Challenges and Opportunities During a “New Normal” of Psychological Aging Research

The recent historical events and ongoing population changes point to a new era of aging research. With the rapid aging of our population, a larger proportion of the older adult population will be living with mild cognitive impairment or dementia (Petersen et al., 2018; World Health Organization, 2017), with similarly increasing numbers of their caregivers (Alzheimer’s Association, 2021). These population shifts are also marked by changes in use of, and reliance on, technology that has become even more apparent during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic when older adults were encouraged to isolate (Xie et al., 2020). In the coming years and decades, our “new normal” will comprise an older adult population that is engaged with information and communication technologies, and will require a deliberate focus on how we can enrich the lives of vulnerable populations, such as those living with dementia and their caregivers. A set of papers recently published in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences addresses these emerging research questions.

Recognizing the increasing numbers of people living with dementia, a multicenter controlled critical trial by Carbone and colleagues (2021) evaluated the effectiveness of a Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) consisting of structured group sessions that engaged participants with mild-to-moderate dementia in a series of activities and discussions. Their CST intervention was effective in maintaining the cognitive and emotional function of people with dementia, providing a feasible intervention option to prolong the cognitive and emotional health of the increasing number of people living with dementia. Another vulnerable group are the caregivers of people with dementia. Smagula and colleagues (2021) aimed to identify a protective neurobiological marker of depression among “morning-type” dementia caregivers. They found that less amygdala–posterior cingulate connectivity (PCC) mediated the association between degree of “morningness” and lower depression severity. Because greater amygdala–PCC is linked with a greater focus on negative emotional processes, therapeutic efforts aimed toward encouraging dementia caregivers to engage in morning activities may be beneficial.

The already increasing prevalence of technology use among older adults escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Anderson & Perrin, 2017; Xie et al., 2020). Email represents an important component of technological connectivity among older individuals, but this also leaves older adults vulnerable to deception strategies that can have negative implications to their well-being. Grilli and colleagues (2020) examined the link between age and perceived suspiciousness of emails. Phishing emails are designed to deceive consumers into providing personal information resulting in identity theft, fraud, or extortion (Simons et al., 2019). This fraudulent practice can have implications for older adults’ financial and emotional well-being, which may result in a diminished ability to maintain their long-term independence. Cognitively unimpaired adults were presented with a series of emails and were asked to rate the credibility of each email from “definitely safe” to “definitely suspicious.” Older age was associated with a reduced ability to discriminate between genuine and phishing emails, indicating that phishing emails were given more credibility than they should, and that genuine emails were viewed suspiciously. This result highlights the importance of considering email as an additional risk factor for reduced well-being in older adults—a problem that would not be considered decades ago, but that is sure to increase in relevance in the future.

With the consistent presence of technology in older adults’ lives, it becomes important to evaluate how consumption of multiple types of technology will affect well-being in the long run. Using longitudinal data from the German Aging Survey, Boeder and colleagues (2021) evaluated whether cumulative media consumption was associated with changes in self-perceptions of aging (SPA) characterized by perceptions of continuous growth and physical decline. Unique to this study is that the authors considered multiple types of media: television, radio, newspaper, and book consumption. Their results consistently showed a negative effect of television consumption on SPA, while book and radio consumption were associated with increases in SPA. Newspaper consumption was only negatively associated with perceptions of physical decline. Although the types of media examined all tend to be used for entertainment and information, the advertising used in television and newspapers may be detrimental for older adults’ self-perceptions. With the growing number of other media used for entertainment and information gathering, such as social media and streaming services, future studies will need to monitor how these additional forms of media consumption influence older adults’ well-being.

Just as the advancements in the availability of technology has influenced the lives of older adults (e.g., Boeder et al., 2021), so have they influenced the way we conduct research. Magnetic resonance imaging, for example, was used by Smagula and colleagues (2021) to detect a biomarker of “morning type” caregivers. Longitudinal panel studies have also reached a point in which innovative statistical techniques can be implemented to address issues related to directionality of associations. Using data from the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study, Casey and colleagues (2020) used cross-lagged panel models to evaluate the reciprocal association between social network size and cognitive function. They found reciprocal effects between language abilities on social network size, and social network size on language abilities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on the entire world, but there is no doubt that it uniquely affected the older adult population. This global event has brought to the surface our strengths and resiliency, but also exposed vulnerabilities. Due to older adults’ need to isolate, the loss of social connections and increases in loneliness pose risks to their health and well-being (Nicholson, 2012; Xie et al., 2021). At the same time, these experiences exponentiated older adults’ adoption of new information and communication technologies to help maintain social connections and retain communication with social networks and medical services (Xie et al., 2020). Nonetheless, a digital divide remains among older, racial-ethnic minoritized, and geographically disadvantaged individuals that will need to be addressed in order to equalize access among older individuals (e.g., Fingerman et al., 2020). As such, the ongoing and projected changes of our older adult population has broadened the scope of aging research to consider other vulnerable subpopulations of older individuals. The growth in innovative techniques and approaches to research will be invaluable in advancing the field of aging research during this new era.

Funding

The author was supported by grant P30AG066614, awarded to the Center on Aging and Population Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin by the National Institute on Aging, and by grant P2CHD042849, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.