Cognition, Aging and Self-Reports

Norbert Schwarz, Denise Park, Barbel Knauper, Seymour Sudman, Norbert Schwarz, Denise Park, Barbel Knauper, Seymour Sudman

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9781560327806
• eBook ISBN: 9781135465797
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

First Published in 1998. This book provides a state-of-the-art overview of age-related changes in cognitive functioning and explores the implications of these changes for the self-report of attitudes and behaviors. The contributors are leading researchers in cognitive aging and survey methodology, and chapters are written to be accessible to non-specialists. The first part of the book provides an authoritative review of the current state of cognitive aging research, covering topics such as working memory, inhibition, autobiographical memory, metacognition, and attention. A second section examines the unique issues associated with aging, language comprehension and interpersonal communication, while the final section reviews researcher into age-related differences in survey responding.Of particular interest is how age-related changes in cognitive and communicative functioning influence the question-answering process in research situations. Experimental research illustrates that older and younger respondents are differentially affected by question order, question wording and other features of questionnaire design. As a result, many age-related differences in reported attitudes and behaviors may reflect age-related differences in the response process rather than differences in respondents' actual attitudes or behaviors. Implications for research design and psychological theorizing are addressed, and practical solutions are offered. As such, the book will be of interest not only to those in the fields of cognitive aging and gerontology, but also to survey methodologists and researchers in public opinion, marketing, and related fields, who rely on respondents' answers to questions in their research.

CHAPTER 1

Cognition, Aging, and Self-Reports; Editors’ Introduction

Norbert Schwarz

Denise C.Park

Bärbel Knäuper

Seymour Sudman

Self-reports of behaviors and attitudes are the dominant source of data in the social sciences. From the dynamics of attitude change to consumer behavior or health problems, and from the styles of parenting to the nation’s unemployment rate or the prevalence of crime, psychologists and social scientists rely on respondents’ self-reports as their major database for testing theories of human behavior and offering advice on public policy. Unfortunately, self-reports are a fallible source of data, and minor variations in question wording or question order can strongly affect the obtained answers and hence the conclusions drawn about the phenomenon under study. It is therefore important to understand how respondents arrive at answers to the questions we pose in self-administered questionnaires, survey interviews, and the psychological laboratory. Since the early 1980s, psychologists and survey methodologists have addressed the cognitive and communicative processes underlying self-reports in an interdisciplinary program of experimental research. Drawing on psychological theories of language comprehension, memory, judgment, and communication, this work has identified numerous sources of context effects in self-reports and has provided conceptual frameworks that promise to improve data-collec tion strategies (see Sudman, Bradburn, & Schwarz, 1996, for a review).

The present book extends this work by exploring how age-related changes in cognitive and communicative functioning influence the processes underlying self-reports. This issue is of considerable theoretical and applied relevance. On the theoretical side, selfreports of attitudes and behaviors provide a challenging arena for testing theories of cognitive aging in real-world domains, thus advancing basic theorizing about cognitive aging. Similarly, understanding how age-related changes in cognitive functioning affect the accuracy of self-reports will advance basic theorizing about the processes underlying self-reports. On the applied side, understanding age-related changes in the response process is of utmost importance across a broad range of the social sciences. Older adults are the fastest growing segment of the population in most industrialized nations. In the United States, adults aged 65 and older represented 6.8% of the population in 1950, but will represent 12.6% by the year 2000 and 22.9% by the year 2050 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989). Hence, social scientists will increasingly face the challenge of collecting data from older adults, a trend that will be compounded when the social problems of an aging population receive increased attention. It is therefore important to understand how research instruments need to be adapted to meet the requirements posed by older respondents.

FIGURE 1. Percentage of respondents who reported that divorce should be “more difficult” to obtain when this alternative was presented in the middle position (“easier,” “more difficult,” “stay as is”) or in the last position (“easier,” “stay as is,” “more difficult”). Data from Schuman & Presser (1981).

