Peter Graf

• University of British Columbia

Theoretical work suggests a sense of purpose in life may encourage health-promoting behaviors by facilitating a more future-oriented time perspective about one’s everyday goals and actions. However, little research has investigated whether people with a strong sense of purpose are thinking more about the future in their everyday lives and whether t...

We examined the role of future time perspective (thinking about the future) in shaping age-related differences in time-varying experiences of happiness. Older adults’ experience of happiness is more strongly associated with low-arousal than with high-arousal positive affect. Low-arousal positive affective states may be conducive to engaging in mean...

Happiness can be experienced differently in young as compared to older adulthood, possibly due to shifts in temporal focus and differences in preferences for high- versus low-arousal affective states. The current project aimed to replicate initial evidence on age-related differences in the experience of happiness by investigating the positive affec...

This study investigated everyday associations between one key facet of mindfulness (allocating attention to the present moment) and pain. In Study 1, 89 community-dwelling adults (33-88 years; Mage = 68.6) who had experienced a stroke provided 14 daily end-of-day present-moment awareness and pain ratings. In Study 2, 100 adults (50-85 years; Mage =...

Importance: A stroke doubles one's risk for dementia. How to promote cognitive function among persons with chronic stroke is unclear. Objective: To evaluate the effect of exercise (EX) or cognitive and social enrichment activities (ENRICH) on cognitive function in adults with chronic stroke. Design, setting, and participants: This was a 3-grou...

Loneliness is a recognized risk factor for morbidity and mortality across the adult life span including old age. Loneliness is a negative emotional experience that has been associated with social isolation, but loneliness may also be adaptive to the extent that it signals a need to socially reengage. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory findi...

Loneliness is a distressing yet adaptive emotional experience that alerts us to socially re-engage. However, loneliness can also lead to social withdrawal and isolation. To reconcile the seemingly contradictory consequences of loneliness, we unpack the timing of the underlying processes by distinguishing between the roles of state loneliness (i.e.,...

Older adults spend much time in solitude (without social interaction), putting them at risk of loneliness, especially if aging outside their country of origin (e.g., Chinese immigrants to Canada). Yet, cultural contextual factors that may reduce loneliness in moments of solitude are poorly understood. This study sought to disentangle the roles of c...

Loneliness is positively associated with a number of negative psychological and health outcomes. Solitude, a related yet distinct phenomenon, can have positive or negative ramifications depending on the context. As older adults spend significant time in solitude, there is particular need to investigate the effects of solitude on the health of this...

Information and communication technology (ICT) has the potential to benefit aging processes. This study examined portable ICT usage and associated changes in physical activity, loneliness, and cognitive functioning. Ninety-two mostly-novice tablet-users aged 51–85 years participated in technology workshops and then reported on their portable ICT us...

Objectives: Being alone is often equated with loneliness. Yet, recent findings suggest that the objective state of being alone (i.e. solitude) can have both positive and negative connotations. The present research aimed to examine (1) affective experience in daily solitude; and (2) the association between everyday affect in solitude and well-being....

This study creates and validates a short, Italian-language scale to measure teacher burnout. To this end, we used two scales from the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory which had already been translated into Italian in a previous study. We administered this measure to two samples of teachers (n1 = 2688 and n2 = 676) in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland....

Older adults spend a lot of time in solitude (without social interaction), increasing their risk of loneliness, especially if they have immigrated. Yet, older adults sometimes seek solitude. This study examines how culture, immigration, acculturation, and solitude desire shape solitude-loneliness associations. Local and immigrant adults aged 50–85...

Intergenerational prosocial behaviour (voluntary helping behaviour intended to benefit younger generations) has been linked to better health among older adults. However, little is known about the day-to-day variations between intergenerational prosocial behaviour and emotional well-being, and whether age moderates these associations. A sample of 86...

Objective Solitude is a ubiquitous experience, often confused with loneliness, yet sometimes sought out in daily life. This study aimed to identify distinct types of solitude experiences from everyday affect/thought patterns and to examine how and for whom solitude is experienced positively versus negatively. Method 100 community‐dwelling adults a...

Introduction: Cerebrovascular disease-such as stroke-is the second most common cause of dementia (ie, vascular dementia). Specifically, a stroke increases one's risk for dementia by a factor of two. Thus, stroke survivors represent a target population in need of intervention strategies to promote cognitive function and prevent dementia. The curren...

Falls are a major health-care concern, and while dual-task performance is widely recognized as being impaired in those at-risk for falls, the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms remain unknown. A better understanding of the underlying mechanisms could lead to the refinement and development of behavioural, cognitive, or neuropharmacological interve...

