Abstract:This research explored the differential association of everyday stress with the episodic memory test performances of young, mid-life, and older adults. Participants included 98 community-dwelling adults ranging in age from 19-89 years. Everyday stress was assessed via the Perceived Stress Scale and the Elder Life Stress Inventory. A brief battery of episodic memory tasks was administered which included tests of Logical Memory, Verbal Paired Associates, Digit Symbol Substitution, and Digit Symbol Incidental Lea… Show more
“…findings are consistent with observational epidemiological studies(VonDras et al 2005 ;Johansson et al 2010), where self-perceived stress was found to be associated with cognitive impairment. The dose-response relationship between self-perceived stress and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) performance.…”
In this generally high-functioning population, individuals' interpretations and responses to stressful events, rather than the events themselves, were associated with cognitive function.
“…findings are consistent with observational epidemiological studies(VonDras et al 2005 ;Johansson et al 2010), where self-perceived stress was found to be associated with cognitive impairment. The dose-response relationship between self-perceived stress and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) performance.…”
In this generally high-functioning population, individuals' interpretations and responses to stressful events, rather than the events themselves, were associated with cognitive function.
“…Perceived stress may be particularly informative in healthy community samples such as the current study, where endorsement of depression symptoms may be low. Other research suggests that perceived stress may also influence objective memory and executive function performance among older adults (VonDras et al, 2005). One biological mechanism that may link perceived stress to subjective and objective memory deficits is the potentially detrimental effects that stress-induced glucocorticoid secretion can have on the hippocampus, which is a critical brain region for learning and memory (Lupien et al, 1999).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Email: guy.potter@duke.edu events and the associated experiences of stress, depression, or anxiety may introduce task-irrelevant distractions into daily life in a manner that challenges the efficient use of cognitive resources, which thereby may contribute to the perception of memory difficulty. This idea is supported by one finding that higher levels of perceived stress and stressful life events were associated with greater age-related differences on objective measures of episodic memory and executive functions (VonDras, Powless, Olson, Wheeler, & Snudden, 2005). Together, these results raise the question of how stressful events and perceived stress contribute to subjective memory complaints in older adults, which is important because the negative effects of stress be may modifiable by cognitive and behavioral interventions.…”
Memory complaints among older adults are often influenced by depression and anxiety, but the association of stress to memory complaints has received little attention. We examined the associations of perceived stress, life events, and activity level to everyday memory complaints among healthy older women, while controlling for the influence of depression and anxiety. Participants (N=54) completed self-report questionnaires on memory complaints, perceived stress, recent life events, activity level, depression, and anxiety. Partial correlation analyses indicated that higher levels of perceived stress were associated with higher levels of memory complaints when controlling for the influence of depression and anxiety, but that life events and activity level were not related to memory complaints. This study highlights that perceived stress, like depression and anxiety, is a psychological factor that influences the appraisal of cognitive ability; however, larger and more heterogeneous samples will be needed to better understand the multifactorial nature of memory complaints in older adulthood.
“…To look for such effects, we assessed logical memory (i.e., memory for the details of a story), which has previously been used to demonstrate performance differences due to stress (e.g., VonDras, Powless, Olson, Wheeler, & Snudden, 2005) and medical malingering (e.g., Langeluddecke & Lucas, 2003). We predicted that logical memory would not be enhanced by action video game experience, thus revealing any motivational differences between the groups.…”
Video game expertise has been shown to have beneficial effects for visual attention processes, but the effects of action video game playing on executive functions, such as task switching and filtering out distracting information, are less well understood. In the main experiment presented here, video game players (VGPs) and nonplayers (nVGPs) switched between two tasks of unequal familiarity: a familiar task of responding in the direction indicated by an arrow, and a novel task of responding in the opposite direction. nVGPs had large response time costs for switching from the novel task to the familiar task, and small costs for switching from the familiar task to the novel task, replicating prior findings. However, as compared to the nVGPs, VGPs were more facile in switching between tasks, producing overall smaller and more symmetric switching costs, suggesting that experience with action video games produces improvements in executive functioning. In contrast, VGPs and nVGPs did not differ in filtering out the irrelevant flanking stimuli or in remembering details of aurally presented stories. The lack of global differences between the groups suggests that the improved task-switching performance seen in VGPs was not due to differences in global factors, such as VGPs being more motivated than nVGPs.
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