{"id":5706,"date":"2020-11-04T07:59:31","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T07:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=5706"},"modified":"2020-11-04T07:59:31","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T07:59:31","slug":"happy-people-less-likely-to-experience-memory-decline-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=5706","title":{"rendered":"Happy people less likely to experience memory decline: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>New York:<\/strong> People who feel enthusiastic and cheerful &#8212; what psychologists call &#8220;positive affect&#8221; &#8212; are less likely to experience memory decline as they age, say researchers.<\/p>\n<p>The result, published in the journal Psychological Science, adds to a growing body of research on positive affect&#8217;s role in healthy aging.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We may wish some memories could last a lifetime, but many physical and emotional factors can negatively impact our ability to retain information throughout life,&#8221; said study authors from Northwestern University in the US.<\/p>\n<p>For the findings, the research team analysed data from 991 middle-aged and older US adults who participated in a national study conducted at three time periods &#8212; between 1995 and 1996, 2004 and 2006, and 2013 and 2014.<\/p>\n<p>In each assessment, participants reported on a range of positive emotions they had experienced during the past 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>In the final two assessments, participants also completed tests of memory performance. These tests consisted of recalling words immediately after their presentation and again 15 minutes later.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers examined the association between positive affect and memory decline, accounting for age, gender, education, depression, negative affect, and extraversion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our findings showed that memory declined with age,&#8221; said study senior author Claudia Haase, an associate professor at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, individuals with higher levels of positive affect had a less steep memory decline over the course of almost a decade,&#8221; added Emily Hittner, a PhD graduate of Northwestern University and the paper&#8217;s lead author.<\/p>\n<p>Areas of future research might address the pathways that could connect positive affect and memory, such as physical health or social relationships, the study noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York: People who feel enthusiastic and cheerful &#8212; what psychologists call &#8220;positive affect&#8221; &#8212; are less likely to experience memory decline as they age, say researchers. The result, published in the journal Psychological Science, adds to a growing body of research on positive affect&#8217;s role in healthy aging. &#8220;We may wish some memories could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lifestyle"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5709,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5706\/revisions\/5709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}