The assessment of age differences in the linkages among affect, personality, and cognitive performance is an important research focus for students of adult development and aging. Building a better understanding of the interrelationships among these subsystems will strengthen theories of aging and adaptation. The proposed research will take advantage of recent advances in tools for measuring and modeling affective, personality, and cognitive processes and will test a set of hypothesized relationships among these subsystems. The following questions are posed: (1) What are they dynamics of personality and cognitive changes under varying conditions of task-induced positive and negative affect? (2) What is the nature of the linkage between personality and cognitive systems under task-induced positive and negative affect? (3) Do personality traits exhibit systematic, short-term changes under varying levels of positive and negative affect or are they truly highly stable aspects of personality? (4) Do personality traits play a role in the relationships between positive and negative affect and cognitive performance? (5) What is the nature of age differences in these change patterns and in the patterning of their relationships with each other? Data to examine a specific set of hypotheses concerning the interrelationships among affect, personality, and cognitive performance will come from a computer-driven series of synthetic work tasks (SYNWORK) interspersed with self-assessment of affect and personality. Both older and younger adults will be studied. The data will be modeled using both traditional methods and newer, linear dynamic models that provide estimates of relationships both within and between subsystems of variables defined across temporal lags.
