Émotion - Cognition - Vieillissement (Oubli Dirigé et Alexithymie)

Dans l approche cognitive du vieillissement, l émotion n a que très rarement été prise en compte. Or, si l on considère que l émotion ne peut être étudiée sans considérer son rapport à la cognition, il devrait en être de même pour la cognition. Nous allons nous intéresser ici à l inhibition de récupération, au travers du paradigme d oubli dirigé (Bjork, 1989). Nous supposons que du fait d un surinvestissement émotionnel, les âgés auront plus de difficultés à oublier volontairement les informations émotionnelles, et qu un fonctionnement alexithymique (Sifneos, 1972) favorisera l oubli volontaire de ces dernières, du fait du retrait émotionnel des alexithymiques. Le premier temps de nos expériences a étudié les conséquences de la vie en institution sur l expression des émotions. Le second temps a investigué l inhibition de récupération dans l âge et l alexithymie, au travers de trois séries d expériences d oubli dirigé. Ces recherches nous ont permis de montrer une tendance au fonctionnement alexithymique dans l âge, et un effet de l âge sur les performances mnésiques. Les expériences d oubli dirigé ont mis en avant des disparités dans les performances des âgés en fonction du type d information présenté : alors que les informations positives ont tendance à améliorer les performances des âgés, les informations à caractère négatif ont tendance à diminuer leurs performances et à rendre difficile l oubli de cette information. La diversité de nos résultats nous a amené à nous interroger sur l initiation de l inhibition de récupération dans l oubli dirigé, au profit d une focalisation attentionnelle sur les informations émotionnelles, à l origine des performances observées.Ageing is one of the privileging objects of research in cognitive psychology. However, in this cognitive approach of ageing, emotions were rarely investigated. Nevertheless, it seems that emotion, as cognition could not be separately study. In this thesis, rehearsal inhibition would investigate with directed forgetting paradigm (Bjork, 1989). As older persons tend to focalize on emotional information, we suppose that they could not intentionally forget this emotional information. In the same way, as alexithymic individuals are characterized by an emotional retreat (Sifneos, 1972), we hypothesized that alexithymia would favor intentional forgetting of emotional information. In a first time, we studied the consequences of life in nursing home on emotional expression. In a second time, we investigated retrieval inhibition in ageing and alexithymia, by means of three series of directed forgetting experiments. These researches showed on the one hand, an alexithymic tendency in ageing, and on the other hand, an effect of age on memory performances. More especially, directed forgetting experiments have shown disparities in aging performances, and forgetting capacities, depending on the nature of presented information. Thus, positive information improves aging performance, whereas negative information decreases these ones. Yet, results controversies conduct us to examine retrieval inhibition in directed forgetting, to the advantage of an attentional focus on emotional information, which would better explain the performances.MONTPELLIER-BU Lettres (341722103) / SudocSudocFranceF

Do the elders blame memory slips and controlled processes through their memory complaint ?

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Alexithymia impairs the cognitive control of negative material while facilitating the recall of neutral material in both younger and older adults

We investigated the moderating impact of the personality construct alexithymia on the ability of younger and older adults to control the recall of negative and neutral material. We conducted two experiments using the directed forgetting paradigm with younger and older adults. Participants studied negative (Experiment 1) or neutral (Experiment 2) words. Participants were instructed to forget the first half and remember the second half of an entire list of words. Overall, we found that alexithymia impairs the ability of both younger and older adults to cognitively control negative material (through both recall and inhibition). The “externally oriented thinking” factor of alexithymia appears to play a particularly pertinent role in terms of inhibiting negative material. Furthermore, older adults recalled fewer sought after negative items, but this was not evident in terms of inhibition. In contrast, only age (older adults) negatively impacted the recall of sought after neutral items. Interestingly, alexithymia had the opposite effect: the “difficulty in identifying emotions” factor of alexithymia was associated with an increased recall of neutral items. We discuss these results in terms of alexithymia and its impact on cognitive control