Positivity effect specific to older adults with subclinical memory impairment
- 1Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA
- 2Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA
- Corresponding author: myassa{at}uci.edu
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↵3 These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
Numerous studies have suggested that older adults preferentially remember positive information (“positivity effect”), however others have reported mixed results. One potential source of conflict is that aging is not a unitary phenomenon and individual differences exist. We modified a standard neuropsychological test to vary emotional content and tested memory at three time points (immediate/20 min/1 wk). Cognitively normal older adults were stratified into those with and without subclinical memory impairment. We found that the positivity effect was limited to those with subclinical memory impairment, suggesting that consideration of subclinical memory impairment is necessary for understanding age-related emotional memory alterations.
Footnotes
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[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
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Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.042010.116.
- Received February 25, 2016.
- Accepted May 18, 2016.
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