Search results for "RICS"
showing 10 items of 14086 documents
Item Response Theory Analysis of the Life Orientation Test-Revised: Age and Gender Differential Item Functioning Analyses
2015
This study is aimed at testing the measurement properties of the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) for the assessment of dispositional optimism by employing item response theory (IRT) analyses. The LOT-R was administered to a large sample of 2,862 Italian adults. First, confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated the theoretical conceptualization of the construct measured by the LOT-R as a single bipolar dimension. Subsequently, IRT analyses for polytomous, ordered response category data were applied to investigate the items’ properties. The equivalence of the items across gender and age was assessed by analyzing differential item functioning. Discrimination and severity parameters indic…
C4, BF, C3 Allele Distribution and Complement Activity in Healthy Aged People and Centenarians
1999
The aim of this study was to examine the complement system and the distribution of some human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class III alleles (C4, BF) in healthy aged people (77 centenarians and 89 elderly subjects). We have also studied the alleles of C3, a complement component genetically unrelated to HLA, the immunochemical levels of C4 and C3 and serum functional hemolytic activity for classical (CH50) and alternative (AP50) complement pathway. The levels of C3 and C4 and the CH50 and AP50 were found to be within the normal range. The frequencies of C3, BF, and C4A alleles were similar in the cohorts that have been studied. For C4B null allele (C4BQ0) a trend toward an increase in the older c…
Resilience Patterns
2015
Resilience, or the capacity to be able to develop oneself successfully despite adverse circumstances, has become a concept of interest in recent years. There is a clear relationship between resilience, psychological well-being, and coping strategies. This study looked at 890 subjects with a mean age of 46.77 ( SD = 20.86) years, ranging from 18 and 95 years old. The participants were 40.6% men and 59.4% women. Using this sample, three clusters were developed by MATLAB R2010a and the Self-Organizing Maps toolbox. Two of these had high resilience, and the other one had low resilience; the psychological well-being variables and coping strategies were taken into account. Thereafter, multivaria…
The effects of instrumental reminiscence on resilience and coping in elderly
2014
A B S T R A C T Objectives: Aging, as a stage of development is marked by major changes to which the subject must adapt. Instrumental reminiscence is based on recalling times one coped with stressful circumstances, and analyzing what it took to adapt in those situations. The purpose of the present study was to analyze the effectiveness of an instrumental reminiscent program to enhance adaptive capacity (problemfocused coping and emotion-focused) and resilience in older adults. Method: Thirty participants noninstitutionalized conducted a pre and post assessment on a treatment consisting of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Brief Resilient Coping Scale and Stress Coping Questionnaire …
Evidence for Less Marked Potential Signs of T-Cell Immunosenescence in Centenarian Offspring Than in the General Age-Matched Population
2014
People may reach the upper limits of the human life span at least partly because they have maintained more appropriate immune function, avoiding changes to immunity termed "immunosenescence." Exceptionally long-lived people may be enriched for genes that contribute to their longevity, some of which may bear on immune function. Centenarian offspring would be expected to inherit some of these, which might be reflected in their resistance to immunosenescence, and contribute to their potential longevity. We have tested this hypothesis by comparing centenarian offspring with age-matched controls. We report differences in the numbers and proportions of both CD4(+) and CD8(+) early- and late-diffe…
Do healthy elders, like young adults, remember animates better than inanimates? An adaptive view
2016
International audience; Background/Study Context: It has been found that young adults remember animates better than inanimates. According to the adaptive view of human memory, this is due to the fact that animates are more important for fitness purposes than inanimates. This effect has been ascribed to episodic memory, where older people exhibit difficulties. Methods: Here the authors investigated whether the animacy effect in memory also occurs for healthy older adults. Older and young adults categorized words for their animacy characteristics and were then given an unexpected recognition test on the words using the Remember/Know paradigm. Executive functions were also evaluated using seve…
Mitochondrial DNA copy number and telomere length in peripheral blood mononuclear cells in comparison with whole blood in three different age groups
2019
There are more and more studies on telomere length (TL) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and it has been proven that these factors play a significant role in the aging of the immune system thereby it is important to understand how it varies in different cell types for more accurate conclusions. The aim of this study was to look into dynamics of mtDNA amount in conjunction with TL in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) during aging in comparison with whole blood (WB) cells. Overall, 53 samples were divided into three age groups: 20-39 year age group, 40-59 year age group and 60-79 year age group. MtDNA amount was determined by qPCR TaqMan, and TL was measured by Southern blotting of term…
Pure Progressive Amnesia and the APPV717G Mutation
2009
We report an isolated, slowly progressive, pure amnestic phenotype in a 59-year-old member of a family affected by autosomal dominant familial Alzheimer disease. Early-onset Alzheimer disease in this family was associated with a V717G mutation in the amyloid precursor protein gene (APP). Subjective impairment of episodic memory began in our subject at the age of 44 years and subsequent, longitudinal neuropsychologic assessment confirmed progressive, severe, global impairment of memory functions over a period of 14 years with preservation of other cognitive domains. The mean annual hippocampal atrophy rate, determined by volumetric magnetic resonance imaging was intermediate between values p…
Age Differences in Face Processing: The Role of Perceptual Degradation and Holistic Processing
2017
Abstract Objectives We simultaneously investigated the role of three hypotheses regarding age-related differences in face processing: perceptual degradation, impaired holistic processing, and an interaction between the two. Methods Young adults (YA) aged 20–33-year olds, middle-age adults (MA) aged 50–64-year olds, and older adults (OA) aged 65–82-year olds were tested on the context congruency paradigm, which allows measurement of face-specific holistic processing across the life span (Meinhardt-Injac, Persike & Meinhardt, 2014. Acta Psychologica, 151, 155–163). Perceptual degradation was examined by measuring performance with faces that were not filtered (FSF), with faces filtered to …
Age Identification: A Comparison between Finnish and North-American Cultures
1998
This study examined perceptions of age among Finnish males and females in three age groups; twenty-five to thirty-nine-year-olds ( n = 446), forty to fifty-four-year-olds ( n = 482) and fifty-five to sixty-four-year-olds ( n = 427). The age perceptions of the Finnish sample were further compared with those of a North-American sample with corresponding age groups ( n = 169, n = 187, n = 222) reported by Barak, Stern, and Gould (1988). Four age concepts used were chronological age, subjective age, ideal age, and disparity age. As expected on the basis of previous studies in age identification, no difference was found between Finnish males and females in terms of subjective age. Ideal age, ho…