​Background: In everyday life, individuals evaluate the meaning of stimuli and events they encounter in relation to their personal goals, concerns, and expectations. These appraisal processes are important because they influence how individuals respond emotionally and behaviorally. In social contexts, observers can draw on emotional cues to infer how an emoter appraised a given situation. There is evidence that how individuals relate to emotions change across adulthood. Here we examine age-related differences in appraisals reconstructed from dynamic emotional expressions. Method: 55 younger and 56 older adults were presented with short video clips of male and female actors enacting four emotional states that varied in complexity and valence (happiness, anger, anxiety, and relief). Face only and face-and-body displays were shown to participants. In one Block, participants were asked to reconstruct the appraisals underlying the emotions portrayed in each video along three dimensions: novelty, pleasantness, and goal conduciveness. In another Block, participants were asked to infer the emotions portrayed in each video. Results. Across all stimuli, older adults inferred higher novelty appraisals than younger adults. Older adults also inferred higher pleasantness and goal-conduciveness appraisals than younger adults, an effect that was driven by displays of happiness. Finally, older adults provided higher ratings on positive emotion scales than younger adults. Conclusion: Our results reveal an additional facet of emotional functioning that is shaped by aging. Older adults reconstruct appraisals differently than younger adults, which has implications for how individuals across the adult lifespan interpret emotions and adjust their behaviours in social interactions.

Background: The lack of validated clinical tools to assess the complaint related to anomia in patients with degenerative aphasia is a shortcoming despite recommendations in favour of a patient-centred approach. Aims: We aimed to develop and validate a Self- and Hetero-assessment Questionnaire for Anomia (S.H.Q.A.) to be used by patients, caregivers and speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Methods & ProceduresThe development of the questionnaire was carried out following a six-stage methodology. Psychometric analysis was carried out on 27 patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), 53 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), their caregivers and their SLPs. Outcomes & Results: Composed of 41 questions, it explores five domains: the contexts and evolution of the severity of the word-finding difficulty, the types of errors and difficulties, the discourse consequences, the strategies employed and their effectiveness, the consequences on social life. Psychometric analysis revealed moderate validity (r < -0.50) and excellent sensitivity (>0.95) for both populations. Fidelity was moderate to excellent for the PPA patient, caregiver and SLP versions of the questionnaire (0.74 < r < 0.92) and satisfactory for the AD patient version (r = 0.49). Conclusions: The S.H.Q.A. meets the validation criteria for application as a tool to assess anomia complaints in patients with PPA and AD. Its use will complement objective assessments, integrating the anomia-related complaint into therapeutic choices and fostering partnership with caregivers. It could also be useful in assessing the effectiveness of interventions for daily communication and changes in patients' needs.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into healthcare has advanced significantly, yet affect recognition remains a major challenge, particularly in AI-assisted interventions such as Computerized Cognitive Training (CCT). The THERADIA-WoZ corpus was developed to enable multimodal affect recognition in the context of AI-driven CCT, focusing on an older adult population. This study extends the corpus by introducing a dataset collected from young adults, allowing direct comparison of affect recognition models across age groups. Our objective was to assess whether multimodal models based on dimensions borrowed from appraisal theories outperform those based on categorical labels and to evaluate their generalisation power across age corpora. After comparing both corpora, models were trained and tested using within-corpus, cross-corpus, and mixed-corpus evaluation. Results revealed that appraisal dimensions consistently outperformed categorical labels across all conditions, demonstrating greater predictive accuracy and stability. Notably, categorical labels failed to generalise across age corpora, as performance dropped to chance levels in cross-corpus evaluation. In contrast, appraisal dimensions maintained predictive performance above chance, reinforcing their robustness for cross-age affect recognition. Furthermore, training on both corpora did not improve generalisation beyond within-corpus training. The findings support the theoretical and practical advantages of appraisal dimensions over categorical labels in affective computing. They also highlight the importance of multimodal fusion and deep learning representations for emotion modeling. To facilitate future research, we provide an API for researchers interested in time-continuous emotion prediction, offering valuable tools for behavioral sciences to enhance the measurement of emotional states in various experimental settings.

