No Effects of Acute Psychosocial Stress on Working Memory in Older People With Type 2 Diabetes

Abstract

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) has been considered a public health threat due to its growing prevalence, particularly in the older population. It is important to know the effects of psychosocial stress and its potential consequences for some basic cognitive processes that are important in daily life. Currently, there is very little information about how people with T2D face acute psychosocial stressors, and even less about how their response affects working memory (WM), which is essential for their functionality and independence. Our aim was to characterize the response to an acute laboratory psychosocial stressor and its effects on WM in older people with T2D. Fifty participants with T2D from 52 to 77 years old were randomly assigned to a stress (12 men and 12 women) or control (12 men and 14 women) condition. Mood and physiological (cortisol, C, and salivary alpha-amylase, sAA) responses to tasks were measured. In addition, participants completed a WM test before and after the stress or control task. Our results showed that the TSST elicited higher negative affect and greater C and sAA responses than the control task. No significant differences in WM were observed depending on the exposure to stress or the control task. Finally, participants who showed higher C and sAA responses to the stressor had lower WM performance. Our results indicate that medically treated older adults with T2D show clear, typical mood and physiological responses to an acute psychosocial stressor. Finally, the lack of acute psychosocial stress effects on WM suggests that it could be related to aging and not to this disease, at least when T2D is adequately treated.

Design guidelines for limiting and eliminating virtual reality-induced symptoms and effects at work: a comprehensive, factor-oriented review

“…Create the most accurate feedback on the avatar's posture and gesture (Bourdin et (Hidalgo et al, 2019), although this doesn't reveal at the meta-analytic level (Shields et al, 2017). Similarly, older people seem less impacted by acute psychosocial stress (Vallejo et al, 2021) Stressful work is linked to slightly more sickness absence among older workers (Götz et al, 2018) Older workers or those with longer professional have greater difficulties with the increase of technological complexity for executing tasks (techno-complexity) (Marchiori et al, 2019) Consider that younger workers could be more sensitive to induced stressors in VR working tasks (Hsu, 2019). Consider attributing fewer complex tasks or less socially stressful tasks to younger workers Older workers could be more susceptible to techno-stress (see also S_3 and S_4) (Marchiori et al, 2019).…”