Profiles in emotional aging: does age matter?

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The aim of this research project was to define emotional profiles in elderly people and to analyze the presence of each one in different age groups (from 65 to 74, 75 to 84, 85 to 94 and 95 to 104).Method: The sample group comprised 257 elderly people not suffering from cognitive impairment who were independent in the Basic and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living. The following emotional variables were analyzed: positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, loneliness, and regulation strategies.Results: Cluster analyses revealed three emotional profiles: ‘dissatisfied’ (elderly people with high levels of negative affect and loneliness who are unhappy with their lives and use problem solving to regulate their emotions), ‘happy’ (those with good levels of positive affect and life satisfaction, low levels of loneliness and negative affect and little use of passive strategies), and ‘resilient’ (those with low levels of positive and negative affect and medium levels of loneliness who are more or less satisfied with their lives and who use passive strategies to regulate their emotions). A relationship was observed between age and profile. Among the under 85s, the most common profile was ‘happy’, while among the over 85s, the most common profile was ‘resilient.’ The ‘happy’ profile was also observed in participants over the age of 85, although to a lesser extent. The prevalence of the ‘dissatisfied’ profile decreased with age.Conclusion: These results highlight the fact that although age seems to be a key factor in determining profile, individual differences should not be overlooked, even among the oldest old.     

Self-face and emotional faces—are they alike?

The image of one’s own face is a particularly distinctive feature of the self. The self-face differs from other faces not only in respect of its familiarity but also in respect of its subjective emotional significance and saliency. The current study aimed at elucidating similarities/dissimilarities between processing of one’s own face and emotional faces: happy faces (based on the self-positive bias) and fearful faces (because of their high perceptual saliency, a feature shared with self-face). Electroencephalogram data were collected in the group of 30 participants who performed a simple detection task. Event-related potential analyses indicated significantly increased P3 and late positive potential amplitudes to the self-face in comparison to all other faces: fearful, happy and neutral. Permutation tests confirmed the differences between the self-face and all three types of other faces for numerous electrode sites and in broad time windows. Representational similarity analysis, in turn, revealed distinct processing of the self-face and did not provide any evidence in favour of similarities between the self-face and emotional (either negative or positive) faces. These findings strongly suggest that the self-face processing do not resemble those of emotional faces, thus implying that prioritized self-referential processing is driven by the subjective relevance of one’s own face.     

What aspects of emotional functioning are impaired in schizophrenia?

Disturbances in emotional functioning are a major cause of persistent functional disability in schizophrenia. However, it is not clear what specific aspects of emotional functioning are impaired. Some studies have indicated diminished experience of positive affect in individuals with schizophrenia, while others have not. The current study assessed emotional responses by 34 individuals with schizophrenia and 35 demographically matched healthy participants to 131 images sampling a wide range of emotional arousal and valence levels. Ratings of affective response elicited by individual images were highly correlated across the groups (r's>.90), indicating similar emotional experiences at the moment of stimulus exposure. However, the data did not indicate strong relationships between ratings of the emotional impact of the images and most measures of day-to-day emotional processing. These results demonstrate that individuals with schizophrenia report "normal" emotional responses to emotional stimuli, and thus suggests that deficits in emotional functioning associated with the disorder are likely to occur further downstream, and involve the effective integration of emotion and cognition for adaptive functioning in areas such as goal-setting, motivation, and memory.     

Compromised emotional competence: seeds of violence sown early?

The authors expected less secure preschoolers to be less emotionally competent when interacting with peers at age 3 and that these emotionally incompetent children, especially those who showed much unregulated anger, would be less socially competent in kindergarten. These directional hypotheses were examined in a sample of 91 preschoolers, and all were corroborated.     

Dopaminergic modulation of emotional memory in Parkinson’s disease

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of dopaminergic treatment on emotional memory in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). We tested memory for emotional and neutral visual stimuli in ten non-demented PD patients on and off dopaminergic medication. Patients recalled significantly more emotional items during the off- than on-medication testing session. In contrast, treatment condition did not affect memory for neutral items. These findings demonstrate that emotional memory deficits observed in PD may result from dopaminergic treatment and suggest an involvement of dopaminergic neurotransmission in emotional processing.     

