Psychological Assessment Influences

Question 1

How does heterogeneity influence PA?

Answer 1

Become more different
OA more heterogenous than YA
More non-normative exps eg…
Increases group variability on cognitive tasks because people are so different

Question 2

What are factors influencing psychological assessment of older adults?

Answer 2

Heterogeneity/variability
Testing biases
Complicating individual factors

Question 3

What testing biases?

Answer 3

Offensive test items - youth is to beauty as age is to ?
Inappropriate norms - norms validated with YA may not apply to OA
Different skills - changing social context changes skills; in/out work
Unfamiliarity with testing process - young people more familiar with testing process from recent education system and also technology tested on
Ecological validity - performance on test often doesn’t predict performance in real life situations

Question 4

What are complicating individual factors?

Answer 4

Physical decline with ageing - handgrip
Cognitive decline with ageing - working memory and recall or retrieval tasks, speed of processing and divided attention tasks
Knowledge development - help Hanoi
Poorer sleep - fatigue impact
Illnesses - CV disease, stress lead to decline in cognitive ability
Meds - improve/hinder temporarily
Vision - reading, distinguishing
Hearing - instructions