Encarnación Satorres

Resilience and Coping as Predictors of Well-Being in Adults

ABSTRACT 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.

An emotional Stroop task with faces and words. A comparison of young and older adults

ANTECEDENTS Given the contradictions of previous studies on the changes in attentional responses produced in aging a Stroop emotional task was proposed to compare young and older adults to words or faces with an emotional valence. METHOD The words happy or sad were superimposed on faces that express the emotion of happiness or sadness. The emotion expressed by the word and the face could agree or not (cued and uncued trials, respectively). 85 young and 66 healthy older adults had to identify both faces and words separately, and the interference between the two types of stimuli was examined. RESULTS An interference effect was observed for both types of stimuli in both groups. There was more interference on positive faces and words than on negative stimuli. CONCLUSIONS Older adults had more difficulty than younger in focusing on positive uncued trials, whereas there was no difference across samples on negative uncued trials.

Phonological false recognition produced by bottom-up automatic activation in young and older people

ABSTRACT Two experiments explored a new procedure to implicitly induce phonological false memories in young and older people. On the study tasks, half of the words were formed from half of the letters in the alphabet, whereas the remaining words were formed from all the letters in the alphabet. On the recognition tests, there were three types of non-studied new words: critical lures formed from the same half of the letters as the studied words; distractors formed from the other half of the letters not used, and distractors formed from all the letters in the alphabet. In both experiments, the results showed that, in both young and older people, critical lures produced more false recognitions than distractors composed of all the letters in the alphabet, which, in turn, produced more false alarms than distractors composed of the letters not used during the study. These results support the predictions of the activation/monitoring models, which assume that false memories are partly due to activation spreading from items (semantically or phonologically) related to the critical words.

Motivated forgetting reduces veridical memories but slightly increases false memories in both young and healthy older people

The aim of the current study is to examine the effects of motivated forgetting and aging on true and false memory. Sixty young and 54 healthy older adults were instructed to study two lists of 18 words each. Each list was composed of three sets of six words associated with three non-presented critical words. After studying list 1, half of the participants received the instruction to forget List 1, whereas the other half received the instruction to remember List 1. Next, all the subjects studied list 2; finally, they were asked to remember the words studied in both lists. The results showed that when participants intended to forget the studied List 1, they were less likely to recall the studied words, but more likely to intrude the critical words. That is, we can intentionally forget something but this can also entail the intrusion of some related false memories.

Effects of Stimuli Repetition and Age in False Recognition

The aim of the current study is to examine the effects of stimuli repetition and age in false recognition using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott experimental paradigm. Two matched samples of 32 young adults and 32 healthy older adults studied 10 lists of six words associated with three non-presented critical words. On half of the lists, the words were presented once, and on the other five lists, the words were presented three times, always following a same sequential order. After each study list, participants performed a self-paced recognition test containing 12 words: the 6 studied words and 6 other non-studied words (the 3 critical words and 3 distractors). The results show that false recognition increases with age and declines in both samples with repetitions (although more in the young adults than in the older people). Results are discussed in relation to the dual-process theories of (false) memory.

Can there be learning potential in Parkinson’s disease? A comparison with healthy older adults

ABSTRACT Patients with Parkinson’s disease may show certain cognitive impairments, although it is unclear how these deficits can affect their learning potential. The study aims to use the testing-the-limits technique to compare the potential for cognitive plasticity in a group of Patients with Parkinson’s disease (N = 33) and a group of healthy older adults (N = 33). Sixty-six participants performed verbal learning test to analyze the learning potential. Repeated-measures analysis of variance showed significant main effects of time, group, and the interaction. There is a lower learning potential in subjects with Parkinson’s disease; however, those still maintain a certain capacity for learning and, therefore, for cognitive plasticity.

Bienestar psicológico en función de la etapa de vida, el sexo y su interacción

Objective . To evaluate the differences in the dimensions of psychological well-being in reference to age, gender and their interaction. Method. A sample with 706 participants was obtained and then divided in three age groups (young, middle-aged adults and elderly adults), who responded to the Ryff Psychological Well-being Scale A MANOVA was calculated taking into account the group variables of age, gender and their interaction. Later, an ANOVA was done to know among which groups there were differences for each dimension. Results. The analysis showed a decrease, with age, in the dimensions of psychological well-being of positive relationships with others, and personal growth, domain of the environment and loss of autonomy in the elderly adults. In addition, the dimension of self-acceptance differs between the genders with age; women showed a decrease in their personal growth with age, while the domain of the environment increases with the adult age being more stable among women. Conclusion. Based on the above, it is suggested that a work in negative and maladaptive thoughts in women, since men get a better score in dimensions that diminish the appearance of pathologies related to the mood. A work in the social relationships as well as the individuals’aptitudes should be encouraged.

Bienestar subjetivo y psicológico: comparación de jóvenes y adultos mayores

El bienestar es un constructo complejo que se refiere a la experiencia optima y el funcionamiento. El bienestar subjetivo, basado en la perspectiva hedonica, es la valoracion general de la vida y el bienestar psicologico, fundamentado en la perspectiva eudaimonica, se asocia al desarrollo personal y realizacion del potencial de uno mismo. Este trabajo compara un grupo de jovenes con un grupo de adultos mayores en medidas de bienestar subjetivo y del bienestar psicologico, para estudiar los posibles cambios asociados a la edad. Se realizo un estudio correlacional, en el que participaron 148 sujetos pertenecientes a dos grupos de edad: jovenes y adultos mayores de Valencia (Espana). Los resultados mostraron diferencias en el bienestar subjetivo con puntuaciones mas altas en el grupo de los adultos mayores para las escalas de afecto positivo. Para el bienestar psicologico los adultos mayores obtuvieron puntuaciones significativamente mayores en las dimensiones de autoaceptacion, autonomia y dominio del ambiente. Los resultados apoyan las teorias sobre el sesgo de positividad en la vejez y un mayor uso de estrategias de tipo acomodativo como forma de adaptacion a las nuevas situaciones.