Emotion Regulation and Aging: A Neurophysiological Study
Item
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Title
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Emotion Regulation and Aging: A Neurophysiological Study
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:750c52ed5c1c:11537
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identifier
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12038
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Creator
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DeCicco, Jennifer M.,
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Contributor
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Tracy A. Dennis
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Physiological psychology | Developmental psychology | Aging | EEG | Late Positive Potential
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Abstract
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Cognitive emotion regulation (ER) pertains to the ability to change the way we attend to and experience emotional information and events. Older and younger adults, however, differ in the way that they attend to emotional information. Socioemotional Selective Theory (SST) suggests that as we age we become more adept at using cognitive ER strategies to reduce negative emotion because we have less time left in life. As a result of these motivational changes, a branch of SST, the positivity effect, proposes older versus younger adults attend to and remember more pleasant than unpleasant stimuli. Research that systematically examines different types of cognitive ER in controlled (reappraisal) and automatic (directed attention) contexts, using neurophysiological measures, has the potential to clarify the nature of the positivity effect. The present research capitalizes on the excellent temporal resolution of the late positive potential (LPP) which is sensitive to attention to emotion and the use of cognitive ER strategies: increasing emotional responses produces larger LPP amplitudes and decreasing smaller LPP amplitudes. Chapter one served to first evaluate whether cognitive ER impacts memory performance and if the LPP during a cognitive ER task was associated with memory performance in younger adults (N = 49). Subsequent research presented uses the LPP to understand whether younger (n = 49) and older adults (n =28) differ in: a) how they attend to emotional information during a passive viewing task (bottom-up); b) how they use two types of cognitive ER strategies, reappraisal (top-down) and directed attention (intermediary top-down); c) how cognitive ER strategies impact memory performance. Results highlight several important contributions to the cognitive ER and aging literature. First, in the initial study results showed that instructions to increase emotional responses to unpleasant stimuli results in larger LPP amplitudes as compared to viewing or decreasing emotional responses. Memory performance in the increase and view conditions was better than the decrease condition. Additionally, larger LPP amplitudes in the increase and decrease conditions were associated with better memory performance. Second, older adults showed sustained attention to emotional stimuli; however younger and older adults did not show preferential attention to unpleasant and pleasant stimuli (respectively). Third, younger and older adults did not differ in their ability to use reappraisal as measured via the LPP, but did show differences in LPP amplitudes on the directed attention task to unpleasant stimuli. Younger, but not older adults showed larger LPP amplitudes to unpleasant stimuli presented with an arousing versus non-arousing focus. Fourth, age differences in memory performance did not emerge; however stimuli presented with an arousing focus were remembered more than those with a non-arousing focus. Fifth, only larger LPP amplitudes to unpleasant stimuli in the decrease condition (relative to a neutral maintain) were associated with better memory performance for younger and older adults. Taken together results suggest that older versus younger adults may sustain processing of emotional stimuli and that age differences in cognitive ER may lie within bottom-up cognitive ER tasks as opposed to reappraisal. Results hold promise that the LPP may be a useful tool for examining other types of cognitive ER strategies in younger and older adults.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
