Emotional Working Memory in Ageing and Anxiety

Authors

  • Jasper Hajonides van der Meulen University of Amsterdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25609/sure.v1.1087

Abstract

Altered processing of emotional information in ageing and anxiety can be detrimental for one’s well-being. A total of 97 participants were tested with a novel delayed match to sample task with positive and negative faces of different levels of emotional intensity. Results show less accurate recall of negative stimuli in anxiety while older adults showed a bias to rate negative faces as less negative. The relationship between emotional working memory and anxiety was not influenced by age. Anxiety and ageing both interfere with emotional working memory; interestingly, the results suggest unrelated effects on processing of negative stimuli in working memory.

Author Biography

Jasper Hajonides van der Meulen, University of Amsterdam

Faculty of Science

References

World Health Organisation. World Health

Organisation: Burden of disease DALYs. The Global

Burden of Disease: 2004 Update (2004).

Alonso, J., Angermeyer, M. C. & Bernert, S. E. A.

Prevalence of mental disorders in Europe: results

from the European Study of the Epidemiology of

Mental Disorders (ESEMeD) project. Acta Psychiatr

Scand, Supplementum 109, 21–27 (2004).

Byers, A. L., Yaffe, K., Covinsky, K. E., Friedman,

M. B. & Bruce, M. L. High Occurrence of Mood and

Anxiety Disorders among Older Adults: The

National Comorbidity Survey Replication. 67, 489–

(2011).

Berrera, T. & Norton, P. Quality of Life Impairment

in Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Phobia, and

Panic Disorder. J. Anxiety Disord. 23, 1086 – 1090

(2009).

Brenes, G. et al. Anxiety, Depression, and Disability

Across the Lifespan. Ageing Ment. Heal. 12, 158 –

(2010).

Charles, S. T., Mather, M. & Carstensen, L. L. Aging

and emotional memory: The forgettable nature of

negative images for older adults. J. Exp. Psychol.

Gen. 132, 310–324 (2003).

Mogg, K., Bradley, B. P., Miles, F. & Dixon, R.

Brief report. Time course of attentional bias for

threat scenes: testing the vigilance-avoidance

hypothesis. 37–41 (2004).

Baddeley, A. Working memory. Science 255, 556–

(1992).

Mathews, A. & MacLeod, C. Cognitive vulnerability

to emotional disorders. Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol. 1,

–95 (2005).

Spielberger, C. D., Gorsuch, R. L., Lushene, R.,

Vagg, P. R. & Jacobs, G. A. Manual for the State-

Trait Anxiety Inventory. CA Consult. Psychol. Press.

(1983).

Zhang, W. & Luck, S. J. Discrete fixed-resolution

representations in visual working memory. Nature

, 233–5 (2008).

Zokaei, N., Burnett Heyes, S., Gorgoraptis, N.,

Budhdeo, S. & Husain, M. Working memory recall

precision is a more sensitive index than span. J.

Neuropsychol. 1–11 (2014).

Bar-Haim, Y., Lamy, D., Pergamin, L., Bakermans-

Kranenburg, M. J. & van IJzendoorn, M. H. Threatrelated

attentional bias in anxious and nonanxious

individuals: a meta-analytic study. Psychol. Bull.

, 1–24 (2007).

Wilson, E. & MacLeod, C. Contrasting two accounts

of anxiety-linked attentional bias: selective attention

to varying levels of stimulus threat intensity. J.

Abnorm. Psychol. 112, 212–218 (2003).

Carstensen, L. L. & Mikels, J. a. At the Intersection

of Emotion and Cognition. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci.

, 117–121 (2005).

Mikels, J. a, Larkin, G. R., Reuter-Lorenz, P. a &

Cartensen, L. L. Divergent trajectories in the aging

mind: changes in working memory for affective

versus visual information with age. Psychol. Aging

, 542–553 (2005).

Reed, A. E., Chan, L. & Mikels, J. a. Meta-analysis

of the age-related positivity effect: age differences in

preferences for positive over negative information.

Psychol. Aging 29, 1–15 (2014).

Svärd, J., Fischer, H. & Lundqvist, D. Adult agedifferences

in subjective impression of emotional

faces are reflected in emotion-related attention and

memory tasks. Front. Psychol. 5, 1–12 (2014).

Downloads

Published

2015-11-20

How to Cite

Hajonides van der Meulen, J. (2015). Emotional Working Memory in Ageing and Anxiety. Student Undergraduate Research E-Journal!, 1. https://doi.org/10.25609/sure.v1.1087

Issue

Section

Economics & Social Sciences