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No description available.

No description available.

The present study expanded the story recognition and inference literature by investigating age differences within the older age range, differences as a result of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and extending the focus of the investigation into the consistency of responding. 304 older adults completed a story recognition task across five different occasions. Old-old (00) adults and those with more severe MCI showed poorer ability to accurately recognize inferences, and less sensitivity to discriminate between statement types. Intraindividual variability was positively correlated with increasing age and cognitive impairment, and interactions revealed the greatest inconsistency involved the false, rather than inferred statements. The findings support our proposal that participants used two different recognition strategies, and their episodic memory ability defined the efficiency and frequency of use of the strategies. 00 and MCI adults may be less able to recognize that something plausible and consistent with an event may not have actually occurred.

Current classification systems for identifying individuals at the earliest stages of dementia, based primarily on cognitive measures, may be limited in scope. The present study examined physical functioning in a sample of 304 nondemented, older adults, classified based on presence and severity of mild cognitive impairment. In general, lower levels of physical functioning and greater inconsistency in physical functioning were found in older participants and in participants with increasing severity of cognitive impairment. Evaluation of the combined and unique contributions of level of and inconsistency in physical functioning to predicting cognitive status group membership revealed that, for some physical measures, inconsistency in physical functioning provided unique information beyond level of performance. These results are consistent with the notion that inconsistency in performance may be a behavioural marker of compromised neurological functioning and that information regarding physical functioning may prove useful for identifying individuals at the earliest stages of dementia.

The problem with which this investigation was concerned was to determine whether or not age difference was related to aggressiveness scores of first-born children.

The accurate estimation of age is considered important from an ethical, legal and archaeological perspective. Among the numerous methods based on macroscopic skeletal studies for age estimation, the Suchey-Brooks (1990) method for aging from the pubic symphysis and the Buckberry and Chamberlain (2002) method for aging from the auricular surface are considered more reliable. However, both these methods have been derived from American populations. In saying this, the following study aimed to evaluate whether it is possible to accurately estimate the age-at-death from morphological age-related changes seen on the pubic symphysis and the auricular surface in a black South African population. A total of 197 individuals of both sexes utilising both left and right os coxae were investigated. Age was estimated using descriptions stipulated by Brooks and Suchey (1990) and Buckberry and Chamberlain (2002). Both methods indicated moderate to high inter-and intra-observer errors. Descriptive statistics indicated a sample distribution of predominantly middle aged individuals. Correlation coefficients, inaccuracies and bias as well as Principal Components Analysis (PCA) were calculated for both skeletal elements for both sexes and sides. Statistical analyses indicated no significant differences between sexes and sides for both the pubic symphysis and the auricular surface. When comparing accuracies of each method, inaccuracies and bias were lower in the pubic symphysis than in the auricular surface thus making the pubic symphysis a more reliable age estimator. Similarly, males indicated lower inaccuracies and bias than did females. Principal Component Analysis indicated variance between certain features found on the pubic symphysis and the auricular surface. Overall, the pubic symphysis outperformed the auricular surface, even though the method described by Buckberry and Chamberlain (2002) is considered more reliable. Further investigation of these two methods on a white South African

The empirical research about the labour force participation of older people has received increasing attention since the 1990s in the UK as there are growing concerns about the ageing of the population and the level of finance needed to support the elderly. Therefore, this thesis analyses main determinants associated with the retirement decisions of both men and women using discrete choice models. Age, health, education attainments, unearned income and pension eligibility are the most important determinants influencing the likelihood of retirement. On the other hand, the effects of other factors, such as hourly earnings, marital status, education, housing tenure, and other individual and household characteristics differ from 1991 to 2013. The other underlying factor that the study examines is the influence of gender disparity on retirement decisions of older people using nonlinear decomposition methods and which factors cause gender gap in retirement decisions. The gender disparity influenced by demographic and financial factors has not been significantly reduced over time. Age, hourly earnings, non-labour income and pension eligibility increase the gender gap, whereas education, good health conditions and being a homeowner act to reduce the gender gap in the retirement process. Moreover, this thesis points out the importance of partial retirement in the British labour market, which has been less subject to research in the UK, and it is found as an important concept to promote longer working lives among older people. Age, education and crisis period were found to be important determinants of partial retirement, while poor health, household income levels, and marital status, were found to be insignificant.

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No description available.