College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
Browse
5 results
Search Results
Item APPLYING A GENDERED LENS TO THE STUDY OF WORK AND CAREGIVING RESPONSIBILITIES AMONG CHINESE MIDDLE- TO OLDER-AGED ADULTS(2023) Ye, Jing; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three papers that investigate the working and caregiving roles of middle-to-older adults and their implications for well-being in China. While existing literature predominantly focuses on older adults as care recipients, this research sheds light on the significant number of older individuals who actively participate in the labor market and provide informal caregiving to family members. Studies usually focus on either caregiving or employment while keeping the other in the background, leaving the intersection of work and caregiving responsibilities understudied. I then ask whether and how work-life conflicts, commonly discussed in the context of middle-aged women, are also applicable to the older population and are shaped by gender. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Study, the study investigates work and caregiving patterns among middle-to-older adults and explores the well-being consequences of juggling these roles. Furthermore, the research examines whether gender-based patterns persist in work and caregiving dynamics during this stage of life. The study is conducted in China, a developing country experiencing accelerated population aging, and the boundaries between work and family responsibilities are less distinct compared to developed societies. Early retirement age in the formal sector provides opportunities for older workers to engage in caregiving, while informal sector and agricultural workers may need to continue working until old age due to low pension rates. The culture of filial piety and intergenerational solidarity further encourages older generations to provide financial and caregiving support to their younger family members, leading to the common occurrence of middle-to-older adults taking on both work and caregiving roles. The first paper explores the association between living arrangements and middle-to-older adults’ work prospects, considering gender and work sector differences. The second paper examines the impacts of living arrangements on role transitions, especially the transitions of workers and worker-caregivers given their prevalence, while also considering the moderating effects of gender and residence. The third paper investigates the joint impact of work and informal caregiving on mental well-being, analyzing the differential effects based on intensity, gender, residence, socioeconomic status, and social isolation level. In the context of accelerated aging in developing countries, this dissertation highlights the contributions of middle-to-older adults and emphasizes the need for investment in and design of long-term care services to meet the demands of rapidly aging populations.Item Detection and Recognition of Asynchronous Auditory/Visual Speech: Effects of Age, Hearing Loss, and Talker Accent(2022-01) Gordon-Salant, Sandra; Schwartz, Maya; Oppler, Kelsey; Yeni-Komshian, GraceThis investigation examined age-related differences in auditory-visual (AV) integration as reflected on perceptual judgments of temporally misaligned AV English sentences spoken by native English and native Spanish talkers. In the detection task, it was expected that slowed auditory temporal processing of older participants, relative to younger participants, would be manifest as a shift in the range over which participants would judge asynchronous stimuli as synchronous (referred to as the “AV simultaneity window”). The older participants were also expected to exhibit greater declines in speech recognition for asynchronous AV stimuli than younger participants. Talker accent was hypothesized to influence listener performance, with older listeners exhibiting a greater narrowing of the AV simultaneity window and much poorer recognition of asynchronous AV foreign-accented speech compared to younger listeners. Participant groups included younger and older participants with normal hearing and older participants with hearing loss. Stimuli were video recordings of sentences produced by native English and native Spanish talkers. The video recordings were altered in 50 ms steps by delaying either the audio or video onset. Participants performed a detection task in which the judged whether the sentences were synchronous or asynchronous, and performed a recognition task for multiple synchronous and asynchronous conditions. Both the detection and recognition tasks were conducted at the individualized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) corresponding to approximately 70% correct speech recognition performance for synchronous AV sentences. Older listeners with and without hearing loss generally showed wider AV simultaneity windows than younger listeners, possibly reflecting slowed auditory temporal processing in auditory lead conditions and reduced sensitivity to asynchrony in auditory lag conditions. However, older and younger listeners were affected similarly by misalignment of auditory and visual signal onsets on the speech recognition task. This suggests that older listeners are negatively impacted by temporal misalignments for speech recognition, even when they do not notice that the stimuli are asynchronous. Overall, the findings show that