Linking Older Adults’ Daily Activities With Well-Being and Cognition: Examining Moderators and Mediators

Abstract Increasingly more studies are showing that daily activities can be beneficial to wellbeing and cognitive abilities of older adults, but discussions about through which psychological mechanisms daily activities are associated with wellbeing and cognitive health have been scarce. This symposium, including three ambulatory assessment studies and one cross-sectional study, presents emerging theoretical hypotheses and recent empirical findings on this matter. Specifically, with 5-6 days of observations from 313 older adults, Brown and colleagues show that greater daily activity diversity is related to older adults’ higher overall cognitive functioning (executive functioning, memory, and crystallized intelligence). Hueluer and colleagues examine the moderating role of interaction modality on the relation of daily social interactions with wellbeing using data from 116 older adults over 21 days. Their results show that more face-to-face interactions — but not telephone or digital interactions — are associated with higher positive affect and lower loneliness. With data from 153 older adults over 15 days, Luo and colleagues show the mediating effect of positive affect in the association between momentary working memory performance and subsequent social activity engagement. Sharifian and colleagues show the mediating effects of solitary-cognitive activities in the association between depressive symptoms and global cognition, using cross-sectional data from 453 older adults, and also examine the moderating role of race. Finally, Tom Hess will serve as a discussant and provide an integrative discussion of the papers, informed by his extensive work on daily activities, motivation, and aging.


LEARNING HUMANITIES AND ETHICS OF AGING THROUGH THE LENS OF AN AVATAR CREATION Gay Hanna, and Yoon Chung Kim, Georgetown University, Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States
The main goal of teaching the humanities and ethics of aging is to understand the perspectives of older individuals as they address the challenges and opportunities presented across the aging spectrum. To encourage understanding of this humanistic and ethical process, students were given an assignment to select a profile of an older person with preselected characteristics that they then develop into their avatar, a virtual companion, to accompany them through the course. This assignment included three iterations of the avatar narrative related to what is studied in class around major life transition points related to work, housing, and end of life. These assignments included the creation of Mind Maps which illustrate their avatar's ongoing concerns related to their environment including their social determinants of health. The avatar's formative development throughout the course brought forward discussions around identity, safety, autonomy, and person-centeredness in terms of gerontological practice and policy.

OLDER ADULTS AS VIRTUAL SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS IN COVID GRADUATE EDUCATION Sonya Barsness, Georgetown University, Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States
COVID-19 has further illuminated the need for educational approaches in gerontology that are person-centered and experiential. Ideally, this includes in-person experiences with students and older adults. Through their classroom participation as subject matter experts in aging, older adults share their personal experiences, and react to gerontological theories and ideas. Shared learning offers a platform for exploration of shared humanity, so that older adults are not seen as the "other", but "us". This prepares a generation of gerontologists to identify and reject ongoing ageism, again highlighted by the pandemic. COVID-19 has also challenged educators to offer these experiential opportunities. In this presentation we will outline how older adults from a Continuing Care Retirement Community participated virtually in a graduate course. We will discuss how their virtual involvement was structured, how their real-time COVID experiences were integrated, and share feedback from older adult participants and students on their shared learning experiences.

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE: INTERNSHIP EXPLORING INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL BENEFITS OF ADULT STUDY ABROAD
Kim Redlich, Georgetown University, Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States Older adult participation in lifelong learning programs -such as university continuing education opportunities and the Age-Friendly University global network -has grown steadily over the last few years. Many of these programs are characterized by mixed-age classrooms in which undergraduate students share space and learning, remotely during Covid, with older adult participants who pay a nominal fee. Survey findings will be presented from older students involved in two university programs in this category: Temple University's "senior scholars" program and Georgetown University's "senior auditors" program, specifically related to the concept of adult study abroad. Adult study abroad is a new offering that combines the intellectual and social benefits of stimulating coursework with the transformative power of travel, and how the merging of these pursuits can produce purpose, meaning and community, especially for older adults. It is typically residential, academic, intergenerational, and of longer duration than a typical tourist experience. Increasingly more studies are showing that daily activities can be beneficial to wellbeing and cognitive abilities of older adults, but discussions about through which psychological mechanisms daily activities are associated with wellbeing and cognitive health have been scarce. This symposium, including three ambulatory assessment studies and one cross-sectional study, presents emerging theoretical hypotheses and recent empirical findings on this matter. Specifically, with 5-6 days of observations from 313 older adults, Brown and colleagues show that greater daily activity diversity is related to older adults' higher overall cognitive functioning (executive functioning, memory, and crystallized intelligence). Hueluer and colleagues examine the moderating role of interaction modality on the relation of daily social interactions with wellbeing using data from 116 older adults over 21 days. Their results show that more face-to-face interactions -but not telephone or digital interactions -are associated with higher positive affect and lower loneliness. With data from 153 older adults over 15 days, Luo and colleagues show the mediating effect of positive affect in the association between momentary working memory performance and subsequent social activity engagement. Sharifian and colleagues show the mediating effects of solitary-cognitive activities in the association between depressive symptoms and global cognition, using cross-sectional data from 453 older adults, and also examine the moderating role of race. Finally, Tom Hess will serve as a discussant and provide an integrative discussion of the papers, informed by his extensive work on daily activities, motivation, and aging. Research has shown cognitive ability in older age is associated with activity engagement, but little is known about what psychological mechanisms are linking the two constructs. This study investigates an emotional pathway, in which affective states mediate the temporal associations between momentary working memory and momentary activities in older age. We examined data from 153 healthy older adults aged 65 to 91 who completed a smartphonebased ambulatory assessment survey seven times a day over 15 days. In each assessment point, participants reported their momentary activities (e.g., social activities, mentally stimulating activities) and affective states (i.e., positive affect, negative affect) and took a working memory task. Initial results suggest that during an approximate time period of six hours (i.e., across three assessment points), working memory performance influences subsequent likelihood of social activity engagement. Moreover, positive affect mediates this temporal association. Results will be discussed in the context of cognitive aging research.

