Aging and Mixed Emotions: A Word-Suffix Approach in Free Recall

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Abstract

The current study investigated mixed-emotional memories in groups of young, young-old, and old-old participants. We used a “word-suffix approach” to simulate the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions. The participants engaged in a free-recall task for valenced words and mixed-emotional words (valenced words coupled with pejorative or endearment suffixes). Our results showed that the groups of older adults recalled higher numbers of suffixed words compared to their younger counterparts. Our findings highlighted older adults’ tendency to perceive and remember emotionally ambivalent words to a greater extent than younger adults and showed that the young-old participants were particularly good at solving ambivalence by focusing on positive-dominant ambivalent words.

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Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales.

David Watson, Lee Anna Clark, Auke Tellegen (1988)

In recent studies of the structure of affect, positive and negative affect have consistently emerged as two dominant and relatively independent dimensions. A number of mood scales have been created to measure these factors; however, many existing measures are inadequate, showing low reliability or poor convergent or discriminant validity. To fill the need for reliable and valid Positive Affect and Negative Affect scales that are also brief and easy to administer, we developed two 10-item mood scales that comprise the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The scales are shown to be highly internally consistent, largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period. Normative data and factorial and external evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the scales are also presented.