Objectives: Physical activity is a key health behavior that reduces disease risk, and yet most older adults are not very active. This study examined time-varying associations between physical activity and a recognized barrier, namely, precipitation. And it examined the moderating role of physical activity intentions and functional mobility on prec...

Objectives: The aims of this study were to document electroconvulsive therapy use in Canada with respect to treatment facilities and caseloads based on a survey of practice (Canadian Electroconvulsive Therapy Survey/Enquete Canadienne Sur Les Electrochocs-CANECTS/ECANEC) and to consider these findings in the context of guideline recommendations....

RÉSUMÉ Cette étude a exploré comment les immigrants âgés d’origine sud-asiatique, parlant le pendjabi (quatre groupes de discussion; 33 participants) de Surrey en Colombie-Britannique, perçoivent leur santé buccale et les problèmes connexes. L’analyse a relevé deux thèmes généraux: les interprétations de la condition bucco-dentaire et les défis de...

When switching tasks, if stimuli are presented that contain features that cue two of the tasks in the set (i.e., bivalent stimuli), performance slowing is observed on all tasks. This generalized slowing extends to tasks in the set which have no features in common with the bivalent stimulus and is referred to as the bivalency effect. In previous wor...

The goal of this study was to investigate recognition memory performance across the lifespan and to determine how estimates of recollection and familiarity contribute to performance. In each of three experiments, participants from five groups from 14 up to 85 years of age (children, young adults, middle-aged adults, young-old adults, and old-old ad...

We investigated: (1) the effect of different targeted exercise training on an individual's overall probability for cognitive improvement, maintenance, or decline; and (2) the simultaneous effect of targeted exercise training and baseline function on the dynamics of executive functions when a multistate transition model is used. Analyses are based o...

We report secondary findings from a randomized controlled trial on the effects of exercise on memory in older adults with probable MCI. We randomized 86 women aged 70–80 years with subjective memory complaints into one of three groups: resistance training, aerobic training, or balance and tone (control). All participants exercised twice per week fo...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) represents a critical window to intervene against dementia. Exercise training is a promising intervention strategy, but the efficiency (i.e., relationship of costs and consequences) of such types of training remains unknown. Thus, we estimated the incremental cost-effectiveness of resistance training or aerobic train...

Health resource utilization questionnaire. (DOC)

Objective: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an effective treatment for mood and other psychiatric disorders. Despite widespread use, the specifics of ECT practice in Canada are largely unknown. A nationwide survey designed to document current delivery was therefore conducted. Method: One hundred seventy-five Canadian ECT delivery sites were id...

Neglect of the mouth can lead to impairment, disability, and discomfort; as a result, it can have a negative impact on quality of life in old age. Some minority groups in North America shoulder a disproportionate burden of dental impairment compared to people of European origins, possibly because of different cultural beliefs and a distrust of West...

Aim: The objective of this study was to present survey data on the teaching of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in health care centers across Canada. Methods: Of 1273 centers identified, 175 were found to practice ECT. These centers were asked to complete a questionnaire, and 107 (61%) of them answered 5 questions dealing specifically with ECT te...

We report secondary findings from a randomized controlled trial on the effects of exercise on memory in older adults with probable MCI. We randomized 86 women aged 70-80 years with subjective memory complaints into one of three groups: resistance training, aerobic training, or balance and tone (control). All participants exercised twice per week fo...

Mobile computing devices, such as smart phones, offer benefits that may be especially valuable to older adults (age 65+). Yet, older adults have been shown to have difficulty learning to use these devices. In the research presented in this article, we sought to better understand how older adults learn to use mobile devices, their preferences and ba...

Objectives: We report on the anesthesia subsection of a comprehensive nationwide survey (Canadian Electroconvulsive Therapy Survey/Enquête canadienne sur les electrochocs) on the practice of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in Canada. Methods: This comprehensive survey was sent to the 175 Canadian institutions identified as providers of ECT in 20...

Objective: To report the results of the policies and procedures subsection of a nationwide electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) survey: Canadian Electroconvulsive Therapy Survey/Enquête canadienne sur les electrochocs. Method: We contacted 1273 registered health care institutions in Canada and invited the 175 centres identified as providing ECT to co...

Purpose: We investigated: (1) the effect of different targeted exercise training on an individual's overall probability for cognitive improvement, maintenance, or decline; and (2) the simultaneous effect of targeted exercise training and baseline function on the dynamics of executive functions when a multi-state transition model is used. Methods: A...