when listener performance is equated for simultaneous AV speech signals, age effects are apparent in detection judgments but not in recognition of asynchronous speech.Item Age-Related Temporal Processing Deficits in Word Segments in Adult Cochlear-Implant Users(Sage, 2019-12-06) Xie, Zilong; Gaskins, Casey R.; Shader, Maureen J.; Gordon-Salant, Sandra; Anderson, Samira; Goupell, Matthew J.Aging may limit speech understanding outcomes in cochlear-implant (CI) users. Here, we examined age-related declines in auditory temporal processing as a potential mechanism that underlies speech understanding deficits associated with aging in CI users. Auditory temporal processing was assessed with a categorization task for the words dish and ditch (i.e., identify each token as the word dish or ditch) on a continuum of speech tokens with varying silence duration (0 to 60 ms) prior to the final fricative. In Experiments 1 and 2, younger CI (YCI), middle-aged CI (MCI), and older CI (OCI) users participated in the categorization task across a range of presentation levels (25 to 85 dB). Relative to YCI, OCI required longer silence durations to identify ditch and exhibited reduced ability to distinguish the words dish and ditch (shallower slopes in the categorization function). Critically, we observed age-related performance differences only at higher presentation levels. This contrasted with findings from normal-hearing listeners in Experiment 3 that demonstrated age-related performance differences independent of presentation level. In summary, aging in CI users appears to degrade the ability to utilize brief temporal cues in word identification, particularly at high levels. Age-specific CI programming may potentially improve clinical outcomes for speech understanding performance by older CI listeners.Item Auditory Temporal Processing Ability in Cochlear-Implant Users: The Effects of Age and Peripheral Neural Survival(2019) Shader, Maureen Joyce; Goupell, Matthew J; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cochlear implants (CIs) are a valuable tool in the treatment of hearing loss and are considered a safe and effective option for adults of all ages. Nevertheless, older adults with CIs do not always achieve comparable speech recognition performance to younger adults following implantation. The mechanism(s) underlying this age limitation are unknown. It was hypothesized that older CI users would demonstrate age-related deficits in auditory temporal processing ability, which could contribute to an age limitation in CI performance. This is because the ability to accurately encode temporal information is critical to speech recognition through a CI. The current studies were aimed at identifying age-related limitations for processing temporal information using a variety of electrical stimulation parameters with the goal of identifying parameters that could mitigate the negative effects of age on CI performance. Studies 1 and 2 measured auditory temporal processing ability for non-speech signals at the single-electrode level for various electrical stimulation rates. Specifically, Study 1 measured gap detection thresholds, which constitutes a simple, static measurement of temporal processing. Study 2 measured amplitude-modulation detection thresholds, which utilized relatively more complex and dynamic signals. Peripheral neural survival was estimated on each electrode location that was tested in Studies 1 and 2. Study 3 measured phoneme recognition ability for consonant contrasts that varied in discrete temporal cues at multiple stimulation rates and envelope modulation frequencies. Results demonstrated significant effects of age and/or peripheral neural survival on temporal processing ability in each study. However, age and the degree of neural survival were often strongly correlated, with older participants exhibiting poorer neural survival compared to younger participants. This result suggested that a substantial reduction in peripheral neural survival accompanies aging in older CI users, and that these factors should be considered together, rather than separately. Parametric variation in the stimulation settings impacted performance for some participants, but this effect was not consistent across participants, nor was it predicted by age or peripheral neural survival.Item Being Single in Late-Life: Single Strain, Moderating Resources, and Distress(2004-05-06) Pudrovska, Tetyana; Schieman, Scott; SociologyUsing a sample of 532 nonmarried adults over age 65 residing in the District of Columbia and two adjoining Maryland counties, this study examines "single strain"--the strain of not being married or not living with a partner in late-life. First, I consider how social and economic statuses affect exposure of nonmarried elders to single strain. Second, I study how sociodemographic characteristics and psychosocial resources moderate the effect of single strain on mental health. Results of multiple OLS regression analyses indicate that while social statuses influence elders' exposure to single strain, the differential emotional responsiveness of nonmarried older adults to single strain is largely unaffected by their sociodemographic characteristics. In contrast, mastery and self-esteem are powerful moderating resources: Nonmarried elders with high mastery and self-esteem are less adversely affected by single strain than those with lower levels of intrapsychic resources.