Articles on the Web

Articles on the Web

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Corinna Loeckenhoff, a new faculty member in the Department of Human Development was awarded an Innovative Research Project Award by the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center for her research on The Role of Affect in Temporal Discounting Across the Adult Life Span. According to some estimates, almost half of the instances of premature mortality in the U.S. can be traced to problematic personal decisions (e.g., regarding weight management, substance abuse, and risky behavior). Temporal discounting, the tendency to devalue delayed gains and losses relative to immediate ones appears to play an important role in suboptimal choices. However, although such effects are well-documented in younger adults, comparatively little is known about adult age differences in temporal discounting. This makes it difficult to develop personalized interventions to promote advantageous intertemporal choices across the life span. Previous decision-making research further indicates that age groups differ in their relative emphasis on positive versus negative aspects of choices, their ability to forecast future emotional reactions, and the degree of emotional conflict in response to difficult decisions. To date, such age effects have not been studied in the context of temporal discounting.

Loeckenhoff’s studies rely on a set of novel laboratory paradigms designed to assess the role of affect in realistic temporal discounting scenarios involving both monetary and experiential outcomes. By administering these paradigms to people of different ages, the proposed research will (1) contribute to the scarce literature on age differences in temporal discounting (2) extend existing knowledge about the role of affective variables in temporal discounting, and (3) identify the mechanisms at the basis of observed age effects with the goal of developing interventions to optimize choices across the life span.

The research will not only contribute to basic knowledge about age and emotional processing in the context of temporal discounting but also provide concrete guidelines for improving decision making across the life span. To achieve these goals, she will leverage the expertise of Cornell faculty in multiple disciplines as well as the collaborative network and resources provided through CITRA.

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Kimberly Kopko

The Parenting In Context Project, led by Associate Professor Rachel Dunifon and Extension Associate Kimberly Kopko, officially launched the Cornell Cooperative Extension Parent Education Data Collection System this spring. This online, user-friendly system is designed for CCE parent educators to enter data, collected via pre- and post-survey instruments, from participants of parenting programs that are comprised of at least 6 hours of content delivery. CCE parent educators have received training on entering data in the system and this data will be used to examine and report the effectiveness of parent education programs on both the county and statewide levels, to assess the impact of participation in parent education programs on families across New York State, and to inform research on the ways in which parent education programming impacts parenting behavior.

For More Information

Parenting In Context Statewide Data Collection website

Kim Kopko, Extension Associate, (607) 254-6517, kak33@cornell.edu

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Human Development Outreach & Extension

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June Mead

June P. Mead, Dept. of Human Development, was selected by National 4-H Headquarters to serve on the Advisory Board for the National 4-H Learning Communities Project, focused on one of the 4-H National Learning Priorities: Program Evaluation. The goal of the National 4-H Learning Communities Project is to foster evaluation capacity building among 4-H youth development professionals and staff in four states: Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Virginia. A report on the project’s findings is due this summer. The advisory board members also plan to present what they have learned about the use of learning circles in building evaluation capacity at the American Evaluation Association Conference 2009 in Orlando, Florida in November. The talk will be entitled: Building 4-H Evaluation Capacity Through Learning Communities: Tales From the National 4-H Evaluation Learning Communities Project.

For More Information

http://www.national4-hheadquarters.gov/comm/NLP_Impact_9-2008.pdf


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June Mead

June P. Mead, Dept. of Human Development, has been invited by National 4-H Headquarters to be part of the 4-H National Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET) Evaluation Instrument Design Team. The team had its first meeting on June 17-19 in Washington, DC.The 4-H SET Evaluation Instrument Design Team was formed by Suzanne Le Menestrel, National Program Leader, Youth Development Research, National 4-H Headquarters and Jill Walahoski, 4-H SET Evaluation Director, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The team is charged with developing two instruments as part of the national SET evaluation funded by the Noyce Foundation. The first instrument is an implementation study that will be used to collect data from institutions regarding their SET plans. The second is the Youth Engagement, Attitudes, and Knowledge Survey that will be used to collect data annually from a nationally representative sample of 4-H youth.

For More Information

June Mead, jm62@cornell.edu

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June Mead
National 4-H Council, in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has recognized five exemplary 4-H programs with the 2008 4-H Families Count: Family Strengthening Award. The programs were selected by 4-H for their ability to improve outcomes for rural, disadvantaged families by fostering the social network, economic opportunities, and the support that families need to be successful.
The award-winning programs were recognized at the annual National Association of Extension 4-H Agents (NAE4-HA) during the Galaxy III Conference in Indianapolis, IN. As project director and evaluator for the Community Improvement Through Youth (CITY) Project, June P. Mead, Dept. of Human Development, received the first $10,000, and will receive the remaining $5,000 after sharing best practices relating to their programs with others in the Cooperative Extension System. The five winners of the $15,000 awards are:

