Cognitive resources, valence, and memory retrieval of emotional events in older adults.

Abstract

In 2 studies with older adults, the authors investigated the effect of executive attention resources on the retrieval of emotional public events. Participants completed a battery of working memory tasks, as a measure of executive attention, and a battery of tasks assessing memory, as well as subjective experiences associated with the retrieval of remote public events. Participants also rated the valence of each public event story. The group-rated valence of the public event stories predicted retrieval and the quality of experiences associated with them, such that emotionally arousing events elicited the highest memory rates and the richest experiences. Furthermore, positive public events elicited the highest memory rates. Executive attention moderated only the relationship between event valence and how participants' associated memories are experienced at retrieval, such that superior executive attention resources predicted richer experiences associated with positive relative to neutral and negative stories. The current results extend previous findings on the effects of aging on emotion regulation, suggesting that cognitive control resources modulate subjective experiences associated with retrieved memories for remote real life events, but not memory retrieval itself.

Emotional memory enhancement in respect of positive visual stimuli in Alzheimer's disease emerges after rich and deep encoding

“…It has also been observed after different types of encoding: incidental (Kensinger et al, 2005;Mather & Knight, 2005;Thomas, 2006;Yang & Ornstein, 2011) and intentional (Kensinger et al, 2005), and in different types of retrieval task: free recall (Mather & Knight, 2005;Yang & Ornstein, 2011) and recognition (Kensinger, 2008;Kensinger et al, 2005). In addition, EEM was found for different types of stimuli: pictures (Kensinger et al, 2005;Waring & Kensinger, 2009;Yang & Ornstein, 2011), words (Kensinger, 2008;Thomas, 2006), human faces (Denburg et al, 2003; and public events (Kensinger, 2006;Petrican, Moscovitch, & Schimmack, 2008).…”

Food for happy thought: Glucose protects age-related positivity effects under cognitive load.

“…If PEs do indeed depend on cognitive control (a finding challenged by some studies; see Allard & Isaacowitz, 2008;Petrican, Moscovitch, & Schimmack, 2008), then this poses constraints on the circumstances under which the phenomenon emerges. Increasing cognitive load by introducing a cognitively demanding secondary task during encoding of emotional words (Mather & Knight, 2005) or during a visual attention task with emotional material (Knight et al, 2007) attenuates or even reverses PEs (i.e., negativity bias).…”

A positivity effect in autobiographical memory, but not phonemic fluency, in older adults

“…Support for this account comes from two sets of behavioural studies. First, studies on the effect of individual differences in executive functions as measured by neuropsychological tasks, on performance in episodic memory or sustained attention tasks, have shown that older adults who perform better on the executive function tasks are also more likely to show positivity effects in the memory and attention tasks (e.g., Isaacowitz et al, 2009;Mather & Knight, 2005;Petrican, Moscovitch, & Schimmack, 2008). Second, positivity effects found when tasks are performed under full attention conditions are nullified or even reversed when performed under divided attention (Knight et al, 2007;Mather & Knight, 2005), suggesting control processes, or attentional resources, disrupted under divided attention are required for the effect to emerge in older adults.…”