While the effects of cannabis use on retrospective memory have been extensively examined, only a limited number of studies have focused on the links between cannabis use and prospective memory. We conducted two studies to examine the links between cannabis use and both time-based and event-based prospective memory as well as potential mechanisms un...

We sought to determine factors governing access to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in Canada. We contacted all 1273 registered health care institutions in Canada and invited the 175 centers identified as providing ECT to complete a comprehensive questionnaire. To determine geographic access to ECT, we used a geographic information system, populatio...

Mobile devices offer much potential to support older adults (age 65+). However, older adults have been relatively slow to adopt mobile devices. Although much ongoing HCI research has examined usability problems to address this issue, little work has looked at whether existing graphical icons are harder to use for this population compared with young...

Converging evidence indicates that pregnant women report experiencing problems with memory, but the results of studies using objective measures are ambiguous. The present study investigated potential reason(s) for the discrepancy between findings of subjective and objective memory deficits, as well as potential source(s) of pregnant women's problem...

Cognitive decline is a major public health care issue and a well-recognized clinical manifestation of cognitive decline are falls. Seniors with cognitive impairment fall at twice the rate of peers without cognitive impairment 1, 2. Exercise training may be an effective strategy against cognitive decline 3–6 and it is recommended for prevention of...

Mobile computing devices can offer older adults (ages 65+) support in their daily lives, but older adults often find such devices difficult to learn and use. One potential design approach to improve the learnability of mobile devices is a Multi-Layered (ML) interface, where novice users start with a reduced-functionality interface layer that only a...

Background: Cognitive decline among seniors is a pressing health care issue. Specific exercise training may combat cognitive decline. We compared the effect of once-weekly and twice-weekly resistance training with that of twice-weekly balance and tone exercise training on the performance of executive cognitive functions in senior women. Methods: In...

Cognitive decline among seniors is a pressing health care issue. Specific exercise training may combat cognitive decline. We compared the effect of once-weekly and twice-weekly resistance training with that of twice-weekly balance and tone exercise training on the performance of executive cognitive functions in senior women. In this single-blinded...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the generality and temporal endurance of the bivalency effect in task switching. This effect refers to the slowing on univalent stimuli that occurs when bivalent stimuli appear occasionally. We used a paradigm involving predictable switches between 3 simple tasks, with bivalent stimuli occasionally occur...

This study focused on examining whether sub-clinical checkers perform worse on a behavioral measure of habitual prospective memory, and on uncovering the source of a dissociation we previously reported between sub-clinical checkers’ performance on event- and time-cued episodic prospective memory tasks [Cuttler, C., & Graf, P. (2007). Sub-clinical c...

The memory deficit theory and meta-memory deficit theory provide intuitive accounts for checking compulsions. According to these theories, deficits in memory and/or a lack of confidence in memory contribute to the compulsion to check. Our goal was to examine whether, as predicted by the theories, memory deficits and/or meta-memory deficits are uniq...

Background: Cognitive decline among seniors is a pressing health care issue. Specific exercise training may combat cognitive decline. We compared the effect of once-weekly and twice-weekly resistance training with that of twice-weekly balance and tone exercise training on the performance of executive cognitive functions in senior women.

To primarily ascertain the effect of the Otago Exercise Program (OEP) on physiological falls risk, functional mobility, and executive functioning after 6 months in older adults with a recent history of falls and to ascertain the effect of the OEP on falls during a 1-year follow-up period. Randomized controlled trial. Dedicated falls clinics. Sevent...

Falls are a major health care problem for older people and are associated with cognitive dysfunction. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is an increasingly recognized clinical problem. No study has comprehensively compared people with and without MCI for fall risk factors in both the physiological and cognitive domains. The purpose of this cross-secti...

To compare the accuracy of perceived postural limits between older fallers with good working memory and those with poor working memory. Cross-sectional study. Research laboratory. Thirty-three community-dwelling older adults with a history of falls. Not applicable. We measured the accuracy of perceived postural limits by using the perceived reach t...

Time-based prospective memory tasks require the retrieval of previously formed plans (e.g., call me on my mobile phone) either at a specified time (e.g., at 3 p.m.) or after a specified period of time has elapsed (e.g., in 3 min). In the present study, we investigated whether the same time-related processes are recruited for a short-duration time-b...

In this study, we explored whether relationships between checking compulsions and prospective memory are a result of the increased levels of distractibility, depression, state and trait anxiety associated with checking compulsions. Students (N=126) completed a prospective memory task and questionnaires which assess the frequency of experiencing pro...