Discrepancy between high non-verbal intelligence and low accuracy at reading emotional expressions in the eyes reflects the magnitude of social–emotional difficulties in autism

Many so-called “high functioning” autistic individuals struggle with daily living skills, and have poorer than expected adult outcomes in employment, relationships, and quality of life. Significant discrepancies between non-verbal intelligence and emotional processing can be observed in autism, but the role of the magnitude of this gap in achieving potential psychosocial outcome is not known. Here, we show in a large group of participants (n = 107), that only among those with an autism diagnosis (n = 33), the gap between non-verbal intelligence (as measured by Raven’s matrices) and the ability to perform the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test significantly predicts self-perceived emotional/social difficulties as assessed by the Empathy Quotient. Our results suggest that it is specifically the magnitude of the gap between (high) levels of abstract reasoning skills and poor proficiency in reading emotions expressed by the eyes that predicts self-perceived difficulties in emotional and social interactions among adults with autism. A better understanding of the underlying causes of the discrepancy between potential and actual psychosocial outcomes is the first step toward developing the most appropriate support for this vulnerable population, and our study offers some potentially important insights in this regard.

     

Psychotic symptoms and emotional distress in patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome

Psychological disturbances in 49 most severely compromised Guillain-Barré syndrome patients were prospectively studied by a semistructured interview and assessed by repeat psychiatric examination during the patients' stay in the neuro-intensive care unit (ICU). Additional information was obtained from attending physicians, nurses and relatives. Anxiety (82%), acute stress disorder, depressive episodes (67%) and brief reactive psychosis (25%) were observed, with oneiroid psychosis (14%) among the latter. Psychotic episodes were strongly associated (p < 0.001) with severe tetraparesis, artificial ventilation and multiple cranial nerve dysfunction. CSF protein concentration was also correlated with the occurrence of psychotic symptoms. Patients themselves experienced loss of communication to be the most difficult condition to cope with. Fifty-five percent explicitly felt reassured by the environment of the ICU and 90% described contact with relatives to be most helpful. Our data suggest that motor deprivation and loss of communication are the conditions most closely connected with the occurrence of psychotic symptoms. Therapeutically, continuous psychosocial support and psychopharmacological measures may both be valuable tools to ameliorate distress.     

Do adolescent anorexia nervosa patients have deficits in emotional functioning?

Adult eating disorder patients have been characterised by alexithymia. We investigated whether adolescent eating disorder patients also show deficits in emotional functioning. To measure emotional functioning a questionnaire (the TAS) and an emotion recognition test were administered to 30 eating disorder (ED) adolescent girls and 31 healthy controls (HC), matched for age, education, and social status. Non-emotional, cognitive parallel tasks were administered on the same occasion to find out whether a possible deficit was emotion-specific or of a more general cognitive nature. The ED patients scored higher on the TAS and performed worse on the emotion recognition test, but no differences between the groups were found on the non-emotional cognitive instruments. It was concluded that adolescent eating disorder patients, just like adult eating disorder patients, are characterised by alexithymia and show specific deficits in emotional functioning. The implications of these findings are discussed. Accepted: 21 August 2001     

From facial mimicry to emotional empathy: A role for norepinephrine ?