This study examined the influence of positive, negative, and neutral emotional contexts, presented as background IAPS images, on encoding strategy selection (Experiment 1), strategy execution (Experiment 2), and subsequent recall performance across young and older adults. In Experiment 1, participants selected either mental imagery or repetition strategy to encode neutral words presented in the emotional or neutral contexts. Results showed that emotional context did not influence strategy choice in either age group, with older adults consistently preferring repetition across contexts, whereas young adults exhibiting greater variability in strategy choice. Consistently, recall accuracy did not vary across emotional contexts as a function of the chosen strategy in either age group. In Experiment 2, when strategy was imposed, emotional context influenced recall when encoding was executed by mental imagery, in both young and older adults. Notably, recall was lower in the negative context than in the neutral and positive contexts, with no difference between the latter two emotional contexts. Repetition produced similar recall in all emotional contexts. Interestingly, in both neutral and positive contexts, recall was higher after encoding by mental imagery than by repetition, while no difference was observed in negative context. These data indicate that task-irrelevant emotional context may primarily impact strategy execution rather than strategy selection, and that negative context can impair the effectiveness of deep encoding (i.e., mental imagery) similarly across age groups.

Two effects on memory have been described in the literature: the emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) (i.e., an emotional stimulus is better remembered than a neutral stimulus) and the dynamic superiority effect (DSE) (i.e., a moving visual stimulus is better remembered than a static stimulus). However, the DSE has previously only been studied using complex visual stimuli (e.g., video clips). Thus, the first objective of the present study was to examine whether the DSE will be observed with simple visual stimuli (i.e., isolated moving stimuli). The second objective was to examine whether people’s emotional memory will be affected by stimulus motion. We conducted three experiments, two using a free recall task, Experiment 1A (online) and 1B (in-person), and one using a recognition task (in-person). Participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral stimuli in two motion conditions, dynamic and static, and then had to recall or recognize them. In all three experiments, we observed an EEM but no DSE. Thus, our data verify that emotions affect memory performance but provide no evidence of motion effects on memory of simple stimuli.

Numerous studies have shown cognitive benefits when children engage in activities in natural environments (NE). These benefits may stem from the restorative qualities of nature, which help reduce stress and replenish attentional capacities. According to embodied cognition theories, cognitive processes are shaped by our interactions with the environment. Given that NE facilitate interactions, we investigated whether cognitive benefits are driven by NE characteristics or sensorimotor interactions. Eighty-nine second-grade students participated in activities under three experimental conditions: sensorimotor activities in NE, non-sensorimotor activities in NE, and sensorimotor activities in built environments. Selective attention, categorization, recognition, short-term retention, and affect were assessed pre- and post-intervention. Results showed significant benefits of sensorimotor activities on short-term retention and selective attention, especially in NE. This suggests that sensorimotor experiences support cognitive processes and that NE provides an optimal context for such interactions, enhancing cognitive benefits.

We present THERADIA WoZ, an ecological corpus designed for audiovisual research on affect in healthcare. Two groups of senior individuals, consisting of 52 healthy participants and 9 individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), performed Computerised Cognitive Training (CCT) exercises while receiving support from a virtual assistant, tele-operated by a human in the role of a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ). The audiovisual expressions produced by the participants were fully transcribed, and partially annotated based on dimensions derived from recent appraisal theory models, including novelty, intrinsic pleasantness, goal conduciveness, and coping. Additionally, the annotations included 23 affective labels from the literature of achievement affects. We present the data collection, transcription, and annotation protocols, alongside a detailed analysis of the annotated dimensions and labels. Baseline methods and results for their automatic prediction are also presented. Results reveal that the dimensions of appraisal theory can be predicted, with the performance varying across different modalities. The corpus aims to serve as a valuable resource for researchers in affective computing, and is made available to both industry and academia.

