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Published on: February 14, 2014
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Emotion Regulation and Executive Functioning in Late Life.
David B Rompilla1, Erik C Nook2, Jacquelyn E Stephens3
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX USA.
Affective Science
|July 3, 2025
Summary
Instructing older adults to use emotion regulation strategies, such as detachment or reappraisal, improved their subsequent verbal fluency. This suggests emotion regulation can enhance cognitive function in aging.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology of Aging
- Emotion Regulation
Background:
- Emotion regulation is theorized to enhance executive functioning, but experimental evidence is limited, particularly in older adults.
- Executive functioning, including verbal fluency, inhibition, and working memory, often declines with age, making it a pressing concern.
- Understanding emotion-cognition interactions is crucial for developing interventions to support cognitive health in later life.
Purpose of the Study:
- To experimentally investigate whether instructing older adults in emotion regulation strategies can improve subsequent executive functioning.
- To examine the effects of specific emotion regulation techniques (detachment, positive reappraisal, emotional acceptance) on cognitive performance.
- To explore the impact of emotion regulation on verbal fluency, inhibition, and working memory in healthy older adults.
Main Methods:
- A laboratory-based study involving 129 healthy older adults (aged 64-83).
- Participants watched loss-themed film clips under different instructions: 'just watch' or employ emotion regulation (detachment, positive reappraisal, acceptance).
- Executive functioning was assessed post-clip using tasks measuring verbal fluency, inhibition, and working memory.
Main Results:
- Emotion regulation selectively enhanced subsequent verbal fluency performance compared to the 'just watch' condition.
- No significant effects of emotion regulation were observed on inhibition or working memory.
- The benefits for verbal fluency were consistent across different emotion regulation strategies and remained significant after controlling for covariates.
Conclusions:
- Emotion regulation serves as a viable strategy for enhancing verbal fluency in older adults.
- This study advances the understanding of emotion-cognition interplay and its potential to support cognitive function in aging.
- Further research is warranted to explore the broader impact of emotion regulation on other executive functions in later life.
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