessments from participants in the Saint Louis Personality and Aging (SPAN) study, focusing on correlations and potential confounding factors.
  • Findings indicated higher levels of IL-6 and CRP were linked to increased pain and fatigue; moreover, CRP was specifically predictive of future fatigue, while pain and fatigue also influenced inflammation levels over the studied period.
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Research into immigrant wellbeing and health has yielded evidence for both potential risks and the capacity for resilience of individuals moving to the United States. Limited research, though, has considered how immigrants may differ in their perceived commitment to a life direction and goals, known as sense of purpose. Moreover, research is needed on whether immigrants may be more likely to derive that purpose through social activism for change.

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Research is needed to better understand factors promoting health and well-being with Indigenous Peoples and people with socioeconomic barriers in Canada, given they face multiple social determinants that are barriers to health. Individual dispositions, sense of purpose and conscientiousness, are known to predict health and well-being in broader samples. In a community-based approach, guided by Indigenous Elders with traditional ways of knowing, we aimed to determine whether these measures correlate with self-rated health and well-being among Indigenous ( = 149) and non-Indigenous ( = 151) Peoples in Vancouver, Canada.

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Engagement in healthier lifestyle behaviors often is motivated by a focus on the future. However, there is limited research on the associations between health behavior and future time perspective, defined as people's tendency to perceive their future as expansive or as limited. Data came from a survey of U.

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Background And Objective: Research has shown that perceptions of future time as limited are associated with more depressive symptoms. However, there is limited research on which dimensions of future time perspective (FTP: opportunity, extension, constraint) are associated with depression, anxiety, and stress, and whether these findings vary across age.

Design And Methods: Data came from a cross-sectional study in a nonclinical U.

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Having a sense of purpose in life predicts better maintenance of cognitive function in older adulthood and reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. However, little research has examined its influence on the rate of cognitive decline and length of cognitive healthspan. This study evaluated the role of sense of purpose on the risk and timing of transitions between normal cognition, MCI, and dementia.

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Wellbeing-defined broadly as experiencing one's life as enjoyable and fulfilling-has been associated with lower risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. The mechanisms underlying this association are largely unknown. However, prior research and theory suggest that wellbeing impacts health behaviors and biological systems that are relevant to cognitive and brain health.

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Article Synopsis
  • The research examined individual differences in how people from the U.S. and Japan perceive factors important for a good life, using data from 4,041 Americans and 381 Japanese participants.
  • Key findings showed that while some factors like family relationships are valued in both countries, others like faith and job importance vary by country and age group.
  • Additionally, perceptions of a good life are linked to people's wellbeing and physical health both at the moment and over time, highlighting how personal views can impact overall quality of life.
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Objectives: Immigrants face multiple forms of cultural stress that hold pernicious influences on their psychological well-being, including everyday discrimination, bicultural stressors, and negative context of reception from others. Research thus is needed to consider potential buffers and mitigating factors that may help immigrant adults in the face of cultural stress. The present studies evaluated a sense of purpose as one potential buffer.

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Purpose is an important construct across contexts and cultures, with evidence suggesting it is strongly related to health, health behaviors, discrimination, and experiences of trauma. In this narrative review of the research on purpose in Hawai'i, the authors identify, critically analyze, and synthesize the extant literature found through a comprehensive literature search. It then discusses important cultural considerations for engaging in purpose research in Hawai'i, broadly, and with the Indigenous people of Hawai'i ().

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Objective: Abundant research has linked nightly sleep as an antecedent of daily psychosocial experiences; however, less is known about sleep's influence on daily expectations of these experiences. Therefore, this research examined the day-to-day associations of sleep quality, duration, and efficiency with next-day expectations for stress(ors) and positive experiences, as well as whether these expectations were related to end-of-day reports of physical symptoms.

Methods: In Study 1, U.

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Sense of purpose refers to the extent to which one feels that they have personally meaningful goals and directions guiding them through life. Though this construct predicts a host of benefits, little is known regarding the extent to which sense of purpose fluctuates within an individual and the affective changes tied to those fluctuations. The current study uses daily diary data to addresses this gap by exploring (1) how much sense of purpose and different components of purpose fluctuate from one day to the next, (2) the extent to which these fluctuations correlate with positive and negative affect, and (3) whether dispositional sense of purpose and age correlate with greater variability.

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Using data from Midlife in the United States (=3,767), this study investigates how believing having money or occupational prestige is important for a good life is associated with different aspects of well-being. Actual income was positively associated with sense of purpose, personal growth, self-acceptance, environmental mastery, and life satisfaction, negatively associated with negative affect, and was not associated with autonomy, positive relations with others, or positive affect. Meanwhile, perceiving having enough money or extra money as important for a good life predicted well-being across all nine well-being indicators.

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Conscientiousness and sense of purpose consistently predict health, wellbeing, and health behavior. However, it remains an open question whether they are unique or overlapping predictors of health and wellbeing. The current study considered this question using the MOSAiCH study, a nationally representative sample of 2305 Swiss adults (: 52.

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Longitudinal research is lacking with respect to how negative emotional reactivity and somatic symptoms during adolescence set the stage for later health. The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine within-person associations between negative emotional reactivity and somatic symptoms during adolescence and their effects on health and wellbeing in adulthood. Participants (N = 1527; 48.

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Objective: Examining the personality and well-being correlates of positive event diversity.

Background: Past research has highlighted that personality traits are linked to the frequency of daily positive events. This study is the first to examine positive event diversity, the extent to which positive events are spread across multiple types of positive life domains, as well as its personality and well-being correlates.

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Multiple studies have focused on the role of psychosocial factors as predictors of COVID-19 vaccination willingness and uptake, with less attention paid to whether vaccination itself could influence wellbeing. The current study evaluated this possibility with respect to sense of purpose, the perception one has goals and a direction in life, building on previous evidence this factor may influence vaccination willingness and decision-making. Across seven waves of monthly data from February to August 2021, participants (n = 2169, m = 48.

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Purpose/objective: The goal of the current study is to examine the relationships between psychosocial factors and well-being among adults with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, a progressive neuromuscular disorder. Specifically, we aimed to examine associations between psychosocial factors and sense of purpose as well as the moderating role of sense of purpose on associations between psychosocial factors and two other measures of well-being (life satisfaction and health-related quality of life).

Research Method/design: In 2021, we recruited 263 U.

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Despite the value of sense of purpose during older adulthood, this construct often declines with age. With some older adults reconsidering the relevance of purpose later in life, the measurement of purpose may suffer from variance issues with age. The current study investigated whether sense of purpose functions similarly across ages and evaluated if the predictive power of purpose on mental, physical, cognitive, and financial outcomes changes when accounting for a less age-affected measurement structure.

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Cognitive gerontology research requires consideration of performance as well as perceptions of performance. While subjective memory is positively associated with memory performance, these correlations typically are modest in magnitude, leading to the need to consider whether certain people may show weaker or stronger linkages between performance and perceptions. The current study leveraged personality (NEO Big Five), memory performance (i.

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Stress-induced dysregulation of diurnal cortisol is a cornerstone of stress-disease theories; however, observed associations between cortisol, stress, and health have been inconsistent. The reliability of diurnal cortisol features may contribute to these equivocal findings. Our meta-analysis (5 diurnal features from 11 studies; total participant n = 3307) and investigation (15 diurnal cortisol features) in 2 independent studies (St.

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Background: Health complications from diabetes place major strain on individuals, financially and emotionally. The onset and severity of these complications are largely driven by patients' behaviors, making psychosocial factors that influence behaviors key targets for interventions. One promising factor is sense of purpose or the degree to which a person believes their life has direction.

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