Stine-Morrow Elizabeth A L, Parisi Jeanine M, Morrow Daniel G, Greene Jennifer, Park Denise C
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 226 Education Building, 1310 South Sixth St., Champaign, IL 61820-6990, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2007 Jun;62 Spec No 1:62-9. doi: 10.1093/geronb/62.special_issue_1.62.
The engagement hypothesis suggests that social and intellectual engagement may buffer age-related declines in intellectual functioning. At the same time, some have argued that social structures that afford opportunities for intellectual engagement throughout the life span have lagged behind the demographic shift toward an expanding older population. Against this backdrop, we developed the Senior Odyssey, an existing team-based program of creative problem solving. We tested the engagement hypothesis in a field experiment. Relative to controls, Senior Odyssey participants showed improved speed of processing, marginally improved divergent thinking, and higher levels of mindfulness and need for cognition after the program. This pilot translational project suggests that the Senior Odyssey program may serve as one effective model of engagement with good scaling-up potential.
参与假说表明，社交和智力参与可能缓冲与年龄相关的智力功能衰退。与此同时，一些人认为，在整个生命周期中提供智力参与机会的社会结构落后于人口结构向老年人口不断增加的转变。在此背景下，我们开发了“老年奥德赛”项目，这是一个现有的基于团队的创造性问题解决项目。我们在一项实地实验中对参与假说进行了测试。与对照组相比，参与“老年奥德赛”项目的参与者在项目结束后处理速度有所提高，发散性思维略有改善，正念水平和认知需求更高。这个试点转化项目表明，“老年奥德赛”项目可能是一个具有良好扩大规模潜力的有效参与模式。
