We examined short-term changes in younger and older adults' control beliefs. Participants completed measures of general and memory-specific competence and locus of control on 10 bi-monthly occasions. At each occasion, participants rated their control beliefs prior to and following completion of a battery of cognitive tasks. Exposure to the set of cognitively demanding tasks led to declines in older adults' ratings of both general and memory-specific competence compared to little change or increases in younger adults' ratings. Older adults were also more inconsistent in their reported locus of control beliefs across the 10 occasions. Analyses examining the relationship between control beliefs and actual cognitive performance revealed few significant effects, suggesting that short-term changes in perceived control are not driven by monitoring changes in actual performance. The results suggest the importance of assessing short-term as well as long-term changes in perceived control to obtain a complete picture of aging-related changes.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BaltesM. M., & BaltesP. B. (Eds.). (1986). The psychology of control and aging.Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
2.
BanduraA. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control.New York: Freeman.
3.
BrandtstädterJ., & Baltes-GötzB. (1990). Personal control over development and quality of life perspectives in adulthood. In BaltesP. B. & BaltesM. M. (Eds.), Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences (pp. 197–224). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4.
CavanaughJ. C., & PoonL. W. (1989). Metamemorial predictors of memory performance in young and older adults. Psychology and Aging, 4, 365–368.
5.
ChipperfieldJ. G. (1993). Perceived barriers in coping with health problems: A twelve-year longitudinal study of survival among elderly individuals. Journal of Health and Aging, 5, 123–139.
6.
DixonR. A.HultschD. F., & HertzogC. (1989). A manual of twenty-five three-tiered structurally equivalent texts for use in aging research (2nd ed., Technical Report No. 2). Victoria, B.C., Canada/Atlanta, GA: Collaborative Research Group on Cognitive Aging.
7.
EizenmanD. R.NesselroadeJ. R.FeathermanD. L., & RoweJ. W. (1997). Intraindividual variability in perceived control in an older sample: The MacArthur successful aging studies. Psychology and Aging, 12, 489–502.
8.
EkstromR. B.FrenchJ. W.HarmanH. H., & DermenD. (1976). Manual for kit of factor-referenced cognitive tests.Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
9.
FolsteinM.FolsteinS., & McHughP. R. (1975). Mini-Mental State: A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 12, 189–198.
10.
GroverD. R., & HertzogC. (1991). Relationships between intellectual control beliefs and psychometric intelligence in adulthood. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 46, 109–115.
11.
HertzogC., & HultschD. F. (2000). Metacognition in adulthood and old age. In CraikF. I. M. & SalthouseT. A. (Eds.), The handbook of aging and cognition (3rd ed., pp. 417–466). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
12.
HultschD. F.MacDonaldS. W. S., & DixonR. A. (2002). Variability in reaction time performance of younger and older adults. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 57B, P101–P115.
13.
LachmanM. E. (1986). Locus of control in aging research: A case for multidimensional and domain-specific assessment. Psychology and Aging, 1, 34–40.
14.
LachmanM. E.BanduraM.WeaverS. L., & ElliottE. (1995). Assessing memory control beliefs: The Memory Controllability Inventory. Aging and Cognition, 2, 67–84.
15.
LachmanM. E., & LeffR. (1989). Beliefs about intellectual efficacy and control in the elderly: A five-year longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 25, 722–728.
16.
LachmanM. E., & WeaverS. L. (1998). The sense of control as a moderator of social class differences in health and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 763–773.
17.
LevensonH. (1974). Activism and powerful others: Distinctions within the concept of internal-external control. Journal of Personality Assessment, 38, 377–383.
18.
McDonald-MiszczakL.HertzogC., & HultschD. F. (1995). Stability and accuracy of metamemory in adulthood and aging: A longitudinal analysis. Psychology and Aging, 10, 553–564.
RabbittP.OsmanP., & MooreB. (2001). There are stable individual differences in performance variability, both from moment to moment and from day to day. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology, 54A, 981–1003.
21.
SattlerJ. M., & RyanJ. J. (1999). Assessment of children: Revised and updated Third Edition WAIS-III supplement.La Mesa, CA: Sattler.
22.
SchulzR., & HeckhausenJ. (1997). Emotions and control: A life-span perspective. In LawtonM. P. & SchaieK. W. (Eds.), Annual review of gerontology and geriatrics (Vol. 17, pp. 185–205). New York: Springer.
23.
SchulzR., & HeckhausenJ. (1999). Aging, culture and control: Setting a new research agenda. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 54B, P139–P145.
24.
SieglerI. C., & GatzM. (1985). Age patterns in locus of control. In PalmoreE.BusseE.MaddoxG.NowlinJ., & SieglerI. C. (Eds.), Normal aging III (pp. 259–267). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
25.
SkinnerE. A. (1997). Perceived control, motivation, and coping.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
26.
SkinnerE. A.ChapmanM., & BaltesP. B. (1988). Control, means-ends, and agency beliefs: A new conceptualization and its measurement during childhood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 117–133.
27.
Soederberg MillerL. M., & LachmanM. E. (1999). The sense of control and cognitive aging: Toward a model of mediational processes. In HessT. M. & Blanchard-FieldsF. (Eds.), Social cognition and aging (pp. 17–41). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
28.
WestR. L., & BerryJ. M. (1994). Age declines in memory self-efficacy: General or limited to particular tasks and measures. In SinnottJ. (Ed.), Interdisciplinary handbook of adult lifespan learning (pp. 426–445). Westport, CT: Greenwood.
