Decisions large and small play a fundamental role in shaping life course trajectories of health and well-being: decisions draw upon an individual's capacity for self-regulation and self-control, their ability to keep long-term goals in mind, and their willingness to place appropriate value on their future well-being. Aging and Decision Making addresses the specific cognitive and affective processes that account for age-related changes in decision making, targeting interventions to compensate for vulnerabilities and leverage strengths in the aging individual. This book focuses on four dominant approaches that characterize the current state of decision-making science and aging - neuroscience, behavioral mechanisms, competence models, and applied perspectives. Underscoring that choice is a ubiquitous component of everyday functioning, Aging and Decision Making examines the implications of how we invest our limited social, temporal, psychological, financial, and physical resources, and lays essential groundwork for the design of decision supportive interventions for adaptive aging that take into account individual capacities and context variables.

Most of the research done in social cognition has been conducted with younger adults and may not be applicable to a much older population. Social Cognition and Aging provides a snapshot view of research that has been done with older adults or is directly applicable to this population. Focusing on issues of self identity, social interactions, and social perceptions, this book provides a broad overview of how aging affects one's own perceptions and actions as well as how others perceive and interact with the aged. Coverage includes such topics as self-control, memory, resilience, age stereotypes, moral development, and the "art" of living. With contributions from top researchers in both gerontology and psychology, this book is an important reference for academics and professionals alike in personality, cognition, social psychology, adult development, sociology, and gerontology.

This volume introduces the oral literature of Native American peoples in Puget Salish-speaking areas of western Washington. Seven stories told by Lushootseed elders are transcribed and translated into English, accompanied by information on narrative design and cultural background. Upper Skagit elder and cotranslator Vi Hilbert, a 1994 recipient of the NEH National Heritage Fellowship in Folk Arts, includes a cultural welcome and offers childhood reminiscences of the storytellers. Cotranslator Thomas M. Hess, associate professor of linguistics at the University of Victoria, parses the beginning lines of a text to show the grammatical structures; he also includes his recollections of working with the storytellers in the 1960s as a graduate student. Editor and cotranslator Crisca Bierwert, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, provides information on the processes of language translation and of rendering oral traditions into written form. Annotator T. C. S. Langen, who holds a Ph.D. in English literature and is a curriculum developer for the Tulalip tribe, provides analyses of Lushootseed poetics. The book includes information about purchasing audiotapes of the stories.