Of particular note are several findings reported in the present book that indicate that older and younger adults are differentially affected by question context and question format, resulting in complex interactions of respondents’ age and the features of the research instrument. To give just one example, survey researchers have long been aware that the order in which different response alternatives are presented may strongly influence the obtained results. For example, Schuman and Presser (1981) asked respondents in a telephone interview, “Should divorce in this country be easier to obtain, more difficult to obtain, or stay as it is now?” Depending on conditions, the response alternative “more difficult” was read to respondents as the second or as the last alternative. Overall, respondents were somewhat more likely to select the response alternative “more difficult” when presented last, a so-called recency effect. However, secondary analyses reported by Knäuper (Chapter 17) indicate a dramatic age difference: As shown in Figure 1, the size of the recency effect increased with respondents’ age, ranging from a nonsignificant 5% for those aged 54 and younger to a whopping 36.3% for those aged 70 and older. Note also that we would draw different substantive conclusions about the relationship of age and attitudes towards divorce, depending on the order in which the response alternatives are presented: While attitudes towards divorce seem to become much more conservative with age under one order condition, no reliable age differences are obtained under the other order condition. Findings of this type illustrate how age-related differences in the response process may threaten conclusions about age-related differences in the reported opinion or behavior. Unless we want to run the risk of misinterpreting age-related differences in response behavior as age-related differences in the substantive phenomenon under study, we need to understand how older and younger respondents differ in the cognitive and communicative processes underlying self-reports.

To address these challenging issues, we need to understand how cognitive and communicative functioning changes over the life-span and we need to relate this knowledge to the processes underlying self-reports. Fortunately, psychologists have made considerable progress in understanding both of these components over the last two decades. Cognitive aging psychologists have identified key age-related changes in basic cognitive mechanisms, memory, language comprehension, speech processing, and communication. Survey methodologists and cognitive social psychologists have illuminated the cognitive and communicative processes underlying self-reports. What is missing from these two research domains is cross-talk between them and an attempt to relate these bodies of research to one another. The present book is designed to fill this gap. It presents tutorial reviews of what has been learned in both fields, as well as research that addresses the interface by exploring differences between older and younger respondents. In combination, the contributions in this volume set the stage for the development of a stimulating and systematic program of research that integrates the knowledge base of cognitive aging researchers with self-report research. We hope that as a result of reading this volume, more researchers will begin to address how age-related changes in cognition and communication interact with features of the research instrument, thus differentially influencing older and younger respondents’ answers to the questions we ask.

Overview

This book is organized in four parts. Part I provides an overview of the general issues the book will address with respect to self-reports, aging, and cognition. Part II reviews age-related changes in cognitive functioning, and Part III addresses age-related changes in language processing and communication. Whereas these three parts can draw on extensive experimental research programs, we know considerably less about the interface of age-related changes in cognition and communication on the one hand and the dynamics of self-reports on the other hand. The contributions in Part IV begin to address these issues by reporting on recent empirical studies into age differences in self-reports.

Self-Reports and Cognitive Aging

In Chapter 2, Norbert Schwarz provides an introduction to the cognitive and communicative processes involved in answering a question. Drawing on research into context effects on self-reports, he addresses how respondents arrive at an interpretation of the question posed to them, retrieve relevant information from memory, form a judgment, and report this judgment to the researcher. Importantly, respondents’ performance at each of these steps is highly context dependent, and the underlying processes are likely to be age sensitive, as many research examples illustrate.

In Chapter 3, Denise Park reviews the major cognitive mechanisms accounting for age-related decline in cognitive function. She discusses the implications of decreases in speed of processing, working memory function, and inhibitory function for self-report situations. Additionally, she addresses the paradox of older adults who evidence substantial cognitive decline in the laboratory but perform quite adequately on complex tasks in their work environment or in managing their health. She argues that automatic processes, familiarity, and world knowledge that are useful in the everyday environment frequently offset the negative impact of declining processing mechanisms.

In Chapter 4, Roger Dixon considers the possibility that cognitive development in late adulthood is not characterized entirely by losses, but that there are also gains in some domains of cognitive function. He addresses the prospect that stability in cognition, or relatively small losses with age, are viewed as gains by the older adult.

These three chapters provide a broad foundation for the subsequent chapters in the volume that are focused on specific domains of research.

Age-Related Changes in Cognitive Functioning

In Chapter 5, Fergus Craik provides a classic overview of what is known about memory and aging. He discusses the major subsystems of memory and provides a detailed discussion of working memory, episodic memory, spatial memory, and memory for remote events. He provides suggestions about the implications of memory decline in these subsystems for self-report. He reviews as well the truth effect (the tendency to believe that something one heard before is true) and argues that this effect is more powerful for older than for younger adults.

