Older adults are more at risk to become a victim of consumer fraud than any other type of crime (Carcach, Graycar, & Muscat, 2001) but the research on the psychological profiles of senior fraud victims is lacking. To bridge this significant gap, we examined 151 (120 female, 111 Caucasian) community-dwelling older adults in Southern Ontario between 60 and 90 years of age about their experiences with fraud. Participants had not been diagnosed with cognitive impairment or a neurological disorder by their doctor and looked after their own finances. We assessed their self-reported cognitive abilities using the MAQ, personality on the 60-item HEXACO Personality Inventory, and trust tendencies using a scale from the World Values Survey. There were no demographic differences between victims and non-victims. We found that victims exhibit lower levels of cognitive ability, lower honesty-humility, and lower conscientiousness than non-victims. Victims and non-victims did not differ in reported levels of interpersonal trust. Subsequent regression analyses showed that cognition is an important component in victimization over and above other social factors. The present findings suggest that fraud prevention programs should focus on improving adults’ overall cognitive functioning. Further investigation is needed to understand how age-related cognitive changes affect vulnerability to fraud and which cognitive processes are most important for preventing fraud victimization.

To address the question of whether cognitive plasticity varies by age and level of cognitive functioning in the older population, the authors used a self-guided retest paradigm to assess the basic forms of plasticity of 34 young-olds (M=74.4 years, range=70-79) and 34 oldest-olds (M=84.0 years, range=80-91), with half in each age group screened for high or low (midrange) level of cognitive functioning. As a whole, members of the sample represent about the upper two thirds of their age cohorts. Results show persistent, though age-reduced, learning in all samples and across all tests. However, age is not differentially "kinder" to the more able with respect to the age-graded decline in learning.

This study examined the effects of loneliness, social support, and acculturation on psychological well-being, as indexed by general emotional well-being and life satisfaction, of older Chinese adults living in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 168 older Chinese adults, recruited via WeChat and the internet, completed an online study through a facilitated Zoom or phone meeting, or through a website link, individually or in a group. The testing package included demographic information, The UCLA Loneliness Scale, The Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale, Vancouver Index of Acculturation, The Satisfaction with Life Scale, and The World Health Organization’s Five Well-Being Index. The results showed that the psychological well-being (both general emotional well-being and cognitively perceived life satisfaction) was positively predicted by perceived social support but negatively predicted by loneliness. Acculturation was not predictive of both outcomes, and it did not moderate the predictive relationships of social support or loneliness. The results shed light on the importance of community services that target enhancing social support and reducing loneliness in promoting psychological well-being of older Chinese immigrants in Canada amidst and post the pandemic.

Literature on cross-cultural differences in cognition suggests that categorization, as an information processing and organization strategy, was more often used by Westerners than by East Asians, particularly for older adults. This study examines East-West cultural differences in memory for categorically processed items and sources in young and older Canadians and native Chinese with a conceptual source memory task (Experiment 1) and a reality monitoring task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants encoded photographic faces of their own ethnicity that were artificially categorized into GOOD or EVIL characters and then completed a source memory task in which they identified faces as old-GOOD, old-EVIL, or new. In Experiment 2, participants viewed a series of words, each followed either by a corresponding image (i.e., SEEN) or by a blank square within which they imagined an image for the word (i.e., IMAGINED). At test, they decided whether the test words were old-SEEN, old-IMAGINED, or new. In general, Canadians outperformed Chinese in memory for categorically processed information, an effect more pronounced for older than for young adults. Extensive exercise of culturally preferred categorization strategy differentially benefits Canadians and reduces their age group differences in memory for categorically processed information.

The self-reference effect (SRE) is a powerful memory advantage associated with encoding in reference to the self (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977). To explore whether this mnemonic benefit occurs spontaneously, the current study assessed how ageing and divided attention affect the magnitude of the SRE in emotional memory (i.e., memory for emotional stimuli). The sample included a young Full Attention group (young-FA), a young Divided Attention group (young-DA), and an older adult group. The division of attention was manipulated at encoding where participants incidentally studied positive, negative, and neutral trait adjectives in either a self-reference (i.e., rating how well each word describes themselves) or an other-reference condition (i.e., rating how well each word describes another person). Memory for these words was assessed with both recall and recognition tasks. The results from both tasks demonstrated equivalent SRE for all three groups across emotional valence categories of stimuli, suggesting that the SRE is a spontaneous, effortless, and robust effect in memory.