Susan T. Charles - US grants

Emotion regulation is vital for human functioning. Because emotions are frequently experienced in a social context emotion regulation is necessary for successful social relationships, which in turn influence health status and even mortality. Studies examining age differences suggest that emotion regulation improves across the adult life span, yet few studies have explored the mechanisms behind these age-related changes. The proposed study will examine two potential mediators- life experience and cognitive appraisal style- for the relationship between age and emotional experience. Specifically, these two factors are hypothesized to influence the degree to which emotions are experienced (sadness versus anger) in response to negative stimuli. Younger and older participants (N=180) will view film clips designed with the potential to elicit different negative emotions (i.e., sadness and anger). Participants will complete questionnaires about the emotions experienced and their cognitive appraisals about each film clip. It is hypothesized that: 1) When viewing negative emotion-eliciting film clips, older adults will report less anger and more sadness compared to the reports of younger adults; 2) Cognitive appraisals (i.e., greater situational attributions and viewing thee scenario from multiple perspectives) will be related to lower levels of anger; 3) People who have experienced greater numbers of life will report a greater mix of emotions, and they will also report sadness to a greater extent than anger in response to the film clips. This study will provide information about age-related psychological strategies that potentially could be taught to younger adults (i.e.,cognitive appraisals) to and in the future to examine the effects of these strategies on physiological responses to emotional stimuli to aid in understanding the relationship between physical and emotional functioning, and how this relationship may change with age.

Contrary to early theories and negative stereotypes, emotions do not diminish with old age. In fact, a growing number of studies have documented intact, and even improved, emotion regulation across the life span. Before we generalize this model of successful aging to all adults, however, we must examine possible exceptions to this phenomenon. Studies documenting age differences in these processes have focused on predominantly healthy adults, and it is unclear how physical health problems may alter the trajectory of emotional experience. The proposed research, guided by socioemotional selectivity theory, includes three studies to examine the developmental trajectory of emotional experience among people with chronic physical health conditions, and how physical health conditions influence age differences in affective well-being and strategies used to maintain wellbeing. A better understanding of the interrelationships between age, health status and affective well-being would benefit both applied and theoretical psychology. Chronic health conditions are normative among older adults, yet health psychologists often rely on clinical interventions that do not consider age differences in their design. On the other hand, interventions designed specifically for older adults are based on studies of emotion regulation among healthy individuals, not those with chronic health conditions. Moreover, it is uncertain what subgroups of older adults are at greatest risk for affective distress over time. The specific aims are: 1) to examine how physical conditions alter the developmental trajectory of affective well-being, 2) to examine genetic and environmental influences in the covariation between chronic pain and the developmental trajectory of affective well-being, 3) to examine age differences in affective well-being and emotion regulation strategies among adults with chronic health conditions, and 4) to examine how chronic health conditions influence affective well-being and emotion regulation strategies among older adults.

Alzheimer; Alzheimer disease; Alzheimer sclerosis; Alzheimer syndrome; Alzheimer's; Alzheimer's Disease; Alzheimers Dementia; Alzheimers disease; CRISP; Care Givers; Caregivers; Chronic; Chronic stress; Cognitive; Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects Database; Daily; Dementia, Alzheimer Type; Dementia, Primary Senile Degenerative; Dementia, Senile; Emotional; Exposure to; Funding; Grant; Health; Immune Function, Cellular; Institution; Investigators; Laboratories; Life; Link; Married Persons; Morbidity; Morbidity - disease rate; Mortality; Mortality Vital Statistics; NIH; National Institutes of Health; National Institutes of Health (U.S.); Neuroendocrine; Neuroendocrine System; Neurosecretory Systems; Outcome; Perception; Physiologic; Physiological; Primary Senile Degenerative Dementia; Relative; Relative (related person); Reporting; Research; Research Personnel; Research Resources; Researchers; Resources; Risk; Source; Spouse Caregiver; Spouses; Stress; United States National Institutes of Health; care giving; caregiving; dementia of the Alzheimer type; immune function; primary degenerative dementia; psychologic; psychological; senile dementia of the Alzheimer type; spousal care giver; spousal caregiver; spouse care giver; stressor