The focus of Chapter 6, by Carolyn Yoon, Cynthia May, and Lynn Hasher, is also on memory. They discuss a fascinating body of research, conducted primarily in their laboratories, indicating that older and young adults have peak cognitive performance at different times of day. They present data indicating that older adults’ cognitive performance is best early in the morning, whereas younger adults’ performance is best in the afternoons and evenings. Such findings have profound implications for survey researchers who may find that older adults are more likely to behave comparably to young adults (thus minimizing survey error) if interviewed in the morning.

In Chapter 7, John Cavanaugh discusses metacognition and aging. How does what we believe to be true about our cognitive function affect our performance? The primary focus is on metamemory. He presents a review of theoretical perspectives guiding the study of self-report data about memory function, and particularly addresses the relationship between memory self-efficacy and performance. He then discusses metamemory as a type of social cognition, and concludes by suggesting productive avenues for future research.

In Chapter 8, David Rubin presents the complex relationship between aging and autobiographical memory (memory for our personal life histories). He discusses the accuracy of autobiographical memory as we age and provides a wealth of information about age distributions in the content and regularity of autobiographical memory.

Part II concludes with a provocative commentary by Tim Salthouse on the pressing issues in cognitive aging research (Chapter 9). He argues that research in cognitive aging has focused on process, and that we have a relatively good understanding of how processes change with age. At the same time, we know relatively little about why they change. He suggests as well that we have a relatively good idea of the products of cognition or the content of knowledge as we age (the “what” of cognitive aging). What is lacking, however, is an understanding of the interaction between product and process. Salthouse argues for the importance of an understanding of the interactive relationship between these two constructs in cognitive aging.

Language Comprehension and Communication

Following this review of basic cognitive processes, the next set of chapters addresses age-related changes in speech processing, message production and comprehension, and communication. In Chapter 10, Arthur Wingfield reviews what we know about age-related changes in speech processing. Adult aging is often accompanied by declines in auditory acuity that affect the sensory processing of others’ utterances. As a result, older adults have to rely to a higher degree on the context of the utterance to fill gaps in the sensory input. Moreover, older adults’ reduced processing speed (discussed in Chapters 3 and 9) and susceptibility to working memory overload (see Chapters 3 and 4) make it imperative that the speaker’s utterances do not place a heavy burden on memory capacity. Unfortunately, many attempts to facilitate older adults’ speech comprehension do more harm than good and may be experienced as patronizing (as also emphasized in Chapters 11 and 12). Thus, exaggerated prosody (intonation, timing, and stress) and a slow overall speed of delivery hurt speech comprehension for young as well as old adults, whereas normal prosody and the thoughtful use of pauses facilitate speech comprehension for both age groups. These observations lead Wingfield to conclude that speakers need to “respect processing limitations for adult listeners regardless of age.” The principles discussed in his chapter “may take on more importance for some individuals than others, but they will be important to all.” From an applied point of view, Wingfield’s recommendations are of particular importance for telephone interviews, a mode of data collection that poses particular demands on respondents.

Extending Wingfield’s discussion, Susan Kemper and Karen Kemtes review message production and comprehension over the life-span in Chapter 11. With regard to message production, they note that some discourse skills, such as storytelling, increase with age, whereas other discourse skills decrease with age, in particular those that require keeping track of the previously established common ground of the conversation. With regard to message comprehension, the available evidence suggests that older adults’ language performance “does not show an inevitable decline under normal discourse conditions.” However, “older adults’ comprehension is compromised when the structure of the discourse is complex and when it is presented at very rapid rates,” conditions that also impair comprehension for younger adults, although to a lesser degree. Importantly, younger adults are likely to change their discourse style when they speak to older adults and may use exaggerated pitch and intonation, simplified grammar, limited vocabulary, and a slow rate of delivery. The authors refer to this speech register as “elderspeak.” Research into the consequences of elderspeak indicates that its use may improve older addressees’ performance on some tasks, yet this improvement comes at a cost: “Elderspeak appeared to trigger older adults’ perceptions of themselves as communicatively impaired and led to increased self-report of expressive and receptive problems.”