SWITCHING UP HOW YOU GET IN YOUR STEPS: DAILY ACTIVITY DIVERSITY AND COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING
Colette Brown, 1 Sangha Jeon, 1 Yee To Ng, 2 Soomi Lee, 3 Susan Charles, 1 and Karen Fingerman, 4 1. University of California,Irvine,Irvine,California,United States,2. University of Texas at Austin,Austin,Texas,United States,3. University of South Florida,Tampa,Florida,United States,4

. The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States
Active lifestyles are related to better cognitive health. More work is needed, however, to examine whether participating in a variety of daily activities (i.e., activity diversity) has unique importance beyond amount of activity. The current study examined associations between daily activity diversity and cognitive functioning among community-dwelling older adults (N = 313, ages 65-90). Participants completed a cognitive battery, then responded to ecological momentary assessments of their participation in 10 common activity types (e.g., exercise, chores, social visits, volunteering) every 3 hours for 5-6 days, and wore accelerometers to track daily step counts and duration of activity. Multiple regression models revealed that greater daily activity diversity related to higher overall cognitive functioning, executive functioning, memory, and crystallized intelligence. These associations remained significant after adjusting for step count and duration of activity. Findings suggest daily activity diversity has unique importance beyond sheer amount of activity for cognitive health in later adulthood.

DAILY SOCIAL INTERACTIONS AND WELL-BEING IN OLDER ADULTS: THE ROLE OF INTERACTION MODALITY
Gizem Hueluer, 1 Birthe Macdonald, 2 and Minxia Luo, 3 1. University of Bonn (Germany), 2. University of Zurich,Zurich,Zurich,Switzerland,3. University of zurich,Zurich,Zurich,Switzerland Older adults increasingly use digital communication technologies to stay connected to others. In the present study, we examine the role of social interactions for older adults' daily well-being focusing on three interaction modalities (face-to-face, telephone, and digital). We use data from 116 participants (age: M = 72 years, SD = 5, range = 65 to 94; 41% women), who reported on their social interactions and well-being over 21 days. Our findings show that frequency of face-to-face interactions is more consistently related to well-being than telephone or digital interactions. On days where participants report more face-to-face social interactions than their own average, they report higher positive affect and lower loneliness than usual. Similar effects are not found for telephone or digital interactions. In summary, our findings suggest that face-to-face social interactions are uniquely relevant to older adults' daily well-being. We discuss implications of these findings for future research.

DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS, LEISURE ACTIVITY ENGAGEMENT, AND GLOBAL COGNITION IN NON-HISPANIC WHITE AND BLACK OLDER ADULTS Neika Sharifian, A. Zarina Kraal, and Laura Zahodne, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Prior research has linked more depressive symptoms to worse global cognition in older adulthood through lower leisure activity engagement. Less is known regarding which types of activities drive these associations. Additionally, depressive symptoms disproportionately affect cognition in Non-Hispanic Blacks (NHB) versus Non-Hispanic Whites (NHW). This cross-sectional study used data from the Michigan Cognitive Aging Project (n=453, 52% NHB, Mage=63.60 years) to examine whether distinct leisure activities (solitary-cognitive, solitary-creative, community-social, physical, intergenerational-social, cognitive-games) mediated the association between depressive symptoms and global cognition and whether race moderated these associations. Lower engagement in solitary-cognitive activities partially mediated the negative association between depressive symptoms and global cognition. In multi-group models, this indirect effect was only evident in NHBs, who showed a stronger negative association between depressive symptoms and activity engagement than NHWs. While cross-sectional, findings indicate that depressive symptoms may negatively impact cognition by reducing engagement in activities that promote cognitive reserve.

NOVEL GENETIC AND COGNITIVE FINDINGS FROM THE LONG LIFE FAMILY STUDY
Chair: Mary Wojczynski Co-Chair: Nancy W. Glynn Co-Chair: Evan Hadley The Long Life Family Study (LLFS), funded by the National Institute on Aging, is an international collaborative Innovation in Aging, 2021, Vol. 5, No. S1