The Relationship between Subjective Aging and Cognition in Elderly People: A Systematic Review.

There is a growing body of evidence on the effects of subjective aging on health, well-being and quality of life. This review aims to synthesize findings about the link between subjective aging and cognition and cognitive decline. Furthermore, it provides an examination of variation sources such as subjective aging construct, cognitive domains, measures employed, age and moderator variables. A systematic search was performed in PubMed, PsychInfo and Web of Science, as well as grey literature searches in Google Scholar, OpenGrey, WorldCat and NDLTD, which resulted in 59 reports being included. Subjective aging is a relevant construct in the explanation and prediction of cognitive aging and cognitive decline in elderly adults. More positive views about own aging and self-perceptions of aging, as well as a younger subjective age, were consistently related to better cognition and lower risk of cognitive decline. However, there were differences due to subjective aging subdimensions and cognitive domains, as well as an effect of age. Additionally, there were concerns about the content validity of some measures employed, such as the Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale Scale for subjective aging and the Mini Mental State Examination for global cognition. Further studies should employ longitudinal designs with a process-based approach to cognition and precise subjective aging measures.

Contextual victimization is associated with slower inhibition control: A pictorial violence-Stroop study carried out in Juárez, Mexico.

Contextual victims are those individuals who are indirectly traumatized by the physical and sociocultural conditions of their violent communities through second-hand information. The purpose of this study was to examine the inhibitory control to violent stimuli in contextual victims from the city of Juárez, Mexico. A pictorial violence-Stroop was constructed with violent, positive, and neutral images. Forty-six university students with low (n = 22) and high (n = 24) scores on the Community Victimization by Community Violence Questionnaire participated. The study adopted a 2 (group = high contextual victims and low contextual victims) × 3 (stimulus type = violent, positive, and neutral) factorial design with repeated measures on the second factor. There were two significant effects which favored the low-context compared with the high-context victimization group, notably faster reaction times in the violent stimulus condition (968.93 vs. 1136.26 ms; H = 5.031; p = .024) and the neutral stimulus condition (899.68 vs. 1013 ms; H = 5.130; p = .025). Results suggest that individuals who are highly exposed to contextual violence may be more sensitive towards violent stimuli, and that their performance on inhibitory tasks that include violence as a distractor cue may be more cognitively demanding.