We investigated the effects of object relative size on priming and explicit memory for color photos of common objects. Participants were presented with color photos of pairs of objects displayed in either appropriate or inappropriate relative sizes. Implicit memory was assessed by speed of object size ratings whereas explicit memory was assessed by...

According to theoretical claims, memory for emotional events and experiences seems to show either no decline or even improvements with age. This chapter presents a meta-analysis and critical review of previous research on age-related changes in memory for emotional events and experiences. The review highlights a number of serious methodological pro...

Mobile devices have much potential to support older adults in their daily lives. However older adults have reported that they find mobile devices, such as existing mobile phones, difficult to learn to use. We argue that more research is needed to improve the learnability of mobile software applications for older adults. We present three different a...

We investigated the influence of size on identification, priming, and explicit memory for color photos of common objects. Participants studied objects displayed in small, medium, and large sizes and memory was assessed with both implicit identification and explicit recognition tests. Overall, large objects were easier to identify than small objects...

Sixty-three participants (range from 18 to 85 years of age) completed 4 data entry tasks on an HP iPAQ 5450 via a touch-screen QWERTY keyboard, as well as a battery of neuro-cognitive tests. Entry errors and assistance required by participants were coded into categories. Multiple regression analyses revealed that episodic memory was the strongest p...

Do interindividual differences in prospective memory task performance reflect individual differences in personality and lifestyle? Do the cognitive abilities known to change with age retain their power to predict episodic prospective memory task performance after controlling for personality and lifestyle variables, and do personality and lifestyle...

We explored whether prospective memory task performance is impaired in sub-clinical compulsive checkers. Participants were 126 undergraduate students who were divided into three groups: high, medium, low checkers. Participants completed two objective tests of their episodic prospective memory, one event- and one time-cued, as well as two questionna...

We investigated the influence of color on the identification of both non-studied and studied objects. Participants studied black and white and color photos of common objects and memory was assessed with an identification test. Consistent with our meta-analysis of prior research, we found that objects were easier to identify from color than from bla...

The objectives of the present investigation were to determine whether subgroups of Cognitively-Impaired-Not-Demented (CIND) individuals with distinct neuropsychological profiles exist in two independent samples, and whether subgroup membership is related to diagnostic outcome over periods of 2 to 5 years. A series of cluster analyses was performed...

Prospective memory is the ability we use to formulate inten-tions, to make plans and promises, and to retain and execute them at the appropriate place or time. Like retrospective memory, prospective memory serves many different functions (e.g., short-term, long-term). This chapter deals with one of them—with episodic prospective memory, the functio...

Current interface design guidelines encompass only a subset of the relevant human-factors data, and seem to have evolved more from intuition than systematic empirical research. In order to close the young-old digital gap, we advocate the development of guidelines that are more firmly anchored in a comprehensive understanding of adult lifespan devel...

The primary objective of the present investigation was to characterize the neuropsychological test performance of a large sample of clinic-referred individuals diagnosed as Cognitively-Impaired-Not-Demented (CIND). Participants classified as Not-Cognitively-Impaired (NCI; n = 68) differed from CIND individuals (n = 205) on a number of demographic,...

Unlabelled: Exposure to general anesthesia may contribute to postoperative cognitive impairment in elderly patients, but the relationship remains poorly understood. We investigated whether aged mice, 18-19 mo, are more susceptible to postanesthetic cognitive impairment than young mice, 3-4 mo, using spatial memory (Barnes maze) and psychomotor (ro...

Cognitive impairments are the main complication after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Modification of treatment parameters has been shown to affect the magnitude of these impairments, but the role of anesthetic type remains unclear. This study tested whether there is a difference in cognitive impairments immediately after ECT with propofol compare...

We investigated the competition between automatic and controlled processes in a word stem completion task. Prime-display duration and the prime-target interval were manipulated. On each trial a masked prime was displayed briefly, followed either immediately or after a delay by a word stem. The subjects were required to complete each stem with the f...

The "grey digital divide": Perception, exclusion and barriers of access to the Internet for older people by Peter Millward Focussing upon the elderly, this article utilises data discovered as researcher for Age Concern in Wigan (U.K.) and examines the feelings of older people toward the Internet. It explores the reasons why some clients and volunte...

This paper explores a number of HCI research issues in the context of the Aphasia Project, a recently established project on the design of assistive technology for aphasic individuals. Key issues include the problems of achieving effective design and evaluation for a user population with an extremely high degree of variance, and user-centered desig...

When performing tasks in alternation, substantial slowing occurs when the stimuli have features relevant to both tasks (i.e., when stimuli are bivalent as opposed to univalent). One possible source of this slowing, herein called a bivalency cost, is that encountering bivalent stimuli leads to a more cautious response style. To investigate this, we...

