Effect of stimuli type on affective memory of patients with different severities of cognitive impairment

Abstract

Objectives

To understand the differences in affective memory performance under different degrees of cognitive impairment, this study recruited older people with different degrees of cognitive impairment, to perform emotion recognition memory tasks.

Methods

Fifty-four elderly participants aged (65-85 years) were recruited. Of these, 18 had mild cognitive impairment, 18 had a mild form of Alzheimer’s disease, and the remaining 18 were healthy. Factors such as the different emotional valences (positive, neutral, or negative) and stimulus types (pictures, words, or sounds) were manipulated to explore their influences on the emotion recognition memory of people with different degrees of cognitive impairment.

Results

The results showed that people’s performance to positive stimuli worsened as their degree of cognitive impairment increased. All participants had difficulty processing memory of affective sound stimuli compared to the other two stimulus types.

Conclusions

The results explain the decline in the cognitive ability process, in affective memory performance, of people with different degrees of cognitive impairment. This abnormal decline on affective memory performance could be an early diagnostic indicator of Alzheimer’s disease. The results can hopefully be used as a reference for subsequent research on cognition-related diseases and age-related decline, especially regarding affective memory.

Keywords:

• Affective memory
• stimuli type
• valence
• mild cognitive impairment
• Alzheimer’s disease

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the physician for assessing participants and all the participants for participating in this study.

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.