Introdução: As pessoas idosas têm preocupação com a perda da memória considerada como um sinal de alarme para declínio cognitivo. O fato é que a falta de memória compromete o cotidiano da pessoa idosa, sua auto-estima e seu relacionamento social. Baltes desenvolveu uma teoria onde preconiza que o desenvolvimento para toda a vida inclui otimização seletiva com compensação e permite que as pessoas envelheçam sem traumas. Isso prevê o engajamento em tarefas que sejam importantes. Num programa de treinamento da memória há espaço para a criação de condições de preparar e manter as pessoas idosas ativas e participantes. Objetivo: Sistematizar um programa de treinamento da memória para pessoas idosas incorporando a auto-avaliação. Método: O estudo é quase experimental - tipo antes e depois, realizado na Faculdade de Saúde Pública/USP, com a população idosa que demanda programas de atividades relacionadas à Universidade Aberta à terceira idade. Constou, na primeira fase, de um programa de treinamento da memória desenvolvido em dez sessões. Após definição do perfil da população alvo, o repertório sistematizado foi caracterizado segundo a função mental a ser estimulada. Resultados: O programa definitivo resultou de ajustes do Programa desenvolvido na primeira fase realizados a partir da análise das fichas de auto-avaliação de desempenho nas estratégias e exercícios e da análise das fichas de auto-relatos sobre a aplicação no dia-a-dia dos participantes, dos conteúdos aprendidos. As observações do pesquisador sobre vários aspectos comportamentais do grupo também foram importantes para os ajustes realizados. O tema atenção e concentração foi o mais citado nas auto-avaliações e auto-relatos. Evidenciou-se que o processo de socialização dos participantes deve merecer a atenção do monitor ao programar o elenco de atividades do grupo de participantes / Introduction: Aged persons are concerned wit loss of memory considered as an alarm sign for cognitive decline. The fact is that the loss of memory jeopardizes the aged person\'s daily life, his/her self-esteem and social relationship. Baltes developed a theory stating that the development for the whole life includes selective optimization with compensation and allows persons to age without traumas. This foresees the engagement in tasks which are important. In a memory training program there is room for the creation of conditions that prepare and maintain aged persons active and participating. Objective: To set up a memory training program for aged persons incorporating self-evaluation. Methodology: The study is almost experimental - before and after, conducted at the Public Health School/USP, with an aged population requiring activity programs related to the Open University for aged persons. The first place consisted of a memory training program developed in ten sessions. After defining the target population\'s profile the systematized repertory was broken down according to the mental function to be stimulated. Results: The final program resulted from adjustments of the program developed in the first phase from the analysis of self-evaluation cards in the performance of strategies and exercises and from the analysis of performance cards of training activities and from the analysis of self-reports on the application on a daily basis of the learned contents. The researcher\'s observations on the group\'s daily behavioral aspects were also important for the effected adjustments. Attention and concentration were the most mentioned subjects in the self-evaluations and self-reports. It was underlined that the socialization process of the participants should receive attention from the facilitator when programming the range of activities of the participants

Dissertation (Ph.D.) -- The Institute for Clinical Social Work, 1999. / A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Institute of Clinical Social Work in partial fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 415-423).

This thesis provides a situated understanding of the ways in which the reality of a new technology is socially constructed. In particular, it examines how members of the aged interpretive community made sense of the computer as an interruption event, a technology not yet routinised as part of their everyday taken-for-granted reality, and needing to be consciously considered and evaluated to make it understandable. Members' sensemaking is studied as a narrative process in which meaning is produced by drawing on a repertoire of narratives, evaluating and developing localised responses to those narratives for the purpose of action taking. Two hundred and four participants over the age of 55 years, recruited predominantly from senior citizens' and SeniorNet organisations in the North Island of New Zealand, were interviewed in 28 focus groups over an eighteen month period between September 2001 and May 2003. Participants were categorised according to their self-identified membership of one of three groups: computer users affiliated to SeniorNet member organisations; computer users without SeniorNet organisational affiliation; and non-computer-users. Their computer-related stories were analysed using narrative analysis to identify and map the similar and different ways in which they constructed computers and themselves in relation to computers, in the stories they told. The research findings from this interpretive study augment the largely functionalist literature on older people and computers and provide insights not identified in previous studies. In particular, the findings indicate that participants identified a common meaning for the computer as actually or potentially useful for older people, but their meanings also varied according to their membership of one of the three participant groups, with SeniorNet members tending to identify the computer as an opportunity; Users, as a tool; and Nonusers, as a threat. Participants' meanings were traced through a storying process that identified three narrative elements as key: the settings in which accounts of the principal protagonists older people and computers were produced; the strength of the narrator's identification with old stories and values; and the ways in which the narrators oriented to the computer in the context of other technologies and events, or in isolation from them. The study makes a contribution to knowledge by enhancing understanding of older people's relationships with computers, through a micro level investigation of their experiences with, and meanings for, the technology. In addition, by identifying and explicating the processes through which the ongoing reality of a new technology is constructed and negotiated, and compared and contrasted in relation to three separate sub-groups of the one demographic population, the study contributes to social construction of technology theory. The study also makes a contribution to practice by showing how the alignment of old stories and new stories is a crucial component in the process for enabling those new to a technology to negotiate an appropriate placement for it, and how such alignment can be influenced by age-peer groups and the imperatives of inter-generational family communication.

