Waring Jill D, Seiger Ashley N, Solomon Paul R, Budson Andrew E, Kensinger Elizabeth A
a Sierra Pacific Mental Illness, Research, Education and Clinical Center , VA Palo Alto Healthcare System , Palo Alto , CA , USA.
Cogn Emot. 2014;28(8):1407-21. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2014.886558. Epub 2014 Feb 17.
The present study examined memory accuracy and confidence for personal and public event details of the 2008 presidential election in healthy older adults and those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Participants completed phone interviews within a week after the election and after a 10-month delay. MCI patients and healthy older adults had comparable emotional reactions to learning the outcome of the election, with most people finding it to be a positive experience. After the delay period, details about the election were better remembered by all participants than a less emotionally arousing comparison event. However, MCI patients had more difficulty than healthy older adults correctly recalling details of public information about the election, although often the MCI patients could recognise the correct details. This is the first study to show that MCI patients' memory can benefit from emotionally arousing positive events, complementing the literature demonstrating similar effects for negative events.
本研究考察了健康老年人和轻度认知障碍（MCI）患者对2008年总统选举中个人和公共事件细节的记忆准确性和信心。参与者在选举后一周内以及延迟10个月后完成了电话访谈。MCI患者和健康老年人对得知选举结果有着相似的情绪反应，大多数人认为这是一次积极的经历。在延迟期过后，与一个情绪唤起程度较低的对比事件相比，所有参与者对选举细节的记忆都更好。然而，MCI患者在正确回忆选举公共信息细节方面比健康老年人更困难，尽管MCI患者通常能够识别出正确的细节。这是第一项表明MCI患者的记忆可以从情绪唤起的积极事件中受益的研究，补充了表明负面事件有类似效果的文献。
