Families, Networks and Communities

A long-standing notion in lifespan psychological research is that the course of human development throughout life is substantially influenced by contextual factors. One prime example for such notions is that spousal development is interdependent in many central life domains including cognitive functioning and well-being. In a recent study, Hoppmann, Gerstorf, & Luszcz (in press) used 11-year longitudinal data on 565 couples from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging (http://www.cas.flinders.edu.au/alsa.html) to examine dyadic interdependencies of spousal social activity trajectories. Social activity trajectories were interrelated in elderly couples and depended not only on individual, but also on spousal cognitive, physical, and affective resources at baseline. Most associations examined were similar in husbands and wives. However, wives performed more social activities and displayed different depression-social activity associations than husbands. Stronger within-couple associations were found in the domain of social activities than for cognition. Our findings illustrate the important role of social relationships for late life development and suggest that the mechanisms involved in dyadic interdependencies may be domain- and gender-specific.

Hoppmann, C. A., Gerstorf, D., & Luszcz, M. (in press). On the interplay between spousal social activity trajectories in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Aging in the context of cognitive, physical, and emotional resources. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences .