Age Differences in Distress Following Intrusive Thoughts

侵入性思想是令人不快但又熟悉的大脑访客。这在老年人中很常见，但人们对侵入性思想的经历和后果如何随着年龄的增长而变化知之甚少。研究老年人的侵入性思想很重要，因为不想要的心理活动无处不在，因为侵入性思想是情绪失调的核心，会产生焦虑、抑郁和与发病率和死亡率相关的健康问题。我们建议研究健康老年人和焦虑老年人对侵入性思想的反应的年龄差异，以确定可以帮助我们理解保持情绪、身体和心理健康的保护因素，以及可以帮助我们学习如何干预那些与情绪困难作斗争的老年人的风险因素。在这一建议中，我们提出了一个模型来理解与年龄相关的侵入性思想复发和随之而来的痛苦的差异。我们将对老年人和年轻人进行一系列研究，使用思想抑制范式，参与者将试图抑制他们的侵入性思想。这种模式可靠地引出了侵入性想法，这将使我们能够评估复发和控制这些想法的尝试的年龄差异，赋予这些想法的意义，以及这些想法引发痛苦的程度。接下来，我们计划通过一系列操作来研究侵入性思维的年龄差异机制，如操纵思想的意义和改变可用的工作记忆容量。我们将研究与年龄相关的保护因素和风险因素，以确定它们何时会导致情绪失调，何时会导致成功衰老。最后，我们将测试该模型的翻译潜力，包括对焦虑的老年人进行简短的干预研究，以确定训练这些成年人给他们的侵入性想法分配不那么具有威胁性的含义是否可以减少他们的痛苦。我们还将评估侵入性思想和随之而来的痛苦对老年人日常功能的影响，检查决策等关键领域。最终，通过研究侵入性思想和痛苦之间的联系，我们可以更好地理解情绪和认知之间的相互作用，以及它们与衰老的相互作用。

DESCRIPTION: Intrusive thoughts are unpleasant but familiar visitors to the mind. They are a common occurrence for older adults, but little is known about how the experience and consequences of intrusive thoughts change with age. Studying intrusive thoughts in older adults is important because unwanted mental activity is so ubiquitous, and because intrusive thoughts are central to emotion dysregulation, producing anxiety, depression and health problems that are tied to morbidity and mortality. We propose to study age differences in response to intrusive thoughts among healthy and anxious older adults to determine both the protective factors that can help us understand preservation of emotional, physical and mental health, and the risk factors that can help us learn how to intervene with those older adults who are struggling with emotional difficulties. In this proposal, we lay out a model to understand age-related differences in the recurrence of intrusive thoughts and ensuing distress. We will conduct a series of studies with older and younger adults using a thought suppression paradigm where participants will attempt to suppress their intrusive thoughts. This paradigm reliably elicits intrusive thoughts, which will allow us to evaluate age differences in the recurrence and attempts made to control these thoughts, meanings assigned to the thoughts, and the degree to which the thoughts provoke distress. Next, a series of manipulations are planned to examine the mechanisms underlying age differences in intrusive thoughts, such as manipulating the meaning assigned to thoughts and altering available working memory capacity. We will examine both age-related protective and risk factors for managing intrusive thoughts to determine when they contribute to emotion dysregulation versus when they contribute to successful aging. Finally, we will test the translational potential of the model, including brief intervention studies with anxious older adults to determine whether training these adults to assign less threatening meanings to their intrusive thoughts can reduce their distress. We will also evaluate the impact of intrusive thoughts and consequent distress on daily functioning in older adults, examining critical domains such as decision making. Ultimately, by examining the link between intrusive thoughts and distress, we can improve understanding of the interplay between emotion and cognition and their interaction with aging. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Establishing how older adults respond to intrusive thoughts, and teaching more adaptive responses to anxious older adults, is critical to promoting successful aging and public health. Intrusive thoughts have been linked to elevated cortisol, low self esteem, multiple forms of psychopathology and severe emotion dysregulation, which have in turn been shown to predict morbidity and mortality, such as increased risk of heart disease. Thus, the proposed studies will provide the basis for developing tools to prevent unhealthy responses to intrusive thoughts in older adults, and thereby help prevent emotion dysregulation and the resulting health problems.