A sample of 76 older adults (27 with diabetes and 49 without diabetes) were selected to judge three information factors, metamemory related to-drug organization-stress and physical activity in relation to their perception of self-care. In order to do so, an Integration Information Theory was considered to determine systematic cognitive algebra rules underlying judgment about 24 different health self-care scenarios. Results indicate that older adults without diabetes use a summative cognitive rule to integrate relevant health information but older adults with diabetes do not. Both groups agreed that metamemory was the most relevant factor to their self-care followed by stress and physical activity. However, valuation of these factors does depend on the type of group. Implications of these results to healthcare a behavioral nursing intervention are discussed in this paper.

A sample of 65 older adults (with and without diabetes) as well as a sample of 84 healthy young people were required to take affective priming studies to compare recognition latencies of stress related word pairs against recognition latencies of positive, negative and neutral word pairs. Moreover, older adults took a stress questionnaire related to relevant disturbing events in the third age. The goal was to test any automatic emotional processing bias to these events. Results suggested that even when people with diabetes obtained low stress test scores, they showed automatic cognitive bias to process stressful events differently than older adults without diabetes and young people. This suggested that people with diabetes patients' controlled strategies to cope with stress might not be aware of such an automatic cognitive bias. It is argued that this information processing style to stressful events makes patients prone to cognitive emotional vulnerability.