Social desirability is a multicomponent personality trait referring to the tendency of individuals to regulate their answers to establish a positive impression, avoid criticism, or satisfy a need for social approval ( Johnson & Fendrich, 2002 Johnson, T., & Fendrich, M. (2002, May). A validation of the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale. Paper presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, St. Pete Beach, FL. http://www.srl.uic.edu/publist/Conference/crownemarlowe.pdf (http://www.srl.uic.edu/publist/Conference/crownemarlowe.pdf) [Google Scholar] ; Paulhus, 1984 Paulhus, D. L. 1984. Two-component models of socially desirable responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46: 598–609. doi:10.1037/ 0022–3514.46.3.598 [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ). This study investigated the role played by the socially desirable response style assessed with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale ( Crowne & Marlowe, 1960 Crowne, D. P. and Marlowe, D. 1960. A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24: 349–354. doi:10.1037/h0047358 [Crossref], [PubMed] [Google Scholar] ) on self-rated measures of affect (i.e., Center of Epidemiological Studies of Depression Scale; Radloff, 1977 Radloff, L. S. 1977. The CES-D Scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1: 385–401. doi:10.1177/014662167700100306 [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ), metacognitive efficiency (i.e., Sensitivity to Memory Questionnaire; Cornoldi & De Beni, 2003 Cornoldi, C. and De Beni, R. 2003. Leopardisti. Gli amanti della memoria [Leopardists. Memory lovers]. Psicologia Contemporanea, 1: 4–11. [Google Scholar] ; and Cognitive Failures Questionnaire; Borella, Carretti, Cornoldi, & DeBeni, 2007 Borella, E , Carretti, B. , Cornoldi, C. and De Beni, R. 2007. Working memory, control of interference and everyday experience of thoughts interference: A comparison between young, young-old and old-old adults. Aging, Clinical and Experimental Research, 19: 200–206. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ), and self-perceived psychological wellness (Psychological Wellness and Aging Questionnaire; De Beni, Borella, Carretti, Marigo, & Nava, 2007 De Beni, R. , Borella, E. , Carretti, B. , Marigo, C. and Nava, L. A. 2007. BAC: Benessere e Abilità Cognitive nell'età Adulta e Avanzata. [BAC: Wellness and cognitive abilities in the advanced and adult age], Florence, , Italy: Organizzazioni Speciali. [Google Scholar] ) in a sample composed of young (M = 24.6 years), old (M = 69.4 years), and very old (M = 81.9 years) adults counterbalanced by gender and education (i.e., ≤ 8 years versus > 8 years). Results revealed that social desirability alone predicted measures of affect and emotional competencies and contributed to predicting personal satisfaction, general perceived wellness, and self-rated cognitive efficiency. Overall, the present outcomes suggest clinical psychologists should pay attention to the crucial interference of social desirability in assessing wellness even in late adulthood, that is, in a developmental phase thought to be mainly characterized by reduced control of physical and psychological functions.

Current models of verbal short‐term memory (STM) propose various mechanisms for serial order. These include a gradient of activation over items, associations between items, and associations between items and their positions relative to the start or end of a sequence. We compared models using a variant of Hebb's procedure in which immediate serial recall of a sequence improves if the sequence is presented more than once. However, instead of repeating a complete sequence, we repeated different aspects of serial order information common to training lists and a subsequent test list. In Experiment 1, training lists repeated all the item–item pairings in the test list, with or without the position–item pairings in the test list. Substantial learning relative to a control condition was observed only when training lists repeated item–item pairs with position–item pairs, and position was defined relative to the start rather than end of a sequence. Experiment 2 attempted to analyse the basis of this learning effect further by repeating fragments of the test list during training, where fragments consisted of either isolated position–item pairings or clusters of both position–item and item–item pairings. Repetition of sequence fragments led to only weak learning effects. However, where learning was observed it was for specific position–item pairings. We conclude that positional cues play an important role in the coding of serial order in memory but that the information required to learn a sequence goes beyond position–item associations. We suggest that whereas STM for a novel sequence is based on positional cues, learning a sequence involves the development of some additional representation of the sequence as a whole.

Lifestyle, physical, and mental health impact successful aging. However, at present, extensive literature about the interplay among perceived mental and physical health, lifestyle, and food intake in long-lived people residing in areas of exceptional longevity is lacking. This study was mainly aimed at examining the relationships among self-assessed life satisfaction, physical health, lifestyle, and food intake in the last two decades of life. A further goal was to investigate the impact of age-related factors on the above variables. The recruitment was mainly conducted in the Sardinian Blue Zone, a well-documented area of exceptional longevity in Sardinia, an Italian Island located in the Mediterranean Sea. Twenty-nine octogenarians (M_age = 83.9 years, SD = 2.7) and 28 gender-matched long-lived (M_age = 97.6 years, SD = 7.9) community-dwellers took voluntarily part in the study. Each participant individually completed a battery of tasks assessing their global cognitive efficiency, life satisfaction, lifestyle, food intake, and perceived physical health. The results highlighted that life satisfaction was significantly associated with time spent on outdoor leisure activities (r = .314, p = .026), perceived physical health (r = .459, p = .001), and carbohydrate intake (r = .333, p = .021). Moreover, the octogenarians and long-lived groups reported similar levels of life satisfaction (t(56) = .573, p = .569, Cohen’s d = .164). In conclusion, healthy nutrition habits and a physically active lifestyle boosting mental and physical health are crucial for promoting optimal aging.