Self-Reported Ageism Across the Lifespan: Role of Aging Knowledge.

The authors examined the prevalence of self-reported ageist behaviors in a lifespan sample ranging in age from 13 to 91 years. Participants completed the Relating to Older People Evaluation (Cherry & Palmore). Results indicated that adolescents and young adults reported fewer ageist behaviors overall than did middle-aged and older adults. Positive ageist behaviors were more frequent than negative ageist behaviors for people of all ages. Women endorsed positive ageism items more often than men, although men and women did not differ in frequency of negative ageist behaviors. Follow-up analyses on participants' responses to two knowledge of aging measures, the Facts on Aging Quiz and the Knowledge of Memory Aging Questionnaire, showed that knowledge of aging was significantly correlated with negative ageist behaviors, after controlling for age and gender. Implications of these findings for current views of ageism (positive and negative) are discussed.

Knowledge of memory aging across the lifespan.

The authors examined knowledge of normal and pathological memory aging in a lifespan sample of 198 individuals who ranged in age from 13 to 88 years. Participants completed the Knowledge of Memory Aging Questionnaire (Cherry, Brigman, Hawley, & Reese, 2003). The authors hypothesized that high school students would be less knowledgeable about memory aging issues than college students, middle-aged, and community-dwelling older adults. Consistent with this hypothesis, response accuracy was lower for high school students compared to their older counterparts. Follow-up analyses revealed that high school students' responses to a subset of questions that tap ageist views of adult cognition were less accurate than the other age groups, implying a response bias toward stereotypical images of memory aging. Implications for research and the design of instructional materials to increase people's knowledge about normative changes in adult cognition are discussed.