0000000000563219
AUTHOR
Alicia Sales
showing 28 related works from this author
How we compensate for memory loss in old age: adapting and validating the Memory Compensation Questionnaire (MCQ) for Spanish populations.
2012
Compensating entails using external strategies and mechanisms that help overcome or alleviate the decreasing memory function that comes with age. This study aims to adapt and validate the MCQ in the elderly Spanish population. A total of 403 elderly people aged between 65 and 92 in the city of Valencia (Spain) completed the questionnaire for the validation process. The factorial validity of the scale was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. The result showed a first order five-factor model with 23 items that met the criteria for model fit according to multiple fit indices. As a general conclusion, the adaptation into Spanish provided a reliable and valid measure of compensation in the…
Effects of Stimuli Repetition and Age in False Recognition
2018
The aim of the current study is to examine the effects of stimuli repetition and age in false recognition using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott experimental paradigm. Two matched samples of 32 young adults and 32 healthy older adults studied 10 lists of six words associated with three non-presented critical words. On half of the lists, the words were presented once, and on the other five lists, the words were presented three times, always following a same sequential order. After each study list, participants performed a self-paced recognition test containing 12 words: the 6 studied words and 6 other non-studied words (the 3 critical words and 3 distractors). The results show that false recogn…
Associative and implicit memory performance as a function of cognitive reserve in elderly adults with and without mild cognitive impairment
2016
AbstractThis study aims to analyze implicit and explicit memory performance as a function of cognitive reserve (CR) in a healthy control group (N = 39) and a mild cognitive impairment (MCI) group (N = 37). Both groups were subdivided into high and low cognitive reserve, and were asked to complete an explicit and implicit associative recognition tasks. The results showed that the control group was able to learn both tasks (η2 = .19, p < .0001), and the high CR group fared better (η2 = .06, p < .05). The MCI sample, conversely, was unable to learn the implicit relationship, and showed very little learning on the explicit association task. Participants diagnosed with MCI showed little pl…
Reminiscence and dementia: a therapeutic intervention.
2015
ABSTRACTBackground:Dementia is a significant public health problem. One non-pharmacological therapy that has shown its effectiveness is reminiscence, which is a psychological intervention designed to address issues of particular relevance to older adults. The aim of this study was to examine the benefits of an integrative reminiscence program in elderly people with dementia.Methods:A quasi-experimental design and purposeful sampling were conducted at two retirement homes. Forty-two elderly adults with dementia were studied to measure the effect of the therapy (23 in the experimental group and 19 in the control group). The treatment group activity was held in 10 sessions.Results:The treatmen…
Differences in false recollection according to the cognitive reserve of healthy older people
2016
We present an associative recognition experiment comparing three samples of healthy people (young people, older people with high cognitive reserve [HCR], and older people with low cognitive reserve [LCR], with each sample consisting of 40 people), manipulating stimuli repetition during the study phase. The results show significant differences among the three samples in their overall performance. However, these differences are not due to a different use of familiarity, but rather due to a different way of using recollection: although there are no differences in the hit rates between the HRC and LRC samples, the LCR group makes significantly more recollective false alarms than the HCR group. …
False memories in Lewy-body disease.
2015
Recently, de Boysson et al. (2011) [de Boysson, C., et al. (2011). False recognition in Lewy-body disease and frontotemporal dementia. Brain and Cognition, 75, 111-118.] found that patients with Lewy-body disease (LBD) showed significantly lower rates of false memories than healthy controls, using the Deese¿Roediger¿McDermott (DRM) experimental procedure. Given that this result could be explained by the practically null rate of true recognition in the LBD group (0.09), we decided to replicate the study by de Boysson et al. (2011), but including a new condition that would maximize the true recognition rate (and analyze its effect on the rate of false memories). Specifically, in a DRM experim…
The Effects of Mindfulness and Self-Compassion on Improving the Capacity to Adapt to Stress Situations in Elderly People Living in the Community
2015
ABSTRACTObjectives: This study aimed to show the effectiveness of mindfulness and self-compassion therapy in improving coping ability and adaptation to stressful situations in the elderly.Methods: Forty-five elderly non-institutionalized adults were randomized to either treatment or a treatment waiting list. A pre- and post-treatment assessment was performed, consisting of the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS), Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), and Coping Strategies Questionnaire. The program was developed over 10 sessions lasting 120 minutes each.Results: Analysis of variance for repeated measures showed significant differences in the time-group interaction for the treatment’s eff…
Older Women's Loneliness and Depression Decreased by a Reminiscence Program in Times of COVID-19.