•   CITY Project, Cornell University
•   Diverse Youth-Adult Partnerships, University of Nebraska
•   Project GIFT, Rutgers University
•   4-H Tech Wizards, Oregon State University
•   The Family Fitness Program, Penn State
“4-H connects families to programs and resources to help them grow stronger,” said National 4 H Council President and CEO Donald T. Floyd, Jr. “With the 4-H Families Count: Family Strengthening Awards, 4 H is able to reach families that often find themselves isolated from opportunities and support systems to help secure their children’s futures.”
To qualify for the award, each program must be a Program of Distinction—part of a collection of programs that reflect the high quality of 4-H youth development programs occurring in communities across the United States, supported by the 4-H system partners and coordinated through National 4 H Headquarters at the USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES).
Further Information

See the Program of Distinction listing for the CITY Project

CITY Project website


CITY Project Logo

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by Susan Lang and Andrew Reed

Many older adults experience decline in mental processes. But this need not be a handicap, because they largely can compensate by relying more on their strong emotional functioning, which doesn't decline with age.

According to Cornell psychologist Joseph Mikels, "One way older adults may be able to compensate for declines in memory and other important decision-making processes is through preserved emotional skills."

Mikels has been studying the role of emotion-cognition interactions in complex decision making, and how the quality of decisions can be improved across the adult life span. He has found that older adults:

do not experience age-related declines in emotional processing.
should trust their "gut feelings" when making decisions.
prefer not to have too much choice.
Mikels, an assistant professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, says that research suggests that older adults may differ substantially from younger adults in how they make decisions. As director of the Emotion and Cognition Laboratory, he conducts studies to examine how emotion interfaces with such cognitive processes as working memory and selective attention.

Mikels and others have found, in fact, that relying on emotion, rather than intensive deliberation, can play an important role in decision making. To determine whether older adults might benefit from a reliance on abilities that are spared from age-related declines -- namely emotional processing -- Mikels' research team presented older and younger adults with hypothetical health-related decisions (choosing a physician, for example), in which one of the alternatives was objectively superior to the others.

"When older adults relied on memory-based decision strategies, the quality of their decisions was quite a bit lower than their younger counterparts," Mikels said. "In stark contrast, when older adults relied on their gut feelings, the quality of their decisions was just as high as that of the younger adults."

By focusing older adults' attention on their "gut feelings," Mikels was able to significantly enhance the quality of their decisions. Indeed, studies suggest that older adults may not only prefer to "go with their gut," but that their decisions may benefit immensely from doing so, Mikels said.

Mikels has also found that older adults prefer having less choice in decision making. In a series of large-scale surveys conducted with Cornell colleague Kosali Simon in Ithaca and New York City, hundreds of younger and older adults reported how many options they wished to choose from in a variety of domains, from prescription drug plans to ice cream flavors. Critically, older adults wanted, on average, half as many options as younger adults, and the older the participant, the fewer choices they desired.

In a separate study, Mikels and Simon measured self-reports of how much money older versus younger adults would be willing to pay for varying degrees of choice among prescription drug plans. Whereas younger adults were willing to pay increasingly more for additional options, older adults were not. In other words, Mikels' research suggests that excessive choice may be especially undesirable as we age, as it not only undermines the quality of decisions, but also people's motivation to choose anything at all. Individuals who are faced with dozens of options are less satisfied with their decisions than people who choose from relatively few options, even when the decisions appear as simple as selecting a variety of jam. And, evidence is now suggesting that this "choice overload" effect may be especially pronounced for older adults.

As such, Mikels said it would seem especially prudent to buffer older adults from these ill effects by tailoring decision environments more closely to their abilities and preferences.

Susan Lang is an editor at the Cornell Chronicle. Andrew Reed is a human development graduate student.


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By Sheri Hall
Reprinted with permission from ChronicleOnline, April 9, 2009

Chronic stress from growing up in poverty can physiologically impact children's brains, impairing their working memory and diminishing their ability to develop language, reading and problem-solving skills, reports a new Cornell study.

The study, published online March 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of the first to look at cognitive responses to physiological stress in children who live in poverty.

"There is a lot of evidence that low-income families are under tremendous amounts of stress, and we know already that stress has many implications," said lead author Gary W. Evans, the Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology in the Departments of Design and Environmental Analysis and of Human Development in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. "What these data raise is the possibility that stress is also related to cognitive development."

Evans and Michele A. Schamber '08, who worked with Evans as an undergraduate, have been gathering detailed data about 195 children from rural households above and below the poverty line for 14 years. They quantified the level of physiological stress each child experienced at ages 9 and 13 using a "stress score" called allostatic load, which combines measures of the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine, as well as blood pressure and body mass index.

At age 17, the subjects also underwent tests to measure their working memory, which is the ability to remember information in the short term. Working memory is crucial for everyday activities as well as for forming long-term memories.

