“…Thus, we expected caregivers, particularly women, would show worse verbal memory performance than non-caregivers. As depressive mood has a mediating role in the relationship between caregiving and verbal declarative memory decline, especially in women [ 1 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 25 , 26 , 27 ], we expected to find that high depressive mood was associated to worse verbal memory performance, particularly in women. Finally, considering that the stressed middle-aged population and caregivers presented a higher T level average and a specific response to an acute laboratory stressor than non-caregivers [ 10 , 27 ], and the fact that T reduces the risk of cognitive decline in middle-aged men and women [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 19 ], we hypothesized that ED caregivers would present higher T levels at specific times in response to laboratory tasks than non-caregivers, and T would be positively related to declarative memory performance.…”