B o o k s h e l f

Australasian Journal on Ageing, Vol 27 No 2 June 2008, 106–108

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© 2008 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2008 ACOTA

improve the quality of life for older adults and to assist peoplewith chronic health conditions. Experimental developmentsaim to make the home a more secure place for older people whoare confronted with difficulties in programming appliances orcompleting tasks unassisted. In some residential care facilitieswhere residents use the Internet, this activity is taking the placeof television-watching, and is providing the benefit of greatercontact with information and other people, including familymembers. The difficulty that older people have in programmingvideo recorders is mentioned; not everyone has an obliginggrandchild available.

Because each chapter serves as a literature review, this is not abook to sit and read for pleasure or diagnostic assistance. It isa reference work aimed at researchers, where material relevantto a particular issue can be located and compared with otherresearch in the field. For me and other psychologists, the majoruse of the book would be as a resource on current thought ina series of related and complex fields. Given that my husbandand I are firmly in the age group, which is the focus of the text,I found the book of more than passing interest.

Jean

M

StokesMedi7 Medical Centre, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

The psychology of ageing: An introduction, 4th edition

Ian Stuart-Hamilton. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006, ISBN 13: 978 1 84310 426 1. $A55.95. Available from Footprint Books.

This fourth edition of a book that was last revised in 2000provides a useful and clearly written introductory text on thepsychology of ageing. The book is divided into eight chapterscovering the basic areas that would be expected in a volume ofthis type. These include an introduction to the demographicsof the ageing population, biological ageing, intellectual changein later life, memory, language, personality and mental illness.

I was unable to compare the current volume with the thirdedition, but I did make a comparison with the second edition,which dates from 1994. The structure of the chapters is almostidentical; except that the chapter titled ‘Dementia’ in the earlieredition is replaced by a broader chapter on ‘Mental Illness andAgeing’ in the present edition. As a result of the enormousresearch output in this field in the last few years, this volumeis apparently 50% longer than its predecessor.

The strongest chapters, which occupy around two-thirds of thebook, appear to be those on memory and intellectual changein older adults. The literature reviewed is up-to-date, and thekey controversies are, as far as I am aware, well covered. I feltthat the chapter on mental illness was the least satisfactory,perhaps because this is an area I know relatively well. There aresome frank inaccuracies here: for example, in the openingstatement, based on a reference to a book dating from 1999,that older people are less likely than any other age group toexperience mental illness. This generalisation is by no means

universally accepted. The short section on schizophreniadoes not incorporate current thinking on the classification ofpsychotic disorders in older people, which goes beyond thesimple distinction between early and late onset schizophreniaoutlined here.

The author himself describes the book as a general introduc-tion to the topic, and this is both its strength and weakness.It does not aim to compete with comprehensive, classichandbooks, such as Birren and Schaie’s

Handbook of thepsychology of ageing

, now in its sixth edition (which I wouldnot like to be without), but it does provide an overview ofkey research in the area. Inevitably, in a book of 252 pages(excluding the glossary and references), this breadth is some-what at the expense of depth. However, it is well referenced,and each chapter concludes with useful suggestions for furtherreading.

This book would be useful in teaching psychology studentsboth at the undergraduate and at the postgraduate level.However, it would also be an excellent textbook for studentswith little by way of background in psychology, thanks to thewell-organised glossary at the end of the book that explainsterms that are highlighted in the text. Some of these are merelyexplanations of acronyms, such as ‘CAMDEX’, others givedefinitions of terms such as ‘cerebellum’, while others explainconcepts or theories such as ‘mutation accumulation theory’.Overall, this is a very readable introduction for students froma variety of disciplines, and I will certainly dip into it from timeto time myself.

Christina

BryantUniversity of Melbourne

Reference

1 Birren JE, Schaie KW, eds.

Handbook of the Psychology of Aging

, 6thedn. San Diego, CA: Academic 2006.

Ageing and time: Multidisciplinary perspectives

J. Baars & H. Visser (eds.), Society and Ageing Series, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, 2007. 209 pp. ISBN 13: 978-0-89503-367-3 (hard cover). $A69.99 (available: Angus & Robertson, www.angusrobertson.resultspage.com).

This book, based on a multidisciplinary approach, attempts toprovide a definition of time and how time is related to ageing.The primary European researchers who contributed to thisvolume represent fields ranging from physics to philosophy,biology and psychology, which make this volume interestingand challenging reading.

Beginning with a social science perspective, the article by Baarsraises the question of why gerontology has concentrated, andstill is concentrating, on calendar time and chronological ageas indices of ageing, when other dimensions of time, such aspersonal experiences and narrative articulation, might be more

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