2022
The confinement caused by the current COVID-19 pandemic protects physical health, but in turn, has a long-lasting and far-reaching negative psychosocial impact; anxiety, stress, fear and depressive symptoms. All of these have a particular impact on vulnerable older people, putting them at serious risk of loneliness. Women report feeling lonelier than men, affecting women to a greater extent. The present study aims to analyze the efficacy of an integrative reminiscence intervention in older women living in nursing homes to reduce the effects of loneliness and depression after COVID-19. 34 older women living in nursing homes are included into study and were divided into intervention group (N …
Measuring elderly people's quality of life through the Beck Hopelessness Scale: a study with a Spanish sample.
2016
Hopelessness is a key element of suicidal intent. It can instill a pessimistic outlook on the future, leading an individual to believe that suicide is the only answer to their problems. Hopelessness operates as a modulating variable between depression and suicidal behavior. The aim of this study was to confirm the factor structure of the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) in a non-clinical sample.Three hundred and sixty-two Spanish individuals, aged over 60, free of cognitive impairment and depressive symptoms, completed the BHS scale. Participants were tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), using one-, two- and three-factor models.The one- and two-factor models presented adequate fit …
Effects of an Educational Program for Professional Caregivers on Behavioral Alterations in Nursing Home Residents: Pilot Study
2020
This pilot study aims to analyze the effectiveness of a type of non-pharmacological intervention such as the educating and training of professional caregivers on behavioral alterations and prescription of psychotropic drugs of older adults in nursing homes. One hundred and forty-five people from two nursing homes were randomized to either treatment (educational training program for healthcare professionals) or a no-treatment group. Twenty-two professional caregivers in the experimental group received 20 h of a training program. Five data collection points were collected (pre and post, and three follow-ups, all six months apart). Intervention consisted of the behavioral alterations and psych…
Resilience and Coping as Predictors of Well-Being in Adults.
2016
Well-being is one of the keys to successful and optimal development across the lifespan. Based on the idea that development involves changes in individuals' adaptive capacity to meet their needs over time, the changes that occur in the second half of life require effort to adapt to the new reality. This study used a structural model to test the effects of coping strategies and resilience on well-being in a sample of 305 mid-life adults. Several constructs were measured: coping strategies, resilience, and well-being. A final model was obtained with good fit indices; psychological well-being was positively predicted by resilience and negatively by emotional coping. Moreover, positive reapprai…
Differences in familiarity according to the cognitive reserve of healthy elderly people / Diferencias en familiaridad en función de la reserva cognit…
2014
AbstractThis study examines the relationship between cognitive reserve and familiarity processes in recognition memory. We hypothesize that people with high cognitive reserve are able to better compensate in alternative information retrieval processes. Forty-five participants, divided into high and low cognitive reserve groups, conducted a recognition experiment where they were asked to discriminate between studied and non-studied words that varied in perceptual familiarity. The results indicated that participants were able to use perceptual familiarity to improve their level of recognition. More importantly, people with high cognitive reserve used familiarity better than those with low cog…
Is Age Just a Number? Cognitive Reserve as a Predictor of Divergent Thinking in Late Adulthood
2016
The purpose of the study was to test a model of causal relationships among cognitive reserve (CR), personality variables such as Neuroticism and Openness to experience, and divergent thinking (DT), independently evaluating performance in different domains (verbal and graphic). It was hypothesized that CR, Openness, and Neuroticism would each directly influence verbal and graphic DT. A total of 135 subjects between 55 and 84 years old participated in the study and were interviewed in individual sessions. For a correct fit Neuroticism was eliminated from the measurement model. The goodness-of-fit indexes of the measurement model, the adequate composite reliability index and the discriminant v…
Can there be learning potential in Parkinson’s disease? A comparison with healthy older adults
2017
Patients with Parkinson's disease may show certain cognitive impairments, although it is unclear how these deficits can affect their learning potential. The study aims to use the testing-the-limits technique to compare the potential for cognitive plasticity in a group of Patients with Parkinson's disease (N = 33) and a group of healthy older adults (N = 33). Sixty-six participants performed verbal learning test to analyze the learning potential. Repeated-measures analysis of variance showed significant main effects of time, group, and the interaction. There is a lower learning potential in subjects with Parkinson's disease; however, those still maintain a certain capacity for learning and, …
Adapting and validating the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale for elderly Spanish population.
