Older adults (n = 113) participated in focus groups discussing their use of and attitudes about technology in the context of their home, work, and healthcare. Participants reported using a wide variety of technology items, particularly in their homes. Positive attitudes (i.e., likes) outnumbered negative attitudes (i.e., dislikes), suggesting that older adults perceive the benefits of technology use to outweigh the costs of such use. Positive attitudes were most frequently related to how the technology supported activities, enhanced convenience, and contained useful features. Negative attitudes were most frequently associated with technology creating inconveniences, unhelpful features, as well as security and reliability concerns. Given that older adults reported more positive than negative attitudes about the technologies they use, these results contradict stereotypes that older adults are afraid or unwilling to use technology. These findings also highlight the importance of perceived benefits of use and ease of use for models of technology acceptance. Emphasizing the benefits of technology in education and training programs may increase future technology adoption.

a b s t r a c tCan simple motor actions affect how efficiently people retrieve emotional memories, and influence what they choose to remember? In Experiment 1, participants were prompted to retell autobiographical memories with either positive or negative valence, while moving marbles either upward or downward. They retrieved memories faster when the direction of movement was congruent with the valence of the memory (upward for positive, downward for negative memories). Given neutral-valence prompts in Experiment 2, participants retrieved more positive memories when instructed to move marbles up, and more negative memories when instructed to move them down, demonstrating a causal link from motion to emotion. Results suggest that positive and negative life experiences are implicitly associated with schematic representations of upward and downward motion, consistent with theories of metaphorical mental representation. Beyond influencing the efficiency of memory retrieval, the direction of irrelevant, repetitive motor actions can also partly determine the emotional content of the memories people retrieve: moving marbles upward (an ostensibly meaningless action) can cause people to think more positive thoughts.

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