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Objective: This study examined the association between negative life events in the past year and cognitive performance in a population of older adults., Methods: Secondary data analysis was conducted on 428 participants from the Charlotte County Healthy Aging Study. Participants completed tests of episodic memory, attention, and psychomotor speed and endorsed the presence and severity of 24 life events. Life events were examined in the aggregate as well as individually., Results: Hierarchical multiple regression results suggest no significant relationship between the aggregate frequency and severity measures of negative life events and cognitive performance. At the individual-event level, individuals who experienced the injury or illness of a friend during the past year and rated it as having more of an effect on their lives performed better on all three cognitive tasks. However, individuals who reported having less money to live on over the past year and rated the event as having more of an effect on their lives performed more poorly on the psychomotor speed tasks., Discussion: The findings support previous research indicating that using estimates of individual stressors rather than aggregate stress measures increases the predictive validity of stress measurement. Furthermore, the individual negative life events can have both a positive and a negative effect, which nullify one another when using the sum score of events.

This article examines why older adults do or do not execute advance directives. METHODS. Secondary data analysis was conducted on data from the Charlotte County (Florida) Healthy Aging Study, on 451 adults who were relatively healthy and affluent. Exploratory logistic regressions were conducted on the probability that respondents had executed advance directives. RESULTS. Findings indicated that increasing age and higher income were the most consistent indicators of having executed an advance directive. Also, individuals reporting taking more prescription medications were more likely to have all the advance directives, except the durable power of attorney for health care. Reporting more negative life events was predictive of having executed the durable power of attorney for health care. DISCUSSION. These findings suggest that in addition to awareness of advance directives, demographic, health, and situational factors may affect the willingness of older adults to execute advance directives. Further research should examine other, more representative, samples to confirm these findings.