Widowhood Impairs Emotional Cognition Among Elderly.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The negative impacts of spousal bereavement on the emotional health of the elderly (e.g., depression and anxiety) have been revealed. However, whether widowhood impairs emotional cognition among the elderly is less known. The purpose of this study is to reveal the emotional cognitive deficits among the widowed elderly.

Methods

In this study, we recruited 44 widowed elderly (WE) and 44 elder couples (non-widowed elderly, NWE) and examined their emotional cognition including attention and visual working memory, which were measured by the visual search task and delayed-match-to-sample task, respectively. Three kinds of emotional faces (i.e., sad, angry, and happy) were adopted as the attentional or mnemonic targets.

Results

It revealed that WE had a general de

SUBMITTER: Bi T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8841410 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature