Perceived Cognitive Demands of Emotion Regulation in Young Adults and Cognitively Diverse Older Adults

TL;DR

This study explores how different age groups and cognitive abilities perceive the mental effort needed for managing emotions, finding that older adults with cognitive issues face more challenges.

Contribution

The study reveals how cognitive impairment affects perceived emotion regulation demands and strategy use in older adults.

Findings

Older adults with MCI report higher emotion regulation demands in lab tasks compared to younger and cognitively normal older adults.

Young and cognitively normal older adults use less demanding strategies more frequently, while MCI older adults do not show this pattern.

Strategies focused on positive emotions are perceived as less demanding than those targeting negative emotions.

Abstract

Effective emotion regulation (ER) often requires cognitive resources, but some strategies are theorized to be more cognitively demanding than others. Individuals can maintain emotional well-being by selecting ER strategies consistent with their available resources. Selection of low-demand strategies may be especially helpful for older adults experiencing accelerated cognitive decline. In this study, young adults (age 21–34, n = 66), cognitively normal older adults (CN; age 70–83, n = 90), and older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI; 70–84, n = 60) reported their perceived ER demands in a laboratory task and regarding their general use of ten ER strategies. We examined group differences in perceived demands as well as links between demands and frequency of use. Group differences varied by context: in the laboratory task, older adults with MCI reported higher demands than young and CN older adults, but reports of general demand perceptions revealed young adults perceive strategies as more demanding than older adults. Strategies varied significantly in their perceived cognitive demands, with strategies focused on enhancing positive emotion (e.g., savoring) rated as less demanding than those focused on reducing negative emotion (e.g., distraction). Multilevel models revealed that regulators used strategies less that they perceived as higher in cognitive demands among young adults (b=–0.20, SE = 0.05, p<.001) and CN older adults (b=–0.26, SE = 0.05, p<.001), but not older adults with MCI (b=–0.07, SE = 0.06, p=.220). Findings suggest that older adults may often have more ER expertise, but MCI may create ER difficulties, interfering with the ability to select easier to implement strategies.