2019
ABSTRACTObjectives:This study aims to adapt and validate the most common measure of self-esteem, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), in the elderly Spanish population based on the initial one-factor model proposed by the author of the scale.Design:The factorial validity of the scale was tested using confirmatory factor analysis.Setting:The study was carried out in the city of Valencia (Spain).Participants:A total of 231 elderly people with a mean age 72.68 (SD=8.55).Measurements:The participants completed the questionnaire RSES for the validation process, sociodemographic data and Mini-Mental State Examination.Results:Confirmatory factor analysis with a five-item structure for the one-f…
The effects of instrumental reminiscence on resilience and coping in elderly
2014
A B S T R A C T Objectives: Aging, as a stage of development is marked by major changes to which the subject must adapt. Instrumental reminiscence is based on recalling times one coped with stressful circumstances, and analyzing what it took to adapt in those situations. The purpose of the present study was to analyze the effectiveness of an instrumental reminiscent program to enhance adaptive capacity (problemfocused coping and emotion-focused) and resilience in older adults. Method: Thirty participants noninstitutionalized conducted a pre and post assessment on a treatment consisting of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Brief Resilient Coping Scale and Stress Coping Questionnaire …
Autobiographical memory for the differential diagnosis of cognitive pathology in aging
2015
Aim The present study distinguishes three memory stages across the lifespan, and aims to compare episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in healthy older adults, with amnesic mild cognitive impairment, and with Alzheimer's disease. This information can offer evidence about the way semantic and episodic autobiographical memory work, and how the disease affects them. Methods The sample was composed of 56 people, all aged over 60 years; 15 with amnestic mild cognitive impairment, 12 with Alzheimer's disease and 29 healthy older people. Participants were evaluated with the Autobiographical Memory Interview. Results A mixed anova showed significant main effects of memory and time-period, a…
Effectiveness of follow-up reminiscence therapy on autobiographical memory in pathological ageing
2015
The objective is to examine the effects of reminiscence therapy (RT) on total, episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) groups, testing the effects of RT on different stages of autobiographical memory, and its effectiveness at follow-up. A sample composed of 43 aMCI (27 treatments, 16 controls) and 30 AD (15 treatments, 15 controls) subjects were evaluated with the Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI) test. The RT consisted of 10 sessions lasting 60 minutes each. Both groups, aMCI and AD, showed significant effects on overall autobiographical memory; aMCI showed significant main effects on episodic and semanti…
Divergent Thinking in Older Adults : Understanding its Role in Well-being
2021
The purpose of the study was to explore the nature of the relationship between Divergent Thinking and Well-being. Two theoretical models about the relationship between Divergent thinking, Psychological well-being and Life Satisfaction were tested. A total of 152 subjects between 65 and 84 years old participated in the study. Final model emphasises the idea that PWB is affected by DT and that PWB is also significantly related to LS. The model also highlights the importance of four dimensions of well-being: environmental mastery, life purpose, personal growth and self-acceptance. The goodness-of-fit indexes confirmed the existence of a significant relationship between DT and well-being, and b…
The effects of healthy aging, amnestic mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's disease on recollection, familiarity and false recognition, estimat…
2016
Given the uneven experimental results in the literature regarding whether or not familiarity declines with healthy aging and cognitive impairment, we compare four samples (healthy young people, healthy older people, older people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment - aMCI -, and older people with Alzheimer's disease - AD -) on an associative recognition task, which, following the logic of the process-dissociation procedure, allowed us to obtain corrected estimates of recollection, familiarity and false recognition. The results show that familiarity does not decline with healthy aging, but it does with cognitive impairment, whereas false recognition increases with healthy aging, but decli…
Estrategias de compensación en adultos mayores: Diferencias sociodemográficas y en función de la reserva cognitiva
2015
Resumen: Los terminos de reserva cognitiva y compensacion, han sido utilizados en una amplia variedad de situaciones en la literatura cientifica para referirse a la superacion o reduccion de las perdidas o deficits en diferentes mecanismos y procesos como es la memoria. A traves del Memory Compensation Questionnaire (MCQ), se pretende analizar los diferentes mecanismos de compensacion en relacion con ciertas variables sociodemograficas (edad, genero y nivel educativo) de una muestra espanola y establecer, a partir de una medida combinada de reserva cognitiva (RC), las diferencias existentes entre sujetos con alta y baja reserva en el uso de mecanismos de compensacion. Se evaluo a 264 sujeto…
