Mindful Attention to Variability in Everyday Memory

This 13-item self-report scale measures subjective memory failures. Namely, respondents are asked to indicate whether or not they had experienced certain memory failures within the past 24 hours (e.g., "Did you find that a word was "on the tip of your tongue" - you knew what it was but could not quite find it?). Following the 13 yes/no questions about one's memory functioning, participants are asked to rate how stressful these failures are on a scale of 0-10 with 0 indicating "not at all stressful" to 10 indicating "very stressful." The final question asks the participant to compare their memory functioning that day compared to other days ("much worse than usual, a little worse than usual, same as usual, somewhat better than usual, much better than usual"). This 13-item version was shortened from the original 28-item version (Sunderland, Watts, Baddeley, & Harris, 1986).

The Memory Controllability Inventory is a 19-item Likert scale with questions about one's memory. Participants rate each statement from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The MCI includes six subscales, including: Present Ability (e.g., "I can remember the things I need to."), Potential Improvement (e.g., "I can find ways to improve my memory"), Effort Utility (e.g., "If I work at it, I can improve my memory."), Inevitable Decrement (e.g., "There's not much I can do to keep my memory from going downhill.", Independence (e.g., "As I get older I won't have to rely on others to remember things for me.", and Alzheimer's Likelihood (e.g., I think there's a good chance I will get Alzheimer's disease"). On all the subscales except Alzheimer's Likelihood, higher scores indicate higher levels of perceived personal control over one's memory.

The Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire is a 54-item self-report scale, which asks about overall satisfaction with one's memory ("MMQ-Contentment"), one's perceived memory ability ("MMQ-Ability"), and the extent to which one employs memory strategies ("MMQ-Strategy"). The MMQ-Contentment asks respondents to rate each item on a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), with 3 indicating "undecided." An example of the "Contentment" subscale is "I am generally pleased with my memory ability." The MMQ-Ability subscale asks respondents to rate 20 different memory mistakes on a scale of 1 (all the time) to 5 (never). An example of the "Ability" subscale is "Forgot an appointment." The MMQ-Strategy subscale asks respondents to rate how often they used a given memory strategy on a scale of 1 (all the time) to 5 (never). An example of a strategy included in this subscale is, "Use a timer or alarm to remind you when to do something."

The BTACT is a neuropsychological battery based off well-known laboratory tasks and modified versions of well-established psychometric tests. The BTACT, which is proctored over the phone, is designed to be sensitive to performance a range of cognitive abilities in older adults without cognitive impairments including: episodic verbal memory (both immediate and delayed list recall of 15 unrelated words of the Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test, Rey, 1964), working memory span (backwards digit span, Wechsler, 1997) and language verbal fluency. We also included the optional Stop-and-Go switch task to test task-switching ability/inhibitory control. Two versions of the test (Form A and Form B) are available for repeated measurement. This test has demonstrated good construct validity and test-retest reliability (Lachman, Agrigoroaei, Tun, & Weaver, 2014). Moreover, the assessment's authors found no difference in performance between individuals who took the test over the phone vs. in person.

Trait mindfulness is assessed using the Langer Mindfulness Scale (LMS-14), a 14-item Likert scale (1= Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree) which includes three factors: novelty seeking, novelty producing, and engagement. The authors reported good psychometric properties.

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule prompts participants to consider twenty mood states and rate each one a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 indicating "very slightly or not at all" and 5 indicating "extremely". Specifically, we used the variation of the scale that asks participants to rate their current mood (i.e., "the way you feel now, that is, at the present moment", Watson et al., 1988, pg. 106). PANAS has been shown to include two factors, namely, positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). The two factors are calculated by summing the 10 positive emotions and the 10 negative emotions. The PANAS referring to mood states in the present moment has excellent internal consistency with the PA alpha coefficient = .89 and the NA alpha coefficient = .85.

This scale prompts participants to rate 18 characteristics on how well they describe "old people in general." Participants rate the extent to which each characteristic matches one's image of aging using a 7-point Likert scale with 0 indicating "does not match my image" to 6 indicating that the characteristic "completely matches my image". In the development of this scale, eighteen traits were conceptually matched across nine dimensions so that positive and negative age-based stereotypes each had an opposite (e.g., "walks slowly" and "active"). These nine domains included activity, appearance, cognition, death, dependence, personality, physical health, social relationships, and will to live. The Image of Aging Scale has good psychometric properties.

Subjective age was assessed with Barak and Schiffman's subjective age measure (1981), which taps into cognitive, psychological, biological, and social domains of the subjective age construct. Specifically, the measure prompts participants to report on "feel age" (i.e., how old participants feel), "look age" (i.e., how old participants believe they look), "do age" (i.e., how old participants believe they act), and "interest age" (i.e., the age group they believe would share their interests). Specifically, we calculated the difference between their actual age and subjective age. The authors reported good internal consistency and reliability.