In Chapter 12, Sheree Kwong See and Ellen Bouchard Ryan extend the discussion of intergenerational communication. Drawing on a classic model of the survey interview, originally proposed in 1968 by Cannell and Kahn, and their own “communicative predicament of aging” model, Kwong See and Ryan propose a framework of intergenerational communication in the context of survey interviews. Their model emphasizes the impact of communicators’ stereotypical beliefs about older adults’ cognitive and communicative abilities on the course of the unfolding conversation. Much of the empirical work they review has been conducted in contexts that are less standardized than the typical survey interview. Hence, the extent to which the observed dynamics of intergenerational communication apply to standardized interviews is currently unknown. The findings reported by Belli, Weiss, and Lepkowski (Chapter 15) indicate, however, that interviewers are indeed more likely to deviate from standard procedures when interviewing older rather than younger respondents. Kwong See and Ryan’s discussion provides a useful framework for conceptualizing the nature of such deviations in future research.

Surveying Older Respondents

The chapters in Part IV address age-related differences in response behavior as observed in sample surveys. Their arrangement follows the sequence of respondents’ tasks, from understanding the questions posed to them to retrieving information from memory, forming a judgment, and reporting the answer. Over the last decade, survey researchers have increasingly adapted methods developed in the psychological laboratory for pretesting questionnaires (for reviews, see DeMaio & Rothgeb, 1996, and the contributions in Schwarz & Sudman, 1996). These methods, summarily referred to as “cognitive interviewing,” include the use of think-aloud protocols and extensive probing to identify respondents’ interpretation of a question and the strategies used in arriving at an answer. In Chapter 13, Susan Schechter, Paul Beatty, and Gordon Willis use these methods to explore the problems that older adults encounter when answering questions about their health status. Extending this discussion to questions designed to assess cognitive functioning, Diane O’Rourke, Seymour Sudman, Timothy Johnson, and Jane Burris (Chapter 14) report on older respondents’ difficulties with memory questions. In combination, these chapters illustrate how cognitive interviewing techniques can be used in applied settings to identify problematic questions at an early stage of the research process. Unfortunately, the use of these techniques in many survey research centers is geared towards making a specific set of questions “work,” rather than towards understanding the underlying processes. As a result, relevant comparison groups are often missing and the research is less cumulative than would seem desirable from a basic research point of view (see O’Muircheartaigh, in press, and Schwarz, in press, for critical discussions). Hopefully, the developing collaboration between survey methodologists and cognitive psychologists will provide future opportunities for combining applied questionnaire development efforts with basic theoretical work.

Whereas the preceding assessments of respondents’ difficulties with survey questions were based on pretests conducted in a laboratory setting, an alternative approach to identifying respondents’ difficulties is based on the coding of tape-recorded interviews conducted as part of ongoing surveys. Known as behavior coding, this technique, developed by Charles Cannell and his associates (Cannell, Miller, & Oksenberg, 1981; see Fowler & Cannell, 1996, for an introduction), identifies sequences of problematic interviewer and respondent behaviors. Robert Belli, Paul Weiss, and James Lepkowski applied this technique to 455 interviews with younger and older respondents and report their findings in Chapter 15. They observe that older respondents encounter more difficulties in understanding questions and are more likely to provide inadequate answers than younger respondents. Partially in response to these difficulties, interviewers “tailor” the questions to meet older respondents’ needs, and hence deviate from the standardized wordings they are supposed to use. This differential degree of tailoring implies that older respondents are less likely to be exposed to the standard version of the question than younger respondents, thus introducing additional variability into the interview process. Whether or not such tailoring is desirable is an issue of considerable debate in survey research (cf. Fowler & Mangione, 1990; Schober, in press; Suchman & Jordan, 1990), which typically places a premium on standardized interviewing. Obviously, deviations from standardized interviewing might seem more justifiable if they increased the accuracy of respondents’ reports. To address this issue, Belli and colleagues checked the accuracy of respondents’ reports of health care visits against medical records. Surprisingly, they find that tailoring actually decreases the accuracy of older respondents’ reports, in contrast to the interviewers’ good intentions. Given the observational nature of their data, however, it is conceivable that a given respondent’s low cognitive abilities may be responsible for both the observed low accuracy of behavioral reports and the observed increase in interviewer tailoring, Addressing these issues in cont...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Cognition, Aging, and Self-Reports; Editors’ Introduction
• Part I Self-Reports and Cognitive Aging
• Part II Age-Related Changes in Cognitive Functioning
• Part III Language Comprehension and Communication
• Part IV Surveying Older Respondents