Repetition increases false recollection in older people
2015
Aging is accompanied by an increase in false alarms on recognition tasks, and these false alarms increase with repetition in older people (but not in young people). Traditionally, this increase was thought to be due to a greater use of familiarity in older people, but it was recently pointed out that false alarms also have a clear recollection component in these people. The main objective of our study is to analyze whether the expected increase in the rate of false alarms in older people due to stimulus repetition is produced by an inadequate use of familiarity, recollection, or both processes. To do so, we carried out an associative recognition experiment using pairs of words and pairs of …
The Role of Recollection and Familiarity in Nondemented Parkinson's Patients
2017
The aim of the current study was to examine if recollection and familiarity decline in nondemented Parkinson's patients. To do so we compared a sample of older people with Parkinson's disease (n = 32) to a control sample of healthy older people (n = 32) on an associative recognition task in which we manipulated the repetition of the pairs during the study phase (half of the pairs were presented once and half twice) to obtain corrected estimates of recollection, familiarity, and false recognition based on the logic of the process-dissociation procedure. The results clearly show that recollection is impaired but familiarity is preserved in nondemented Parkinson's patients. The results show th…
An overall decline both in recollection and familiarity in healthy aging
2015
Background: In the area of recognition memory, the experimental data have been inconsistent about whether or not familiarity declines in healthy aging. A recent meta-analysis concluded that familiarity is impaired when estimated with the remember-know procedure, but not with the process- dissociation procedure. Method: We present an associative recognition experiment with remember-know judgments that allow us to estimate both recollection and familiarity using both procedures in the same task and with the same participants (a sample of healthy older people and another sample of young people). Moreover, we performed a within-subjects manipulation of the type of materials (pairs of words or p…
Fronteras entre el DCL y personas mayores sanas
2016
Los cambios demográficos de los últimos años han generado grandes cambios poblacionales, con un gran número de personas mayores. Dentro de este marco de cambio demográfico, se plantea un nuevo reto para la sanidad y el estudio del desarrollo humano, ya que esta etapa está altamente asociada con aspectos relacionados con el deterioro y la enfermedad, concretamente, uno de los aspectos que más destaca por su incidencia y preocupación tiene que ver con el área cognitiva. De entre estas patologías, el deterioro cognitivo leve (DCL) se plantea como uno de los síndromes que mayores inquietudes están creando en la neurociencia debido a la evidencia sobre su posible evolución a demencia, así como a…
Compensation strategies in older adults: sociodemographic and cognitive reserve differences
2015
Los términos de reserva cognitiva y compensación, han sido utilizados en una amplia variedad de situaciones en la literatura científica para referirse a la superación o reducción de las pérdidas o déficits en diferentes mecanismos y procesos como es la memoria. A través del Memory Compensation Questionnaire (MCQ), se pretende analizar los diferentes mecanismos de compensación en relación con ciertas variables sociodemográficas (edad, genero y nivel educativo) de una muestra española y establecer, a partir de una medida combinada de reserva cognitiva (RC), las diferencias existentes entre sujetos con alta y baja reserva en el uso de mecanismos de compensación. Se evaluó a 264 sujetos jubilad…
Bem-estar psicológico em função da etapa de vida, sexo e sua interação
2016
Objetivo. Evaluar las diferencias en las dimensiones del bienestar psicológico en función de los grupos de edad, sexo y su interacción. Método. Se obtuvo una muestra de 706 participantes, dividida en tres grupos de edad (jóvenes, adultos y adultos mayores), quienes respondieron a las escalas de bienestar psicológico de Ryff. Se calculó un Manova teniendo en cuenta las variables grupo de edad, sexo y su interacción. Posteriormente, se realizaron varios Anova para conocer entre cuáles grupos existían diferencias para cada dimensión. Resultados. El análisis mostró una disminución, con la edad, en las dimensiones de bienestar psicológico de relaciones positivas con otros y crecimiento personal,…
Differences in familiarity according to the cognitive reserve of healthy elderly people
2014
This study examines the relationship between cognitive reserve and familiarity processes in recognition memory. We hypothesize that people with high cognitive reserve are able to better compensate in alternative information retrieval processes. Forty-five participants, divided into high and low cogni- tive reserve groups, conducted a recognition experiment where they were asked to discriminate between studied and non-studied words that varied in perceptual familiarity. The results indicated that participants were able to use perceptual familiarity to improve their level of recognition. More importantly, people with high cognitive reserve used familiarity better than those with low cognitive…