Table 1.
Inclusion criteria for SuperAgers and cognitively average elderly adults.
Table 2.
Ryff & Keyes psychological well-being 42-item questionnaire subscale descriptions[22, 23].
Examples of positively worded and negatively worded items are provided.
Table 3.
Demographic & neuropsychological characteristics of the sample.
There were no significant between-group differences in age, education, gender, or race. SuperAgers outperformed their cognitively average-for-age peers on measures of episodic memory and category fluency. There were no other significant between-group differences on neuropsychological measures, including estimated premorbid intelligence.
Fig 1.
Psychological well-being in SuperAgers and cognitively average-for-age elderly adults.
Boxplots for Psychological Well-Being 42-Item (PWB-42) subscale scores are shown (medians, interquartile range, and upper/lower quartile ranges). SuperAgers endorsed significantly greater levels of positive relations with others compared to their cognitively average peers (Median SuperAger: 40, Cognitively Average Elderly: 36; p = 0.005). The groups did not differ on other subscales of the PWB-42 (p’s>0.0083) including Autonomy (Median SuperAger: 34, Cognitively Average Elderly: 34), Environmental Mastery (Median SuperAger: 40.5, Cognitively Average Elderly: 37), Personal Growth (Median SuperAger: 36, Cognitively Average Elderly: 37), Purpose in Life (Median SuperAger: 37.5, Cognitively Average Elderly: 37), or Self-Acceptance (Median SuperAger: 38, Cognitively Average Elderly: 37).