TITLE:
Automatic Information Processing Bias to Stress Factors by Older Adults with and without Diabetes
AUTHORS:
Perla Lizeth Hernández-Cortés, López Ramírez Ernesto Octavio, Guadalupe Elizabeth Morales Martínes, Bertha Cecilia Salazar-González
KEYWORDS:
Aging, Positivity, Diabetes, Stress, Automatic Cognitive Bias
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Aging Research,
Vol.3 No.3,
July
30,
2014
ABSTRACT: A sample of 65 older adults (with and without diabetes) as well as a
sample of 84 healthy young people were required to take affective priming
studies to compare recognition latencies of stress related word pairs against
recognition latencies of positive, negative and neutral word pairs. Moreover,
older adults took a stress questionnaire related to relevant disturbing events
in the third age. The goal was to test any automatic emotional processing bias
to these events. Results suggested that even when people with diabetes obtained
low stress test scores, they showed automatic cognitive bias to process
stressful events differently than older adults without diabetes and young
people. This suggested that people with diabetes patients’ controlled
strategies to cope with stress might not be aware of such an automatic
cognitive bias. It is argued that this information processing style to
stressful events makes patients prone to cognitive emotional vulnerability.