Department of Psychology.
Psychol Aging. 2019 Aug;34(5):655-664. doi: 10.1037/pag0000367. Epub 2019 Jun 10.
Research has shown that remembering emotional information can occur at the expense of surrounding neutral background information; this emotional memory trade-off occurs similarly in both younger and older adults. We investigated how levels of cortisol, a hormone that acts on the central nervous system, impact emotional memory with age. Younger and older adult participants incidentally encoded emotional (positive, negative, or neutral) items placed on neutral backgrounds and later completed recognition tests for both the items and the backgrounds. Cortisol was measured at multiple time points to assess basal cortisol. Results are reported for prelearning levels, as findings were comparable across time points. Results revealed that higher levels of cortisol predicted a lower memory trade-off effect for older adults compared to younger adults and that this age difference in the role of cortisol tended to be strongest for memory for negative items (rather than for backgrounds or neutral items). No such interaction emerged for the positive trade-off effect. These results suggest that cortisol levels play a different role in supporting emotional memory across the life span, with lower levels of cortisol potentially more adaptive for memory for negative emotional information and higher levels indicating potential impairment with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
研究表明，记住情绪信息可能会以牺牲周围中性背景信息为代价；这种情绪记忆权衡在年轻人和老年人中同样存在。我们研究了皮质醇（一种作用于中枢神经系统的激素）水平如何随年龄影响情绪记忆。年轻和年长的参与者偶然地将情绪（积极、消极或中性）项目编码到中性背景上，然后完成对项目和背景的识别测试。皮质醇在多个时间点进行测量，以评估基础皮质醇。报告了预学习水平的结果，因为在不同时间点的结果是可比的。结果表明，与年轻人相比，较高的皮质醇水平预示着老年人的记忆权衡效应较低，而皮质醇在年龄差异中的作用在记忆负面项目时更为明显（而不是背景或中性项目）。积极权衡效应则没有出现这种相互作用。这些结果表明，皮质醇水平在整个生命周期中对支持情绪记忆起着不同的作用，较低的皮质醇水平可能更适合记忆负面情绪信息，而较高的皮质醇水平则表明随着年龄的增长可能会出现潜在的损害。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。
