Abstract Cognitive reserve (CR) is a construct generally associated with neurodegenerative diseases in aging. The aim of this paper was to examine the CR profiles of older adults at different stages of their lifespan and evaluate the importance of: (a) gender and CR; and (b) CR, cognition, and symptoms of depression. A sample of 195 older adults volunteered to participate in the study, and a cluster analysis was carried out on their responses in terms of the Cognitive Reserve Scale. The cluster analysis depicted two different profiles. Furthermore, women had a better CR than men. The results provide an important contribution to understanding the variables related to the CR construct.

Resumo A reserva cognitiva (RC) é um construto geralmente associado a doenças neurodegenerativas no envelhecimento. O objetivo deste estudo foi examinar os perfis de RC em adultos idosos em diferentes estágios da vida, e avaliar o efeito de: (a) gênero e RC; e (b) RC, cognição e sintomas depressivos. A amostra contou com 195 adultos, e uma análise de cluster foi realizada a partir dos escores obtidos na Escala de Reserva Cognitiva. A análise de cluster descreveu dois perfis diferentes. Além disso, as mulheres apresentaram maior RC em comparação aos homens. Os resultados fornecem contribuições importantes para as variáveis relacionadas ao construto da RC.

Abstract The transition from on-paper to on-screen reading seems to make it necessary to raise some considerations, as a greater attentional effort has been claimed for print texts than digital ones. Not surprisingly, most university students prefer this digital medium. This research aims to examine reading times by contextualizing this phenomenon into two processes: namely, word recognition and reading comprehension task on paper and on screen. Thus, two different tasks—counterbalanced into digital and print mediums—were carried out per each participant with a preference for a digital medium: a reading comprehension task (RCT) and a lexical decision task (LDT) after reading a specific story. Participants were slower reading print texts and no statistically significant differences were found in RCT accuracy. This result suggests that the task required more cognitive resources under the print medium for those with a worse comprehension performance in reading, and a more conservative pattern in digital RCT for those with a better performance.

Abstract The service-learning disciplines can offer a unique opportunity for civic development in university students, as there is a large body of research that links it to values and civic attitudes including a vast number of ecological issues and citizen variables. Moreover, one should bear in mind that these students are future generations that will face many pressing social and environmental issues. Given the need to develop instruments to measure the impact of a service-learning methodology in university students’ values as well as civic attitudes, VAL-U is proposed. As the university can be considered a learning step prior to the professional field, the main objective of this study was to analyse the internal consistency and factor structure of the proposed VAL-U scale in the Spanish population. The scale confirmed acceptable psychometric properties. Furthermore, the results have shown high reliability and optimal goodness of fit. Promising results are offered to employ VAL-U as a valuable tool for assessing Values and Civic Attitudes Scale for Spanish-speaking University Students’ Service-Learning.

Successful resilience is a variable often related to an optimal aging process. However, literature is rather limited when dealing with assessment instruments for the elderly in the Spanish language. The objective of this work is to validate the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (Sinclair & Wallston, 2004), a four item likert scale, in the Spanish elderly. For this propose, the scale was administrated to a sample of 991 elderly Spanish participants, and the data set analysed in terms of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency and criterion validity. The scale demonstrated good psychometric properties. Furthermore, the homogeneity indices were higher than the recently literature, reinforcing the dimensional structure of the scale. These results have shown higher reliability from previous Spanish versions. Therefore, the Brief Resilient Coping Scale is a valuable assessment instrument that could be very useful in the assessing of resilience in the Spanish-speaking elderly.

La resiliencia exitosa es una variable a menudo relacionada con un proceso óptimo envejecimiento. Sin embargo, la literatura es más bien limitada en relación a instrumentos de evaluación para los adultos mayores en el idioma español. El objetivo de este trabajo es validar la escala breve de resiliencia BRCS (Sinclair & Wallston, 2004), una escala de cuatro punto Likert, en personas mayores españolas. Para ello, la escala se administró a una muestra de 991 adultos mayores españoles, y fue analizada en términos de análisis factorial exploratorio y confirmatorio, consistencia interna y validez de criterio. La escala demostró buenas propiedades psicométricas. Además, los índices de homogeneidad fueron más altos que los mostrados en la literatura recientemente, reforzando la estructura dimensional de la escala. Estos resultados han mostrado una mayor fiabilidad frente a las anteriores versiones españolas anteriores. Por lo tanto, el BRCS es un instrumento de evaluación que podría ser muy útil en la evaluación de la resiliencia de los adultos mayores de habla española.

Este estudo buscou investigar a influência de características sociodemográficas no desempenho de idosos em duas tarefas de fluência verbal, além de fornecer dados normativos de referência nessas tarefas, conforme níveis de educação, para a população brasileira de idosos saudáveis. A amostra inicial incluiu 521 idosos com idade a partir 60 anos, participantes do Programa Estratégia Saúde na Família. Foram excluídos os participantes que tinham pontuações sugestivas de declínio cognitivo no Mini Exame do Estado Mental, de sintomas depressivos na Escala de Depressão Geriátrica e com autorrelato de doenças neurológicas ou de distúrbios psiquiátricos. A amostra final foi composta por 218 participantes que responderam à tarefa de fluência verbal fonêmica (letras F, A e S) e 265 que responderam à tarefa semântica (animais). O desempenho em ambas as tarefas foi associado à idade e aos anos de ensino formal, mas não ao sexo. Ainda, a variável escolaridade mostrou ter um impacto maior no desempenho de fluência verbal do que a idade em ambas as modalidades de evocação. Os resultados desse estudo sugerem a importância de oferecer dados normativos de idosos brasileiros, adequados à idade e à escolaridade, em tarefas de fluência verbal.

This study aims to investigate the influence of sociodemographic characteristics on the performance of older people on two tasks of verbal fluency and provide normative data for a Brazilian population of healthy elderly individuals with different educational levels. The initial sample included 521 individuals aged from 60 years, participating in the Program Family Health Strategy. Participants who had scores suggestive of cognitive decline on the Mini-Mental State Examination, depressive symptoms in Geriatric Depression Scale and self-reported neurological or psychiatric disorders were excluded. The final sample consisted of 218 participants in phonemic verbal fluency task (letters F, A and S) and 265 participants for semantic verbal fluency task (animals). The performance in both tests was associated with age and education, but not with sex. Still, the education variable was shown to have a greater impact on scores in phonemic and semantic tests than age in both forms of evocation. The results of this study suggest the importance of providing normative data for elderly Brazilians appropriate to age and education on verbal fluency tasks.