Tendency to mimic others' emotional facial expressions predicts empathy and may represent a physiological marker of psychopathy. Anatomical connectivity between amygdala, cingulate motor cortex (M3, M4), and facial nucleus demonstrates a potential neuroanatomical substrate for mimicry, though pharmacological influences are largely unknown. Norepinephrine modulation selectively impairs negative emotion recognition, reflecting a potential role in processing empathy-eliciting facial expressions. We examined effects of single doses of propranolol (beta-adrenoceptor blocker) and reboxetine (selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) on automatic facial mimicry of sadness, anger, and happiness, and the relationship between mimicry and empathy. Forty-five healthy volunteers were randomized to 40 mg propranolol or 4 mg reboxetine. Two hours after drug subjects viewed and rated facial expressions of sadness, anger, and happiness, while corrugator, zygomatic, and mentalis EMG were recorded. Trait emotional empathy was measured using the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale. EMG confirmed emotion-specific mimicry and the relationship between corrugator mimicry and empathy. Norepinephrine modulation did not alter mimicry to any expression or influence the relationship between mimicry and empathy. Corrugator but not zygomaticus mimicry predicts trait empathy, consistent with greater anatomical connectivity between amygdala and M3 coding upper facial muscle representations. Although influencing emotion perception, norepinephrine does not influence emotional facial mimicry or its relationship with trait empathy.     

Stability of emotional dysfunctions? A long-term fMRI study in first-episode schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE: Patients with schizophrenia are characterized by emotional symptoms such as flattened affect which are accompanied by cerebral dysfunctions. This study aimed at determining changes of mood-related neural correlates under standardized pharmacological therapy in first-episode schizophrenia. METHOD: Using fMRI in a longitudinal approach, 10 first-episode schizophrenia patients (6 males) and 10 healthy subjects (same education, gender and age) were investigated during sad and happy mood induction using facial expressions. Reassessments were carried out following 6 months of standardized antipsychotic treatment. Data analysis focussed on therapy-related changes in cerebral activation and on stable, therapy-independent group differences. RESULTS: According to self ratings, mood induction was successful in both groups and did not reveal time-dependent changes. Patients revealed stable hypoactivations in core brain regions of emotional processing like the anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal and temporal areas as well as the hippocampus. Therapy-related signal increases in pre- and postcentral, inferior temporal and frontal areas were restricted to sadness. DISCUSSION: Stable dysfunctions which are unaffected by therapy and symptom improvement were found in cortico-limbic regions crucially involved in emotion processing. They presumably reflect patients' difficulties in emotion regulation and emotional memory processes. However, therapy-related activation changes were also observed and demonstrate efficacy of antipsychotic therapy on improving emotion functionality. They may represent an increased usage of autobiographic emotional memories and an improved strategy to experience an emotion by mirroring someone else's emotions.     

Can foster carers help children resolve their emotional and behavioural difficulties?

Although foster care is generally seen as providing a positive experience for the children and young people for whom it caters, it is rarely conceived of as a place where the children are helped to address their emotional difficulties and modify their often difficult behaviour. Yet research evidence suggests that some foster carers are consistently less likely to have placements which break down, and that foster carers who show particular skills in parenting can make a difference to successful outcomes. The article draws on a large longitudinal study of foster care to argue that it is possible to learn from what these foster carers do in order to develop these skills in others. A model of successful foster care. developed from the main statistical part of the study is first described. Two cases from the qualitative, case-studies component of the research are then analysed to demonstrate a quality of responsive parenting. The model is further developed within the framework of the dynamic of attachment and interest sharing proposed by Heard and Lake (1997), to show how this can be used as a basis for future approaches to working with foster placements.     

Scene identification and emotional response: which spatial frequencies are critical?

Emotional responses are regulated by basic motivational systems (appetitive and defensive), which allow for adaptive behavior when opportunities and threats are detected. It has been suggested that specific ranges of spatial frequencies of the visual input may contain information that is diagnostic for discriminating emotionally relevant from less relevant contents, and that specialized neural modules may analyze these spatial frequencies to allow efficient detection and response to life-threatening or life-sustaining stimuli. However, there is no evidence supporting this possibility regarding natural scenes, which are highly varied in terms of pictorial composition. The present study examines how low and high spatial frequency filtering affects the understanding of natural scene contents and modulates the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP), a well-known component of the event-related potentials that reflects motivational significance. The content of an initially degraded (low- or high-passed) picture was progressively revealed in a sequence of steps by adding high or low spatial frequencies. At each step, human participants reported whether they identified the gist of the image. The results showed that the affective modulation of the LPP varied with picture identification similarly for low-passed and high-passed pictures. The engagement of corticolimbic appetitive and defensive systems, reflected in the LPP affective modulation, varied with picture identification, and did not critically or preferentially depend on either low or high spatial frequencies.     

