Visual analogue mood scale scores in healthy young versus older adults.

ABSTRACTBackground:The current research sought to characterize current mood state profiles in healthy young versus older adults using 100-point visual analogue mood scales (VAMS), provide within-sample and new sample replication of age-group differences, assess sex differences, and compare with commonly used standardized symptom measures. METHODS: In two studies, six word-only VAMS (happy, sad, calm, tense, energetic, and sleepy) were administered in a laboratory setting. In Study 1, 22 young and 29 older males completed the VAMS six times (twice per day at weekly intervals). In Study 2, 60 young (30 males) and 60 older (30 males) adults completed on one occasion the VAMS, Beck Depression Inventory-II, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. RESULTS: VAMS scores showed that older adults had a tendency to indicate feeling happier, less sad, calmer, less tense, more energetic, and less sleepy than young adults. This pattern occurred across assessment points and irrespective of sex, except for the tense VAMS, which showed higher scores in females than males in young but not older adults. The standardized measures showed significant age-group differences for Trait Anxiety only (lower in older than young adults). CONCLUSIONS: These findings establish current mood state differences in young versus older adults. The absence of age-group differences in past studies may relate to the limited precision of the scales (only 7 points, in contrast to the 100-point scales used here).

Manual versus saccadic assessment of cognitive inhibition and switching in young and older adults.

Inhibition and switching deficits occur with healthy aging and many clinical conditions, compromising performance of daily tasks and thus quality of life. To assess deficits, saccade tasks have often been used, but they require access to expensive eye-tracking equipment and trained personnel. Moreover, with respect to switching, the aging literature suggests that easy-to-administer manual tasks may be more sensitive to deficits than saccade tasks. Here we directly compared the 2 response modalities for assessing inhibition and switching abilities and characterized changes associated with healthy aging. We measured in 60 young adults (18-24 years) and 60 older adults (60-72 years) performance on 3 brief tasks that varied in their requirement of inhibition and switching. All participants completed the 3 tasks twice-once making keypress and once making saccadic responses. Regarding assessment similarity across the 2 response modalities, manual and saccadic response variables significantly correlated (r > .2 in all cases). With respect to aging effects, manual responses showed robust inhibition (r = .52) and switching (r = .63) deficits whereas saccadic responses showed inhibition (r = .23) but not switching (r = .13) deficits. These results indicate that easy-to-administer keypress responses can be used to assess age-related declines in inhibition and switching abilities and that keypress responses show greater sensitivity than saccadic responses. Future research is needed to test whether these patterns extend to clinical populations with inhibition and switching deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record