Emotional, Psychological, and Cognitive Changes Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: Is There an Advantage of Being an Older Adult?

Abstract

Introduction: The study examined age-related differences between young and older adults’ emotional and psychological experience as well as cognitive functioning throughout different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.Materials and Methods: Participants were interviewed by phone when confined at home during the national lockdown (T1-May 2020; N = 138 young adults; N = 119 older adults) and after the first wave of contagions, when restrictions were discarded (T2-September 2020; N = 52 young adults; N = 59 older adults). A sub-sample also participated in a third assessment (T3-December 2020). Participants completed questionnaires assessing their emotional and psychological functioning (i.e., positive and negative affect, perceived social and emotional loneliness, resilience) along with memory tasks (Backward Digit Span task and words list recall).Results: Although individuals reported less positive and more negative emotions during the lockdown than at T2, results showed that older adults displayed overall fewer negative emotions and greater resilience than young adults. The latter were those who reported feeling more emotionally lonely when compared to their older counterpart during the lockdown than afterward. Older adults’ advantage in emotional and psychological functioning was also confirmed 7 months after the national lockdown. Only age-related differences in favor of young adults for the memory tasks were found. The measures of interest were also susceptible to mood and/or concerns of COVID-19 effects.Discussion: These findings further highlight the age-related advantage of older adults managing the emotional and psychological experience even when facing an unexpected, prolonged, and unpredictable, stressful life event such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The longitudinal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health behaviors, psychosocial factors, and cognitive functioning in older adults

“…Overall, both subjective and objective cognitive functioning remained largely stable or slightly improved across this sample of healthy older adults in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This pattern aligns with the few previous studies demonstrating stability in subjective cognitive complaints, general cognition, and working memory performance in older adults during the pandemic (Amanzio et al, 2021;Carbone et al, 2021;De Pue et al, 2021). Furthermore, aside from potential practice effects, the slight improvements in cognitive functioning may reflect benefits from socialization received through study visits and research staff interaction.…”

“…Longitudinal studies also did not indicate a change in objective cognitive performance on general cognition screeners compared to a pre-pandemic baseline (Amanzio et al, 2021). Further, throughout the early months of the pandemic, older adults' performance remained stable on a working memory task but improved on a word recall task; however, the latter was no longer significant after the inclusion of mood measures in the model (Carbone et al, 2021). Overall, few studies have assessed longitudinal changes in objective measures of cognitive functioning in older adults both throughout the pandemic and compared to baseline functioning.…”

“…Notably, there may be age-related differences in the pandemic's impact on psychological functioning. Compared to younger adults, older adults have reported greater emotional well-being and higher resilience during the pandemic (Carstensen et al, 2020;Carbone et al, 2021;Ceccato et al, 2021). This identified pattern and the current findings seem to align with the socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen et al, 2003), which posits that older adults experience motivational shifts towards achieving emotional meaning and psychological well-being, as future time is perceived as constrained.…”

“…The current study aims to fill the gaps in the literature by analyzing changes in health behaviors, psychosocial factors, and cognitive functioning in a sample of older adults using a pre-pandemic baseline and longitudinal follow-up throughout 9 months of the pandemic (dates ranging from April 2020 to August 2021). Compared to a pre-pandemic baseline, we hypothesized that our sample of healthy older adults will experience negative changes in health behaviors (Suzuki et al, 2020;Niedzwiedz et al, 2021) and psychosocial factors (Shan Wong et al, 2020;Krendl and Perry, 2021), but stable cognitive functioning during the pandemic (Amanzio et al, 2021;Carbone et al, 2021). Throughout 9 months of the pandemic, we hypothesized that our sample will experience improvements in health behaviors and psychosocial factors reflecting an overall adjustment to the times and continued stable cognitive functioning.…”

Predictive Factors of Anxiety, Depression, and Health-Related Quality of Life in Community-Dwelling and Institutionalized Elderly during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Some studies, on the contrary, showed lower levels of anxiety and depression, and they motivated this result with a possible higher resilience and coping mechanisms in older people in comparison to the younger population or with a greater acceptance of death with maturity developed by age [ 24 , 25 ]. Moreover, when one considers resilience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a few studies have shown that older people seem to better manage their emotional and psychological consequences [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 ].…”