Do patients with schizophrenia consciously recollect emotional events better than neutral events?

OBJECTIVE: The influence of the emotional valence of words on conscious awareness was assessed in patients with schizophrenia. METHOD: The remember/know procedure was used to test 24 patients with schizophrenia and 24 normal comparison subjects. RESULTS: Patients' "remember" responses and conscious recollection were more frequent for emotional words than for neutral words. In contrast, the levels of "know" responses and familiarity were independent of emotional words. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with schizophrenia consciously recollected emotional words better than neutral words.     

Cognitive emotion regulation strategies and emotional problems in 9–11-year-old children

The present study describes the development of the child version of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ-k). Like the adult version of the CERQ, the CERQ-k measures nine cognitive emotion regulation strategies that children may use after having experienced negative life events. The original CERQ was considered suitable for adults and adolescents aged 12 and older. The CERQ-k was constructed for children of 9, 10 and 11 years of age. The present study describes some psychometric properties of the CERQ-k and relationships with measures of depression, fearfulness and worry among 717 primary school youngsters. Principal component analyses confirmed the allocation of most items to subscales, while Cronbach’s alphas of most subscales exceeded 0.70. Cognitive emotion regulation strategies were found to be related to the reporting of symptoms of depression, fearfulness and worry, which provided some evidence for criterion-related validity.     

Change in children’s emotional and behavioural problems over a one-year period

Although children with emotional or behavioural problems are at increased risk of future problems, knowledge of factors associated with persistence and change in child problems, once these problems exist, is limited. Using repeated measures analyses of variance, the present study investigated the association of parental problem recognition, professional and informal service use, and sociodemographic factors with change in child problems over a one-year period, in a sample of 360 children and adolescents with emotional and behavioural problems. Higher overall problem levels were found in children (aged 4–11 years at baseline) versus adolescents (aged 12–17 years), in boys, and in children with less educated parents, which indicates the need to address preventive actions at these groups. Although rates of service use were low, children who had been in contact with general practitioners or mental health services had higher overall problem levels, suggesting that children who need it most end up receiving professional care. Although child emotional and behavioural problems decreased significantly over time, this change was not associated with utilisation of professional or informal services. Our findings imply the need for methodologically sound research into the effectiveness of professional and informal services for child emotional and behavioural problems.     

Mood-congruent memory in depression – The influence of personal relevance and emotional context

The investigation of veridical mood-congruent memory (MCM) in major depressive disorder (MDD) has been subject of many studies, whereas mood-congruent false memory has received comparatively little attention. The present study examined the influence of valence, personal relevance and the valence of the context of the learning material on true and false MCM in 20 inpatients with MDD and 20 healthy controls. Sixty positive, negative, neutral or personally relevant nouns were either combined with a positive, negative or neutral adjective. Word pairs were presented to participants in a learning trial. In a recognition task, participants had to identify the previously studied word pairs. A MCM effect could not be found for hits. However, in exploratory analyses, word pairs containing personally relevant nouns were more rated towards old by the patient relative to the control group. Furthermore, depressed patients tended to rate items more towards old than controls when the words were presented in a negative new context. Results are in line with previous findings in depression research emphasizing the role of mood-congruent false memories for mood disorders.     

Dominant language functions of the right hemisphere? Prosody and emotional gesturing.

Two patients lost the ability to impart affective qualities to their speech following lesions in the right hemisphere. Arguments are given to support the idea that the right or "minor" hemisphere has a dominant role in modulating the affective components of speech. The anatomical organization of the cortical areas subserving affective speech in the right hemisphere seem to be similar to the organization of cortical areas subserving propositional speech in the left or "major" hemisphere.