OBJECTIVES: To describe bruising as a marker of physical elder abuse. DESIGN: Consenting older adults were examined to document location and size of bruises and assess whether they were inflicted during physical abuse. An expert panel confirmed physical abuse. Findings were compared with results of an earlier study of accidental bruising in older adults. SETTING: Residences of participants. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty‐seven adults aged 65 and older reported to Adult Protective Services (APS) for suspected physical elder abuse. MEASUREMENTS: Age, sex, ethnicity, race, functional status, medical conditions, cognitive status, history of falls, bruise size and location, recall of cause, and responses to Revised Conflicts Tactics Scale and Elder Abuse Inventory. RESULTS: Seventy‐two percent (n=48) of older adults who had been physically abused within 30 days before examination had bruises. The physically abused older adults had significantly larger bruises; more of them knew the cause of their bruises (43 (89.6%) vs 16 (23.5%) of the comparison group); and they were significantly more likely to have bruises on the face, lateral aspect of the right arm and the posterior torso (including back, chest, lumbar, and gluteal regions) than older adults from an earlier study who had not been abused (n=68). CONCLUSION: Bruises that occur as a result of physical elder mistreatment are often large (>5 cm) and on the face, lateral right arm, or posterior torso. Older adults with bruises should be asked about the cause of the bruises to help ascertain whether physical abuse occurred.

Prior studies indicate that, in tests of recognition memory, ERPs elicited by correctly recognized test items differ according to whether the items were encoded in an emotionally arousing or an emotionally neutral study context. These prior studies employed only a relatively brief (ca. 10 min) retention interval, however. The present study contrasted the ERP correlates of incidental emotional retrieval as a function of study-test delay. Pictures of emotionally neutral objects were encoded in association with either emotionally negative or emotionally neutral scenes. In a repeated measures design (N=19), half of the objects were subjected to a recognition memory test 10 min after completion of the study phase, whereas the remainder were tested 24 hrs later. After the short delay, ERPs elicited by objects paired with emotional vs. neutral backgrounds differed from around 200 ms post-stimulus, the objects paired with the emotional scenes eliciting the more positive-going waveforms. After 24 hrs, differences between the ERPs elicited by the two classes of object were still apparent from around 200 ms post-stimulus. Strikingly, these effects differed from those obtained 10 min after study in both their polarity and scalp distribution. The early onset of these ERP effects suggests that they may reflect a form of memory independent of the conscious recollection of the associated study contexts. The qualitative differences in the effects at the two retention intervals raises the possibility that the encoded objects were subjected to consolidation processes that differed according to the emotional attributes of their study contexts.

Objective Global precedence (GP) is an individual’s ability to readily identify global (gestalt) features when both global and local (internal) details are presented. Prior research shows that both age and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, affect GP. The goal of the current study is to examine differences in GP between individuals with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD; before age 65) and healthy controls (HC). Method Fourteen EOAD patients and 6 HC’s recruited from Behavioral Neurology at an academic medical center were included in the current analysis. EOAD participants were diagnosed by clinical history, routine labs, neuroimaging, and neurological examination. Exclusion criteria included unstable medical conditions and history of severe head injury, psychotic disorder, or psychoactive substance use. All participants completed a Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE) to assess overall cognitive functioning and a 4-item Navon's paradigm task (consisting of a larger letter whose shape is composed of smaller repeats of a different letter) to assess for GP. Results Linear regression analysis was performed, with the total score on Navon task as the dependent variable and age, MMSE score, and study group as predictor variables. Analysis yielded significant findings, suggesting a difference in GP performance between the two groups. However, coefficients suggested that while age did not contribute to the between-group difference, MMSE scores significantly accounted for our findings. In fact, when effects of MMSE scores were controlled, the between-group difference was no longer significant. Conclusion Findings suggest that individuals with EOAD perform worse on tasks of GP, which may be secondary to overall cognitive decline.