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emerging longitudinal findings challenge the long-held contention that affective well-being increases uniformly across the life span. To date, little systematic empirical and theoretical work has established the boundary conditions within which well-being is enhanced or compromised in aging adults. The proposed research program intends to fill this gap by addressing 3 core questions that are essential to understanding the aging of well-being concerning: (1) how aging differentially affects distinct temporal measures of affective well-being (e.g., emotional reactivity; variability in emotional experience; short-term recalled emotional experiences); (2) characteristics of the psychosocial environment that may modulates these effects differentially by age; and (3) how varying aspects of experienced well-being differentially relate to perceived and objective physical health across the adult life span. The proposed project addresses these questions by applying a novel theoretical model (Strength and Vulnerability Integration; SAVI) to two longitudinal data sets. SAVI is the first theory that applies a principled account of when and under what circumstances age-graded increases will and will not be observed. SAVI predicts that the age-related positive memory bias documented in the literature largely accounts for findings of higher experienced well-being with age. This effect, however, can be minimized or eliminated in assessments of relatively proximal emotional states, and when people are given a contextual anchor (e.g., when recalling a specific event). The first dataset includes two waves of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey and the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE). Multiple aspects of well-being are assessed across 10 years among a large national sample of people spanning 50 years of adulthood, and biomarkers were collected at Time 2. The second data set will include the first burst of data from the Effects of Stress on Cognitive Aging, Physiology, and Emotion (ESCAPE) study, which consists of momentary sampling throughout the day across 14 days, nightly, weekly and a monthly assessment of emotional experiences, and biomarkers including those related to inflammation. These data capture multiple aspects of current and overall affective well-being and self-reported and objective health indices. The proposed project combines the theoretical innovations of SAVI with the methodological innovations of these data sets to test core questions about age, well-being and physical health. Knowledge gained will help inform future clinical intervention and prevention efforts by explaining these age-related and methodological dynamics and how they are related to health-related outcomes.

This National Science Foundation Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) award to the University of California-Irvine will test a cascading mentorship program for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctoral students. A centuries-old model of doctoral mentoring assumed that students learn by working alongside their faculty advisors at the lab bench. However, research as evolved into a team activity with advisors and students serving different roles and rarely working together at the same task. In this environment, students typically learn most research skills from advanced graduate students and postdoctoral researchers rather than their faculty advisors. Cascading mentorship describes such a model of mentoring from a rich network of faculty and peers. Doctoral students who receive cascading mentorship are much more likely to develop strong research skills than those who do not regardless of the quality of mentoring received from their primary faculty advisors. However, not all students are trained in large, well-functioning labs with ready-made cascading mentorship networks. In addition, factors such as shared or dissimilar cultural identity with the majority of faculty and differences in first-generation students’ access to faculty mentors, friends, or family members with doctoral degree experience may result in differences in the quality of mentoring. Thus, when doctoral programs fail to provide rich networks of cascading mentorship, it is the students from minority communities who are likely to suffer most.

In this project, approximately 65 advanced graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in cognitive science will be trained to lead cascading mentorship groups of five to ten doctoral students each. The groups will use proven pedagogical methods to help members plan their research, organize their time, and learn to produce the forms of writing on which academic success depends such as: literature reviews, funding proposals, research reports, etc. This project will address research questions related to four scale-up challenges: 1) group leader effects, i.e., whether the approach works when these mentorship groups are led by advanced graduate students rather than by a faculty member; 2) implementation cost, i.e., whether these groups can be supported in a way that is affordable for most doctoral programs; 3) long-term effects of cascading mentorship over a period of years in a variety of domains including: writing quantity and quality; progress through the graduate program; mental health and well-being; and 4) broad suitability, i.e., whether the model is equally effective for all students or whether only a subset of students benefit. Results from this project will help departments decide whether to adopt a cascading mentorship model program-wide or offer this model as an option for a subset of students.

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.