Abstract
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.
Highlights
There is no doubt that in late life, older adults have to cope with physical, mental, and social stressors with an increasing frailty, which threaten their quality of life [1]
This is the case for health effects of positivity in old adults where academic evidence suggests that positive emotional experience is a relevant predictor of survival in late stages of life [5]
There is evidence suggesting that young adults process negative information more thoroughly than positive information in impression formation, memory, and decision-making [18]
Summary
There is no doubt that in late life, older adults have to cope with physical (health problems), mental (decrease of cognitive capacities or cognitive deficits due to illness), and social stressors (abandonment or family loses) with an increasing frailty, which threaten their quality of life [1].Models of successful aging [2] suggest that in order to cope with late life stressors, older adults proactivelyHow to cite this paper: Hernández-Cortés, P.L., Octavio, L.R.E., Martínes, G.E.M. and Salazar-González, B.C. (2014) Automatic Information Processing Bias to Stress Factors by Older Adults with and without Diabetes. Proactivity models of successful aging describe how older people choose behavioral adaptations to cope with stressors of illness, frailty and social loses [3] [4]. In terms of psychological well-being, enhancement of emotional experience seems to be an available mental resource that people use in late life to proactively adapt to mental or/and physical decline. This is the case for health effects of positivity in old adults where academic evidence suggests that positive emotional experience is a relevant predictor of survival in late stages of life [5]. If the cognitive memory task requires to deal with visual emotional content, both groups show the same level of performance over negative information and older adults exhibit superior working memory performance to process positive information compared to negative emotional stimuli [7]
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