How do men and women's family life courses differ? Are gender differences in family life courses greater at higher or lower educational levels? And how does the intersection of gender, education and family life courses vary across different macro-structural contexts? This paper addresses these questions comparing East and West Germany during the German division (1961–1990). We thereby compare a strong male breadwinner model in a social market economy in West Germany and a universal breadwinner model in a state socialist system in the East. The analysis uses data from the German National Education Panel (NEPS) and employs two new sequence analysis tools: sequence discrepancy analysis and the implicative statistic for analyzing sequences of typical states. These tools enable us to scrutinize the degree, content, and timing of differences in family trajectories between men and women of different educational levels in the two sub-societies. In line with our expectations, family life courses were more de-standardized in the West compared to the East, and this occurred to the same extent for men and women in both contexts. While we find moderate gender differences in family life courses across all educational groups in the strong male breadwinner context in West Germany, for East Germany gender differences were significant among the medium and lower educated, but not among the highly educated. These findings underline the fact that the intersection of gender and education for family life courses is highly context-specific. They further suggest that different patterns of assortative mating play a key role for gender differences in family life courses. We demonstrate the added value of sequence discrepancy analysis and the implicative statistic to illuminate differences in longitudinal life courses between men and women or other social groups.

Introduction: Findings on the association of speaking different languages with cognitive functioning in old age are inconsistent and inconclusive so far. Therefore, the present study set out to investigate the relation of the number of languages spoken to cognitive performance and its interplay with several other markers of cognitive reserve in a large sample of older adults. Methods: Two thousand eight hundred and twelve older adults served as sample for the present study. Psychometric tests on verbal abilities, basic processing speed, and cognitive flexibility were administered. In addition, individuals were interviewed on their different languages spoken on a regular basis, educational attainment, occupation, and engaging in different activities throughout adulthood. Results: Higher number of languages regularly spoken was significantly associated with better performance in verbal abilities and processing speed, but unrelated to cognitive flexibility. Regression analyses showed that the number of languages spoken predicted cognitive performance over and above leisure activities/physical demand of job/gainful activity as respective additional predictor, but not over and above educational attainment/cognitive level of job as respective additional predictor. There was no significant moderation of the association of the number of languages spoken with cognitive performance in any model. Conclusions: Present data suggest that speaking different languages on a regular basis may additionally contribute to the built-up of cognitive reserve in old age. Yet, this may not be universal, but linked to verbal abilities and basic cognitive processing speed. Moreover, it may be dependent on other types of cognitive stimulation individuals also engaged in during their life course.

OBJECTIVE: Empirical evidence on prospective memory (PM) in ADHD is inconsistent. Differential findings have been related to differential executive control demands. This study aimed at exploring the impact of inhibitory control on event-based PM performance in ADHD. METHOD: Eighteen adults with ADHD and 18 controls performed a word categorization task with an embedded event-based PM task. In addition, participants performed an acoustically presented task that put either low or high loads on inhibitory control processes. RESULTS: Inhibitory load did not differentially affect PM performance: Across both inhibitory load conditions, individuals with ADHD showed reduced PM performance when compared with controls. Moreover, inhibitory load did not influence PM performance across both groups. CONCLUSION: Possibly, full inhibitory control resources are not necessary during the entire duration of an event-based PM task, but may suffice to be employed after cue detection when needing to interrupt the ongoing task. (J. of Att. Dis. 2019; 23(1) 51-56).

Objective impact of working memory (WM) training on everyday life functioning has rarely been examined and it is not clear whether WM training gains are transferred to reasoning abilities. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of a verbal WM training in older adults in terms of specific gains and transfer effects to everyday life and reasoning abilities. community dwelling older adults (from 65 to 75 years of age) were randomly assigned to a training or an active control group. The specific gains in a WM task similar to the one trained were assessed. Transfer effects to everyday life and reasoning abilities were also examined using (i) objective performance-based tasks (the Everyday Problem Test and the Timed Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale) and (ii) the Cattell test and Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices respectively. the trained group showed specific benefits and transfer effects to one of the everyday abilities measures (the Everyday Problem Test) and in the two reasoning tasks. These results suggest that WM training can positively impact cognitive functioning and more importantly older adults' abilities in everyday living.

The present study targeted the question of whether focal versus nonfocal prospective memory (PM) can be distinguished on a construct level and if so to what extent individual differences in these two constructs are related to individual differences in facets of controlled attention and episodic memory. 315 individuals (aged 20–68 years) were administered focal and nonfocal PM tasks as well as indicators measuring updating inhibition shifting and episodic memory. Latent variable modeling revealed that focal and nonfocal PM were two distinguishable but related constructs. Furthermore analyses showed that focal PM was more strongly related to inhibition while nonfocal PM was more strongly related to shifting. Present data support the conceptual hypothesis that focal and nonfocal PM should be conceptualized as two distinguishable but related constructs. Moreover they suggest that both have some but distinct associations to controlled attention.