3 results
four - Financial elder abuse
- Edited by Alan Walker, The University of Sheffield
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- Book:
- The New Dynamics of Ageing Volume 2
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 13 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 25 July 2018, pp 51-70
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Summary
Introduction
A true story
The topic of financial elder abuse is rather closer to home than I might have wished. During this research project, my 94-year-old mother, and then subsequently my 95-year-old stepfather, fell for a financial scam. The scam consisted of a letter arriving in the post telling my mother that she had won US$800,000 in the Publishers Clearing House (PCH) sweepstakes. All that mother had to do was pay the taxes of US$800 and a cheque would be sent for the US$800,000. This is, of course, where mother should have become suspicious. However, PCH does run a sweepstake prize, and the letter certainly looked legitimate, containing the logo of PCH. All that mother had to do was go to Western Union and telegraph the tax money; this, she did, even though my stepfather by then was suspicious and warned against this action. Needless to say, the winnings never arrived.
My sister and I probably never would have found out about this, as clearly my mother felt humiliated for falling for this scam, but for the fact that they were then inundated with telephone calls and further letters saying that they had won money. Not knowing how to stop the calls and the mail, mother eventually revealed what had happened to my sister. My sister and I were both horrified and felt guilty. We felt guilty because we had never thought to warn about scams of this nature. One of the reasons for not discussing this with them was because they did not have a computer, and both of us were unaware of the number of very sophisticated scams that are sent through the post.
As if this was not bad enough, our stepfather then fell for the follow-up scam. He received a letter from a ‘company’ indicating that they understood that mother had been scammed and they were now receiving nuisance telephone calls and letters, and that for a fee of US$300 the company would intervene and stop the calls and letters. He paid the fee. Luckily my sister found out about this in time to stop the payment. However, he then received nasty letters threatening legal action if he did not make the payment.
six - Participation and social connectivity
- Edited by Alan Walker, The University of Sheffield
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- Book:
- The New Science of Ageing
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 04 March 2022
- Print publication:
- 29 August 2014, pp 181-208
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Extending participation and social connectivity is now widely accepted as central to adding life to years as well as healthy years to life, while participation in the life of the community is seen as critical to well-being (Sen, 1992, p 39), and capable of addressing older people's rights, extending inclusion, reducing exclusion, easing demand on national budgets and building social cohesion. The central conundrums of increasing participation and social connectivity are, first, the intermeshing of personal, local, meso and macro level factors in shaping participation and social connectivity, and second, how the drive towards increased participation can be included in framing policy in such a way that participation is individually meaningful, social connectivity is enhanced and benefits flow to participants and to society in general. Underlying the application of the concepts of participation and social connectivity to older people is the idea that old age places people outside the mainstream: that older people's participation and social connectivity is wanting in scale or scope, that they do want or should want to participate more and that it is chiefly the impediment of old age that constrains their participation. Categorised as outside the mainstream, older people become defined by their age rather than those other salient aspects of their social identity, class, sexuality, ethnicity, education, histories and personal outlook that policy makers and implementers find difficult to respond to in relation to older people. This chapter examines older people's experiences of participation and social connectivity across a range of geographical and social locations within the UK and within low and middle-income countries, in order to test conceptualisations of older people's participation and social connectivity against experience, and to begin to trace the individual, local, meso and macro factors and linkages that need to be addressed to extend meaningful participation and engagement for people who happen to be older.
3 - Working Memory and Reasoning
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- By Kenneth J. Gilhooly, Brunel University
- Edited by Jacqueline P. Leighton, University of Alberta, Robert J. Sternberg, Yale University, Connecticut
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- Book:
- The Nature of Reasoning
- Published online:
- 05 July 2011
- Print publication:
- 03 November 2003, pp 49-77
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Summary
Memory and reasoning serve complementary functions. Memory serves to maintain access to previously acquired information (including information recently generated in the course of a task) while reasoning seeks to derive new information from old. The present chapter will be focusing particularly on the interrelations between working memory and reasoning. The role of working memory in reasoning was a key concern of the first papers setting out the highly influential Baddeley-Hitch working memory model (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Hitch & Baddeley, 1976) and this concern continues. Clearly, reasoning processes must draw on concepts and rules retrieved from long-term memory, but it would seem to be generally agreed that explicit reasoning acts on the transient contents of working memory. Such a view has been common to otherwise opposed perspectives on reasoning, such as mental model and mental rule approaches. First, I will outline initial definitions of working memory and of reasoning and then review the main empirical studies. Finally, I will draw some interim conclusions and indicate directions for future research in this area.
WORKING MEMORY
A recent definition of working memory is as follows: “Working memory is those mechanisms or processes that are involved in the control, regulation, and active maintenance of task-relevant information in the service of complex cognition” (Miyake & Shah, 1999, p. 450). Although there would be general agreement that the human information processing system does indeed control, regulate, and actively maintain task-relevant information, the nature of the underlying mechanisms is subject to considerable debate (Andrade, 2001; Miyake & Shah, 1999).