An examination of younger and older adults' age preferences.

Research suggests that how people feel about aging can contribute to their later physical, cognitive, and mental health. In two studies, we examined younger (ages 18-30) and older adults' (ages 61-70) views about aging by asking them to rate the extent to which they would find it desirable to be various ages between 0 and 120. Participants also indicated both their ideal age (the age at which they would most like to be) and their subjective age (how old they generally feel).

The Relationship Between Older Adults' Subjective Age and Perceived Effort on Cognitive Tasks.

Background: Although engagement in cognitively-demanding activities is beneficial for older adults, research suggests that older adults may be less motivated to engage in these types of activities because of the increased age-related costs associated with task engagement and their perceptions of the task demands.

Methods: Across three studies, we investigated if older adults' subjective age predicted their perceptions of effort over the course of a working memory task. Younger and older adults reported their subjective age and then completed an increasingly difficult series of working memory trials, indicating perceived task demands and effort after each trial.

Metacognitive errors in the classroom: The role of variability of past performance on exam prediction accuracy.

Students often make incorrect predictions about their exam performance, with the lowest-performing students showing the greatest inaccuracies in their predictions. The reasons why low-performing students make inaccurate predictions are not fully understood. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that low-performing students erroneously predict their exam performance in part because their past performance varies considerably, yielding unreliable data from which to make their predictions.

Statistical Model of Dynamic Markers of the Alzheimer's Pathological Cascade.

Objectives: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive disease reflected in markers across assessment modalities, including neuroimaging, cognitive testing, and evaluation of adaptive function. Identifying a single continuum of decline across assessment modalities in a single sample is statistically challenging because of the multivariate nature of the data. To address this challenge, we implemented advanced statistical analyses designed specifically to model complex data across a single continuum.

Metacognition in the classroom: The association between students' exam predictions and their desired grades.

Students are overconfident when making grade predictions, and worse, the lowest-performing students are generally the most overconfident. Because metacognitive accuracy is associated with academic performance, multiple studies have attempted to improve metacognitive accuracy with mixed results. However, these studies may be of limited use because we do not understand the types of information university students use to make performance predictions.

The effect of cognitive testing and feedback on older adults' subjective age.

Subjective age, or how old a person feels, is an important measure of self-perception that is associated with consequential cognitive and health outcomes. Recent research suggests that subjective age is affected by certain situations, including cognitive testing contexts. The current study examined whether cognitive testing and positive performance feedback affect subjective age and subsequent cognitive performance.