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The Role Of Autobiographical Memory Recall In Reappraisal Efficacy And Effort Across Age, Irina Orlovsky

Masters Theses

Socioemotional theories posit that the experience of overcoming unique life challenges over a lifetime enhances self-efficacy and emotional resilience among older adults. Older adults demonstrate greater emotional well-being and motivation to regulate emotions than younger adults, but specific regulatory mechanisms supporting late-life emotional resilience remain unclear. Cognitive reappraisal is an effective but cognitively demanding emotion regulation strategy and shows mixed efficacy in later-life. While a growing repertoire of autobiographical memories may be a resource with age, the role of autobiographical recall in momentary reappraisal has never been tested empirically. In this online study, older and younger adults were trained to …

Predicting Reappraisal Success With Innate Neural Connectivity Across The Adult Lifespan, Parker Longwell

Masters Theses

Reappraisal — reinterpreting a situation to change emotional response — is an effective emotion regulation strategy that relies on cognitive control network activity, including engagement of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), to attenuate amygdala activity. Greater dlPFC-Amygdala functional connectivity predicts instructed reappraisal task success, and daily use of reappraisal for younger adults (Pico-Perez et al.., 2018) but not older adults (Opitz et al., 2012), while the connectivity of the vmPFC is predictive of physiological markers of ER success for all ages (Sakaki et al., 2016 & Urry et al., 2006). However, the relationship between Resting-State Functional Connectivity (RSFC) and reappraisal …

One Year Change In Cognitive Function In Male And Female Common Marmosets (Callithrix Jacchus), Brianna Healey

Masters Theses

Long term cognitive studies in humans and nonhuman primates such as macaques are difficult because of their long lifespan. The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) is a non-human primate who shares with humans many features characteristic of primates, including a complex brain and cognitive function. They also have a short lifespan (~10 years) that makes them a great model in studies of cognitive aging. This study focuses on the rate of decline in cognitive function in male and female marmosets based on performance on reversal learning tasks over 2 years of testing.

We found that marmosets improved their overall …

Age Group Differences In Affect Responses To A Stressor, Molly Mather

Masters Theses

Older adults may be better able to modulate their emotional experiences than younger adults, and thus may recover more quickly from negative stressors. Additionally, older adults may be more likely to experience co-occurrence of negative and positive emotions in the setting of negative stressors, which may facilitate emotion recovery. To date, few studies have investigated the nature of age group differences in spontaneous emotional responses to a standardized stressor. The current study utilizes a laboratory mood manipulation to determine age group differences in emotion recovery in negative and positive affects, as well as age group differences in the co-occurrence of …

Does Age Influence Dynamic Stability And Muscular Power Following Neuromuscular Fatigue In Women?, Ben J. Hoffmann

Masters Theses

Older adults, especially older women, produce less muscular power than young adults, due primarily to slower maximal contractile velocity. These decrements may lead to increased fall risk in older women and can be exacerbated by fatigue. Recently, a 32 min walking task (32MWT) was shown to elicit fatigue in older women. The purpose of this study was to determine whether knee extensor (KE) maximal velocity is related to dynamic stability (margin of stability, MoS) in young and older women pre- and post-32MWT. METHODS: Nine young (Y; 24.3+1.1years, mean±SE) and 17 older (O; 71.1±1.1years) healthy women completed 2 testing sessions on …

Associations Between Alexithymia And Executive Function In Younger And Older Adults, Gennarina Diane Santorelli

Masters Theses

The prevalence of alexithymia, a condition characterized by difficulties identifying and verbalizing one’s emotions, increases across the lifespan, with older adults reporting greater alexithymic features than young and middle-aged adults. This late-life increase in alexithymia may be the product of age-related decline in prefrontal brain circuitry implicated in emotional awareness and executive processes, notably in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). There is a dearth of research on the link between executive function and alexithymia in healthy adults. This study determined associations between alexithymia and executive function in healthy younger and older adults. Higher alexithymia scores were predicted to be associated …

Age-Related Changes In Sleep-Dependent Consolidation Of Visuo-Spatial Memory, Akshata Sonni

Masters Theses

Healthy aging is associated with a reduction in slow-wave sleep (SWS), crucial for declarative memory consolidation in young adults; consequently, previously observed benefits of sleep on declarative learning in older adults could reflect a passive role of sleep in protecting memories from waking interference, rather than an active, stabilizing effect. To dissociate the passive and active roles of sleep, a visuo-spatial task was administered; memory was probed after a 12 hr interval consisting of either daytime wake or overnight sleep and post-wake/post-sleep stability of the memories was tested following task-related interference. Ninety five older adults (mean=65.43 yrs; SD=7.6 yrs) and …