The subjects were in good health, but aging had left its mark. “This was before 75 was the new 55,” says Langer, who is 67 and the longest-serving professor of psychology at Harvard. Before arriving, the men were assessed on such measures as dexterity, grip strength, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory and cognition — probably the closest things the gerontologists of the time could come to the testable biomarkers of age. Langer predicted the numbers would be quite different after five days, when the subjects emerged from what was to be a fairly intense psychological intervention.
虽然受试者们的健康状况都相当不错,但衰老已经在他们身上留下了痕迹。“那时还没有‘75岁是新的55岁’这样的概念,”兰格说,如今67岁的她是哈佛大学任职时间最长的心理学教授。这些老人在抵达实验地点之前接受了一系列检查,如灵巧性、握力、柔韧性、听觉和视觉、记忆力和认知功能——当年,这些很可能是老年学家掌握的最接近年龄测试生物标志物的指标。兰格预测,五天之后,当受试者们结束大强度心理干预的时候,这些指标都将大为改观。
Langer had already undertaken a couple of studies involving elderly patients. In one, she found that nursing-home residents who had exhibited early stages of memory loss were able to do better on memory tests when they were given incentives to remember — showing that in many cases, indifference was being mistaken for brain deterioration. In another, now considered a classic of social psychology, Langer gave houseplants to two groups of nursing-home residents. She told one group that they were responsible for keeping the plant alive and that they could also make choices about their schedules during the day. She told the other group that the staff would care for the plants, and they were not given any choice in their schedules. Eighteen months later, twice as many subjects in the plant-caring, decision-making group were still alive than in the control group.
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