Job-seeking research has been implicitly an examination of the job-seeking activities of youth. Even at the broader level of the labour market there continues an underlying association of youth with employment while the experiences of mature workers have been largely minimised, especially in New Zealand. This study examines the job-seeking activities and experiences of mature job-seekers in the New Zealand labour market from a political economy perspective.Issues surrounding mature workers have lacked a theoretical and disciplinary "base" with the issues of retirement and health consistently overwhelming any discussion about mature people and employment. The political economy theory of aging does provide a useful explanatory framework given the struggle for recognition and resources of mature workers. The persistent exclusion of mature workers from any discussion about the labour market in New Zealand is a common theme throughout the present study.As mature workers become increasingly "problematised" by economists as a threat to future economic productivity; issues surrounding mature employment need to be better understood because there will be greater proportions of mature workers and mature job-seekers. Through a sample of 947 mature jobs-seekers collected by MESA offices throughout New Zealand, issues surrounding mature job-seekers in particular were examined.The results highlight both the different and similar experiences of men and women in the New Zealand labour market. Women respondents were more likely to present themselves as younger than men, and to be returning to the labour market after family responsibilities with lesser confidence in their job-seeking skills and occupational abilities. Men by contrast presented themselves at MESA as older and more likely to have been made redundant; they also appeared to have more confidence in their job-seeking and occupational skills. Gender, however, did little to explain the primarily formal job-seeking methods used and the effort expended job-seeking. There is little to suggest that job-seeking efforts diminish significantly with age. Only with the final cohort of age 61 years and over, was mean job-search effort significantly less than for other age-cohorts. By contrast the variable time out of work explained much of the variance with job-search peaking at six months out of work. Subsequent analysis strongly supports the suggestion that any policy intervention will have the greatest impact within the first four to six months of unemployment.There is also some evidence to suggest that the reason for becoming a mature job-seeker and the attributions these mature job-seekers make for their unemployment is associated with their job-search efforts. In the present study those mature job-seekers made compulsorily redundant, regardless of age or gender, clearly tried harder than other job-seekers. By contrast those job-seekers who indicated they had been dismissed gave less effort to their job-search.The primary barrier identified by mature job-seekers is silence, silence from employers or employment agencies about why they have not been considered or rejected for work. As a consequence many mature job-seekers interpreted this silence as age discrimination. Understandably mature job-seekers are reluctant to see their lack of skills or experience as contributing to their circumstance and feel disappointed that their skills are not appreciated: a point well highlighted by the qualitative analysis "Trajectory of emotion" that captures the voice of participants in the present study. Finally, paid employment does matter to mature people and future research and policy would do well to examine the full picture of the labour market and give attention to where real needs exist. Mature job-seekers in the present study did not necessarily seek "special" treatment but rather the same opportunities as their chronologically younger colleagues to make a contribution to New Zealand society through paid work.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Industrial Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of dietary vitamin E reduction on blood cholesterol levels (LDL and total cholesterol). Eight healthy older adults between the ages of 40 and 60 volunteers were used for the study. Subjects acted as their own controls during the two week baseline period in which they ate their normal diet and kept precise diet records [three day diet recalls which were analyzed for vitamin E content using the Diet Analysis program (Food Processor version 8)]. A vitamin E reduction diet was created for each individual using the same Diet Analysis program. This vitamin E reduction diet was designed to significantly reduce the amount of dietary vitamin E intake of each subject while keeping calories relatively similar throughout a period of three weeks. Fasting blood draws and three day diet recalls were collected every week. Vitamin E intake, total calories, HDL, LDL, TG, and glucose values over the course of this study were compared with a one-way ANOVA using repeated measures. Post-hoc testing using Duncan and Scheffe comparisons were made to indicate any statistically significant difference. Significance was set at p<0.05 and all values were reported as x ± SEM. The averaged three day vitamin E intake was reduced by 55% (20.3 ± 2.6 mg to 11.2 ± 2.1 mg). There was no significant change in total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, or triglycerides from baseline to the conclusion of the study.The results suggest that short term reduction of dietary vitamin E has no effect on total or LDL cholesterol. / School of Physical Education

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Göttingen, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [1]-40, 2nd set).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 154 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-111).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-235). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Marriage, Family and Human Development, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 33-39).