Widowhood Impairs Emotional Cognition Among Elderly.

Taiyong Bi,Boyao Shao,Yanshu Kong,Hui Kou

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2021.808885

Abstract

BackgroundThe negative impacts of spousal bereavement on the emotional health of the elderly (e.g., depression and anxiety) have been revealed. However, whether widowhood impairs emotional cognition among the elderly is less known. The purpose of this study is to reveal the emotional cognitive deficits among the widowed elderly.MethodsIn this study, we recruited 44 widowed elderly (WE) and 44 elder couples (non-widowed elderly, NWE) and examined their emotional cognition including attention and visual working memory, which were measured by the visual search task and delayed-match-to-sample task, respectively. Three kinds of emotional faces (i.e., sad, angry, and happy) were adopted as the attentional or mnemonic targets.ResultsIt revealed that WE had a general deficit in search efficiency across emotional types, while they showed mnemonic deficits in negative faces but not positive faces. Furthermore, the modeling analysis revealed that the level of depression or state anxiety of the elderly moderated the effects of widowhood on the deficits of mnemonic processing, i.e., the deficits were only evident among WE with the high level of depression or state anxiety.ConclusionThese findings reveal the attentional deficits in sad, angry, and happy faces and the mnemonic deficits in sad and angry faces among elderly who suffer from widowhood and point out the important role of emotional problems such as depression and state anxiety in modulating these emotional cognitive deficits.

Highlights

Spousal bereavement is a common negative event in later life that negatively influences the mental and physical health of the elderly
NWE showed a higher mnemonic accuracy and discriminability than WE only among high state anxiety individuals
The results mainly showed that emotional problems could modulate the effect of spousal bereavement on working memory deficits, i.e., the deficits were only evident among individuals with a high level of emotional problems

Summary

Introduction

Spousal bereavement is a common negative event in later life that negatively influences the mental and physical health of the elderly. The widowed elderly reported increased anxiety, grief, depression, emotional loneliness, and social loneliness (Bergman et al, 2010; Kim and Lyu, 2018; Förster et al, 2019; Szabó et al, 2020). These negative impacts of widowhood were found to last a long period and were serious threats to wellbeing and quality of life in the elderly (van Boekel et al, 2019). The negative impacts of spousal bereavement on the emotional health of the elderly (e.g., depression and anxiety) have been revealed. The purpose of this study is to reveal the emotional cognitive deficits among the widowed elderly

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion