The confinement situation experienced as a result of COVID-19 will have consequences at a psychological level. These consequences can affect emotion recognition because, due to isolation, ...interactions and social contacts have been drastically reduced. The aim of this study was to find out if there were differences in facial emotion recognition in two groups of young adults, one confined during COVID-19 and the other unconfined.
One hundred and sixty-four young adults were tested twice, the first time unconfined, to obtain the baseline, then the sample was divided into two subgroups so that 84 were evaluated in a confined situation and 80 in an unconfined situation. . Ekman 60 Faces test, which includes the recognition of the six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) was applied. The main results obtained showed that during the confinement situation there was a significant decrease in the recognition of happiness, and a significant increase in the recognition of sadness and depressed mood. Confinement significantly alters and reduces our social interactions, which can affect our mood as well as our emotional facial recognition. For this reason, health services need to engage in early detection of the psychological effects this situation will have on the population.
•Decrease in the happiness emotion has been observed during confinement due COVID-19.•Recognition of sadness obtained a significant increase during confinement due COVID-19.•Confinement has implications for mental health and emotional and social functioning.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a strong predictor of negative mood. Applying emotional skills correctly can help to increase positive emotional states and reduce negative ones. This study aims to ...implement EI intervention designed to improve clarity, repair EI dimensions and coping strategies, and reduce negative mood in older adults.
Participants were randomly assigned to the treatment or control group.
Participants were evaluated individually before and after the intervention.
Participants included 111 healthy older adults; 51 in the treatment group and 60 in the control group.
An EI program was implemented. The program was administered over 10 sessions lasting 90 min each.
EI dimension (attention, clarity, and repair), coping strategies, hopelessness, and mood were assessed.
Analysis of variance for repeated measures was applied. In the treatment group, scores on clarity and emotional repair increased and attention to emotions decreased; problem-focused coping (problem-solving, positive reappraisal, and seeking social support) showed significant increases, whereas emotion-focused coping (negative self-focused and overt emotional expression) obtained significant decreases; scores on negative mood measures declined significantly.
An intervention based on EI is effective in older adults. After the EI intervention, the participants showed significant increases in their levels of clarity and emotional repair and intermediate levels of attention. In addition, the intervention was found to influence adaptation results, increasing the use of adaptive coping strategies and decreasing the use of maladaptive strategies, as well as reducing hopelessness and depressive symptoms.
Dementia is a significant public health problem. One non-pharmacological therapy that has shown its effectiveness is reminiscence, which is a psychological intervention designed to address issues of ...particular relevance to older adults. The aim of this study was to examine the benefits of an integrative reminiscence program in elderly people with dementia.
A quasi-experimental design and purposeful sampling were conducted at two retirement homes. Forty-two elderly adults with dementia were studied to measure the effect of the therapy (23 in the experimental group and 19 in the control group). The treatment group activity was held in 10 sessions.
The treatment group significantly improved their depressive symptoms and self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, and environmental mastery.
This study provides support for the effectiveness of integrative reminiscence therapy (RT) as an intervention in people with dementia, especially in reducing depressive symptoms and improving psychological well-being, with the therapy being effective on personal and emotional variables.
Emotional intelligence has been shown to be a relevant resource associated with better personal and social adaptation. In older adults, it has been associated with constructs such as life ...satisfaction and resilience, which are of interest in the field of gerontology because of their impact during the aging process. The objective of this study is to test an intervention based on emotional intelligence in order to find out whether the levels of these abilities improve, and whether the inter- vention has an effect on resilience and life satisfaction. The sample was composed of 125 healthy older adults (treatment, n = 57 and control, n = 68). The variables studied were homogeneous between groups. These variables were evaluated using the TMMS-24, SWLS, and BRCS self-report tests. The results showed significant effects of the intervention on the treatment group. Attention levels decreased significantly, whereas clarity and repair increased. In addition, the average scores on resilience and life satisfaction increased. An emotional intelligence-based intervention improves skills of older adults in its three dimensions. In addition, after the intervention, there is an increase in life satisfaction and resilience. Emotional intelligence skills are considered to generate positive, cognitive and behavioral outcomes for adaptation du- ring aging. Thus interventions of this type could contribute to the quality of life of older adults, a topic of great relevance today due to increased longevity.
Well-being is one of the keys to successful and optimal development across the lifespan. Based on the idea that development involves changes in individuals' adaptive capacity to meet their needs over ...time, the changes that occur in the second half of life require effort to adapt to the new reality. This study used a structural model to test the effects of coping strategies and resilience on well-being in a sample of 305 mid-life adults. Several constructs were measured: coping strategies, resilience, and well-being. A final model was obtained with good fit indices; psychological well-being was positively predicted by resilience and negatively by emotional coping. Moreover, positive reappraisal and avoidance form part of both coping strategies (problem-focused and emotion-focused). Considering the characteristics of the model, educational intervention programs could be developed to promote skills that favor good adaptation at this stage in the life cycle and contribute to promoting successful aging.
Reminiscence promotes the acceptance of oneself and others, a sense of meaning, and the integration of the present and the past. The currently accepted classification contains eight reminiscence ...functions grouped in three broader functions: self-positive functions (identity, problem-solving, and death preparation); self-negative functions (bitterness revival, boredom reduction, and intimacy maintenance); and prosocial functions (conversation and teach-inform). The main objective of this study was to investigate how the eight dimensions change over time in a sample of healthy older adults after an intervention based on simple reminiscence and subsequent follow-up.
Participants were randomly assigned to the treatment or control group.
Participants were evaluated individually before, immediately after, and 3 months after the intervention.
Participants included 139 healthy older adults (71 intervention group and 68 control group).
Ten weekly sessions lasting 2 hours each were administered, based on a simple reminiscence program.
Participants were assessed with the Reminiscence Functions Scale.
After the intervention, in the treatment group, there was a significant increase in the self-positive functions of problem-solving and death preparation, and these effects were maintained even at the follow-up; there was a significant reduction in the self-negative functions of bitterness revival and intimacy maintenance; and there was a significant increase in the prosocial function of conversation.
When applying an intervention based on reminiscence, it is important to evaluate how it influences these functions because this information can help us to modify the objectives of the intervention and increase its effectiveness.
Impairments in the ability to recognize facial affective expressions may lead to social dysfunction and difficulties with interpersonal communication.
The objective was to compare the attentional ...responses on a Stroop emotional task using words and faces by testing whether the two stimuli differ in the degree of interference they produce in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD).
There were 75 participants: 25 healthy older adults, 25 with mild AD, and 25 with moderate AD. A variation of the classic emotional Stroop test was administered. This task combined emotional words (happy or sad) superimposed on facial expressions (happy or sad), where the words were either incongruent or congruent with the emotion expressed by the face stimuli.
Facilitation was shown on negative words in healthy older adults, and significant effects were obtained for condition, valence, group, and the condition x group interaction. Although less interference was observed on negative stimuli, the fastest reaction times were found for congruent positive stimuli. The effect of interference in healthy older adults is similar in both conditions. However, in the AD groups, there is less interference on the words task than on the faces task.
The more complex nature of faces, as opposed to the over-learning and automaticity of words, may explain the higher interference in AD patients in the faces condition. In patients with AD, words can be a better method for recognizing emotions than affective facial expressions.
The aim of our experiment was to analyse the effect of the emotional valence (positive, negative, or neutral) on true and false recognition, matching the arousal, frequency, concreteness, and ...associative strength of the study and recognition words. Fifty younger adults and 46 healthy older adults performed three study tasks (with words of different valence: positive, negative, neutral) and their corresponding recognition tests. Two weeks later, they performed the three recognition tests again. The results show that words with a negative valence produced less true recognition and less false recognition than words with a positive or neutral valence, in both younger and older adults, on the immediate recognition test. This pattern of results was also found in the younger adults on the delayed recognition test, whereas in the older participants, these differences disappeared. Thus, when arousal is controlled, both younger and older adults tend to recognise negative information worse than positive or neutral information, but they also commit fewer errors. Results would suggest that the greater arousal commonly associated with negative stimuli, rather than their own valence, could explain some of the contradictory results found in the literature.
Current research on older adults considers psychological and emotional aspects of successful aging. Erikson’s epigenetic model of psychosocial development indicates that the Ego-Integrity vs. Despair ...stage is fundamental at this time of life. In this regard, the aim of this article is to validate an Ego-Integrity scale in an Ecuadorian context and analyze its relationship with other psychological variables. The sample consisted of 394 older adults who were tested collectively using: Northwestern Ego-integrity Scale, Centre for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression, General Self-Efficacy Scale, Sense of Coherence, and Diener’s Life Satisfaction Scale. A structural model was established with adequate measures on the Ego-Integrity and Despair Scale for older adults. The results showed that life satisfaction, general self-efficacy, and meaningfulness (sense of coherence scale) had significant and positive relationships with ego-integrity, whereas depression had a negative relationship. In addition, the comprehensibility and manageability of the sense of coherence had a significant and negative relationship with despair, whereas depression had a positive relationship. This information leads us to consider that, in order to help older people to achieve successful aging, it is important to promote the psychological variables that foster integrity and minimize depressive mood.
The conflict monitoring system exerts an influence on centers responsible for cognitive control, causing them to intervene more strongly in processing when conflict occurs. These mechanisms are ...usually investigated through specific tasks where there is an inherent interference elicited by the congruency or incongruency between the stimuli and responses, such as the Stroop task. In studies of emotional conflict, one hypothesis related to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is that it serves, in part, to signal the appearance of conflicts, thus triggering compensatory adjustments. This study aims to verify whether the conflict monitoring hypothesis is confirmed in a group with Alzheimer's disease and, therefore, whether they exhibit a reduction in their reaction times.
A group of healthy older adults (HOA) and a group with Major Neurocognitive Disorders due to probable AD were evaluated to test the conflict monitoring hypothesis with an emotional Stroop task.
A significant interaction was obtained on the word and faces blocks. In the HOA group, a reduction in reaction times was observed, whereas in the AD groups, no reduction in reaction times was obtained.
Whereas in HOA the conflict monitoring hypothesis is confirmed, in the Major Neurocognitive Disorders due to probable AD group there is no reduction in their reaction times on the high conflict resolution trials (incongruent trials that follow incongruent trials) due to their difficulty in making compensatory adjustments to cognitive control that help them to reduce conflict and improve their success rate.
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