This chapter focuses on the memory representation of newly acquired associations. The chapter begins with a brief review of previous investigations on implicit memory for new associations and of theoretical accounts that have been offered for their findings. It uses the theoretical accounts for making specific predictions about memory for newly acq...

The Verbal Paired Associates (VPA) subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scale-III (WMS-III) is one of the most widely used instruments for assessing explicit episodic memory performance. The normative data for the VPA subtest in the WMS-III manual show clear evidence of performance ceiling effects that limit the usefulness of this instrument. For this...

An original approach to memory development that views memory as a continuous process of growth and loss over the human lifespan rather than as a series of separate periods. Until recently, the vast majority of memory research used only university students and other young adults as subjects. Although such research successfully introduced new methodo...

This paper explores a number of HCI research issues in the context of the Aphasia Project, a recently established project on the design of assistive technology for aphasic individuals. Key issues include the problems of achieving effective design and evaluation for a user population with an extremely high degree of variance, and user-centered desig...

Everyday tasks, such as getting groceries en route from work, involve two distinct components, one prospective (i.e., remembering the plan) and the other retrospective (i.e., remembering the grocery list). The present investigation examined the size of the age-related performance declines in these components, as well as the relationship between the...

Prospective memory is required for many aspects of everyday cognition, its breakdown may be as debilitating as impairments in retrospective memory, and yet, the former has received relatively little attention by memory researchers. This article outlines a strategy for changing the fortunes of prospective memory, for guiding new research to shore up...

To determine whether neuropsychological testing is fatiguing, and whether it is more fatiguing to older than younger adults, 351 healthy, community living adults, between 18 and 91 years of age, completed a 3 to 4 hour battery of tests focusing on sensation, perception, attention, memory and knowledge. The battery included 3 critical tests: one for...

Transfer appropriate processing (TAP) is the assumption that retrospective memory test performance reflects the overlap between study and test phase processing. In a task analysis, we identify a similar sequential-type of processing overlap in prospective memory (ProM) situations. In addition, ProM test performance can also involve a concurrent ove...

To assess the efficacy of lamotrigine, a novel antiepileptic drug that inhibits glutamate release, to retard disease progression in Huntington disease (HD). Excitatory amino acids may cause selective neuronal death in HD, and lamotrigine may inhibit glutamate release in vivo. A double-blinded, placebo-controlled study was conducted of 64 patients w...

In the Color-Word Stroop test (CWST), the basic task is to name the ink color of rows of XXXs, and performance in this condition is compared with performance in naming the ink-color of color words under conditions where word meanings and ink colors mismatch or are incongruent (e.g., the word red printed in green ink). The present study investigated...

Memory research distinguishes two components of episodes--the event or item and the spatial-temporal setting or context in which it occurred. The word context is used either globally to denote the physical, social, or emotional environment at study and test or it is used locally to refer to another word or picture that was paired with a particular...

Investigated the contributions of object orientation information in semantic and episodic memories to implicit and explicit memory test performance, in 3 experiments. 456 undergraduates were shown color photos of objects, and their memory was assessed either with an old/new recognition test or with a test that required Ss to identify slowly faded o...

The opposition procedure (OP) is a new method for revealing two different aspects of processing (said to be automatic and consciously controlled processing, respectively) that are recruited for performance in various memory test situations. Graf and Komatsu (1994) wrote a critique of this method, and Toth, Reingold and Jacoby (1995) responded, unfo...

The Stroop test comes in different variations, but all of them index performance on a basic task, like color or picture naming, when it is carried out by itself versus when it is performed in the presence of conflicting or incongruent stimuli. The present study examined the hypothesis that Stroop interference--the cost of performing one task in the...

The process dissociation procedure (PDP) was introduced as a general-purpose tool for estimating the extent to which performance on various cognitive tasks is mediated by processes that are versus are not under the direct control of our conscious intentions. We investigated two of the core assumptions of the PDP that concern the processes that medi...

Abstract What abilities or skills need to be recruited for free recall of a list of words, to what extent do they influence performance, and does their influence remain constant across the lifespan? These and related questions were addressed in an investigation with 163 community,dwelling healthy adults. In a session that lasted about 2.5 hours, ea...

The process dissociation procedure (PDP) was introduced as a general-purpose tool for quantifying the extent to which performance on various cognitive tasks is mediated by consciously controlled versus automatic processes. In this paper, we consider several aspects that limit the procedure's domain of application. We suggest that the PDP is inappro...