Evans found that children who lived in impoverished environments for longer periods of time showed higher stress scores and suffered greater impairments in working memory as young adults. Those who spent their entire childhood in poverty scored about 20 percent lower on working memory than those who were never poor.

"When you are poor, when it rains it pours," Evans explained. "You may have housing problems. You may have more conflict in the family. There's a lot more pressure in paying the bills. You'll probably end up moving more often. We know that produces stress in families, including on the children.

"We put these things together and can say one reason we get this link between poverty and deficits in working memory may be from this chronic elevated stress," he said.

The findings suggest that government policies and programs that aim to reduce the income-performance gap should consider the stress children experience at home.

"It's not enough to just take our kids to the library," Evans said. "We need to also take into account that chronic stress takes a toll on their cognitive functioning."

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Ordinarily, we think of stereotyping and prejudice as social responses to people. Indeed, researchers have found that the mere presence of a Black American target, for example, can bring to mind stereotypic associations.  In this talk, Dr. Eberhardt will present a wide variety of research studies that highlight how such racial associations may also influence our perception and interpretation of the physical world around us.

Dr. Eberhardt's visit sponsored by:

  • Law, Psychology & Human Development
  • Department of Human Development
  • Cornell Law School
  • Department of Psychology
  • Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research

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The Children, Youth and Families At Risk Conference 2009 will be held May 19-21, with the CYFAR 2009 Pre-conference on Monday, May 18. The venue for CYFAR 2009 is the Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor, located in the center of this historic city.
Weekly features on the CYFAR 2009 Conference website will highlight the outstanding line-up of keynote and research presentations, as well as all of the professional development opportunities at the conference.

Francesca Adler-Baeder, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist, Human Development and Family Studies, Auburn University will present the opening session keynote, What’s love got to do with it? Children’s development in the context of their parents’ relationships.
Bonnie Braun, Herschel S. Horowitz Endowed Chair and Director, Center for Health Literacy, University of Maryland—College Park, School of Public Health, will present the 4-H Family Strengthening Distinguished Lecture at CYFAR 2009. Dr. Braun’s lecture is sponsored in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation who believe that children do better when families do better and families do better in supportive communities. The goal of this lecture is to share research and practical examples of the reality of this statement and what this might mean for youth, families and communities.
Gary Evans, Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology, Cornell University is a featured Research Presenter. For the past two decades he has been examining cumulative risk exposure among a sample of low- and middle- income children growing up in rural New York areas. His research presentation is entitled, The Environment of Childhood Poverty.
Another featured researcher, Deborah Leong, Professor Emeritus, Director Center for Improving Early Learning, Metropolitan State College of Denver, will present Self-Regulation and School Readiness: What Neuroscience Tells Us and How to Support its Development in the Early Childhood Classroom. Dr. Leong is Director for the Center for Improving Early Learning, home of Tools of the Mind.

June P. Mead, Senior Extension Associate in the Department of Human Development, serves as the CYFAR Conference Program Coordinator and chairs the Program Committee. Steve Goggin, Senior Extension Associate in the Department of Human Development, chairs the Keynote and Research Committee.
For Further Information and Registration, see the CYFAR 2009 website.

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June Mead

Recently, a two-year project funded by the AARP Foundation celebrated its successful completion and initiated plans for a national rollout. Over the past two years, the Prepare to Care Project, Cooperative Extension Services worked in partnership with state and local AARP offices in New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin to identify the most effective outreach strategies for working with small business employers and distribute family caregiving information and educational programming. The project was known as the Prepare to Care--I'm Ready Are You?
The main effort of the project was to develop a toolkit for educators and caregiver professionals to assist them in understanding the programming options and supportive materials for implementing the Prepare to Care program in their community. The content of the Prepare to Care Workplace Toolkit provides background information on working with employers, different strategies to use when reaching employers, and how to support employees. The tools and templates provided in the Prepare to Care Workplace Toolkit are based on the lessons learned during the pilot implementation in the four states.
In New York, the project was headed by Denyse Variano, Senior Extension Resource Educator, Cornell Cooperative Extension - Orange County and June P. Mead, Senior Extension Associate, Dept. of Human Development.
National distribution of Prepare to Care materials includes:

26,660 Prepare to Care workbooks distributed
1,597 Prepare to Care checklists distributed
650 Prepare to Care bookmarks/paycheck insert distributed
10,316 Caring for Those You Care About tip sheets distributed
6,724 Prepare to Care Benefits Check-up fact sheet distribute
2,949 Prepare to Care: The Business Case for Employers distributed

Further Information

For information about the "Prepare to Care" Toolkit and ordering information, visit the eXtension website for the Family Caregiving Community of Practice
To be notified when the Toolkit is available, send name, organization, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address to: Benefitsoutreach@aarp.org


Prepare to Care Brochure

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