Abstract
Background: Older adults perform better in tasks which include positive stimuli, referred to as the positivity effect. However, recent research suggests that the positivity effect could be attenuated when additional challenges such as stress or cognitive demands are introduced. Moreover, it is well established that older adults are relatively resilient to many of the adverse effects of sleep deprivation. Our aim was to investigate if the positivity effect in older adults is affected by one night of total sleep deprivation using an emotional working memory task.Methods: A healthy sample of 48 older adults (60-72 years) was either sleep deprived for one night (n = 24) or had a normal night’s sleep (n = 24). They performed an emotional working memory n-back (n = 1 and 3) task containing positive, negative and neutral pictures.Results: Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was best for positive stimuli and worst for negative stimuli. This positivity effect was not altered by sleep deprivation. Results also showed that, despite significantly increased sleepiness, there was no effect of sleep deprivation on working memory performance. A working memory load × valence interaction on the reaction times revealed that the beneficial effect of positive stimuli was only present in the 1-back condition.Conclusion: While the positivity effect and general working memory abilities in older adults are intact after one night of sleep deprivation, increased cognitive demand attenuates the positivity effect on working memory speed.
Highlights
While older age is usually characterized by impairments in cognitive functions such as working memory (Salthouse and Babcock, 1991; Clarys et al, 2009), older adults show a sustained or even improved ability when it comes to emotion regulation compared to their younger counterparts (Nashiro et al, 2012)
Older adults usually handle the effects of sleep deprivation, like impaired attention or lowered mood, better than young adults (Scullin and Bliwise, 2015; Schwarz et al, 2018a), it is not known whether the positivity effect is affected by sleep deprivation
Welch t-tests for each of the valences of the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) ratings showed that the sleep deprived rated significantly lower on positive affect (29.3 ± 7.1) than the control group (34.0 ± 7.0, t44 = 2.30, p = 0.026, BF10 = 2.36) but there was no difference in negative affect (TSD: 10.9 ± 7.7, Control: 10.8 ± 8.0, t43 = 0.06, p = 0.95, BF10 = 0.29), see Figure 1
Summary
While older age is usually characterized by impairments in cognitive functions such as working memory (Salthouse and Babcock, 1991; Clarys et al, 2009), older adults show a sustained or even improved ability when it comes to emotion regulation compared to their younger counterparts (Nashiro et al, 2012). Studies show that this positivity effect can be modulated by stress induced by aversive movie clips (Everaerd et al, 2017) and cognitive demand (Reed et al, 2014) This suggests that the agerelated preference for positive stimuli (or decreased attention toward negative stimuli) may be attenuated when healthy older adults are exposed to additional challenges. Our aim was to investigate if the positivity effect in older adults is affected by one night of total sleep deprivation using an emotional working memory task
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