28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
Neuroimaging data have demonstrated startling dissociations between behavior and neural
activations across phases of human development. Even when young and old adults perform
similarly on a cognitive task, there is evidence for additional neural activation in frontal cortex in
older adults compared to young. Is this additional activation in working memory and encoding
areas of the brain evidence for compensatory neural recruitment or does it merely represent
nonselective, dedifferentiated activations of a deteriorating neural system? Evidence for
dedifferentiated function in hippocampal and sensory areas in late life development and the
implications for theories of human development will be presented.
4066.5 How to account for age differences in working memory capacity? A lifespan perspective,
A. de Ribaupierre, University of Geneva, Carouge-Genève, Switzerland
It is well known that working memory capacity (WMC) increases during childhood and decreases
during older adulthood. Similar explanatory hypotheses have been advanced, that often hold
general mechanisms - such as processing speed and inhibition - responsible for age changes in
WMC. Only rarely have the same tasks been used across the lifespan in order to assess a) what are
the relationships between these different constructs and b) whether such relationships differ for
different life periods. Results from two lifespan studies will be reported, in which WMC,
inhibition, and processing tasks were administered to children, young and older adults.
4067 INVITED SYMPOSIUM
Parenting: Stress and support
Convener and Chair: B. Hagekull, Sweden
Co-convener: A. Sanson, Australia
4067.1 Individual and parental characteristics as precursors of adolescent anxiety: Results from
an Australian longitudinal study, P. Letcher 1 , A. Sanson 1, 2 , D. Smart 2 , 1 University of Melbourne,
Melbourne, Australia; 2 Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, Australia
This study investigated the direct and interactive effects of individual and parental characteristics
(including parental stress and support) in the prediction of anxiety at 17 years. Participants were
drawn from the Australian Temperament Project, a longitudinal community-based cohort of
Australian children followed prospectively from infancy to young adulthood. Videotaped
parent-adolescent interactions and questionnaires were used to assess parenting characteristics at
16 years of age. Questionnaire measures of temperament, parental stress and support, and
adolescent anxiety were also available when adolescents were 15/16 years old. The implications of
the results for understanding interactive individual and parental risk processes will be discussed.
4067.2 The relations between parenting stress, goals and practices, and child temperament:
Evidence from Australia, B. Selcuk 1 , A. Sanson 2 , 1 Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey; 2 Australian
Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, Australia
In this study, we aimed to investigate how parenting stress is related to the goals parent set for
their children, practices they use while child rearing, and their children’s temperament.
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