Cognitive modifications during ageing can affect decision-making competence (DMC). As this ability is central to the preservation of autonomy, our study aims to investigate how it changes in elderly adults and to determine whether such changes are linked to the deterioration of executive functions and working memory. To this end, 50 young adults and 50 elderly adults were assessed with executive, working memory, and DMC tasks. The latter comprised the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and a scenario task based on situations inspired by everyday life, under conditions of both risk and ambiguity. The results revealed lower performances in old than in young adults for the updating, inhibition, and working memory tasks. The IGT failed to distinguish between the two age groups. However, the scenario task did permit such a distinction, with young adults seeking more risky and ambiguous choices than elderly adults. Moreover, updating and inhibition capacities appeared to influence DMC.

Background: Decision-making is a highly complex process that depends on numerous cognitive functions, such as episodic memory. It is also influenced by aging. However, how changes in episodic memory with age contribute to changes in decision-making is not clear yet. Objective: This work aimed to examine the role of two memory processes, recollection and familiarity, in decision-making in ageing. Method: Thirty young adults and 30 older adults performed two episodic memory tasks: recognition, which allowed for the measurement of recollection and familiarity, and recall, which allowed for the measurement of recollection. In both tasks, they first viewed a series of pictures and then were asked to recognise or recall them respectively. They also performed an original scenario task based on situations inspired by everyday life, evaluating decision-making under conditions of either risk or ambiguity. In this task, participants were presented with short descriptions of situations requiring a decision and had to choose between two given options. Results: Lower performances was observed in recall and recognition tasks in older than in young adults. In the scenarios task, young adults sought significantly more risk and ambiguity than older adults. In both young and older adults, recollection and familiarity processes were involved differently in decision-making. The former is more involved in decision-making under ambiguity, and the latter in decision-making under risk. Conclusions: The results suggest that decision-making changes with age, but that the involvement of the episodic memory, familiarity and recollection processes, does not appear to vary with age.

Emotions are known to influence cognitive performance, particularly working memory (WM) in both its aspects, processing, and maintenance. One explanatory mechanism might be that negative stimuli capture attentional resources, leaving fewer resources for attentional maintenance and processing of information in WM. However, this attentional capture was only investigated using WM tasks in which participants were explicitly asked to process negative items. The aim of this paper was to determine whether explicit processing of emotional stimuli is necessary to impair WM performance, or if their mere presence is enough to capture attention. For this purpose, participants performed a complex span task in which they alternated between memorizing a series of neutral words and processing either emotional images or neutral ones. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to explicitly process emotional images, whereas in Experiment 2, emotional images were presented without any processing being required. In both experiments, we observed a decrease in memory performance when the images were negative compared to neutral. Whether or not voluntary processing is involved, emotional images seem to capture attentional resources, which in turn leads to a decline in memory performance. These results were discussed in relation to attentional theories and the influence of emotion on the specific mechanisms of WM.

BackgroundImpaired cognitive function is observed in many pathologies, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer disease. At present, the pharmaceutical treatments available to counter cognitive decline have only modest effects, with significant side effects. A nonpharmacological treatment that has received considerable attention is computerized cognitive training (CCT), which aims to maintain or improve cognitive functioning through repeated practice in standardized exercises. CCT allows for more regular and thorough training of cognitive functions directly at home, which represents a significant opportunity to prevent and fight cognitive decline. However, the presence of assistance during training seems to be an important parameter to improve patients’ motivation and adherence to treatment. To compensate for the absence of a therapist during at-home CCT, a relevant option could be to include a virtual assistant to accompany patients throughout their training. ObjectiveThe objective of this exploratory study was to evaluate the interest of including a virtual assistant to accompany patients during CCT. We investigated the relationship between various individual factors (eg, age, psycho-affective functioning, personality, personal motivations, and cognitive skills) and the appreciation and usefulness of a virtual assistant during CCT. This study is part of the THERADIA (Thérapies Digitales Augmentées par l’Intelligence Artificielle) project, which aims to develop an empathetic virtual assistant. MethodsA total of 104 participants were recruited, including 52 (50%) young adults (mean age 21.2, range 18 to 27, SD 2.9 years) and 52 (50%) older adults (mean age 67.9, range 60 to 79, SD 5.1 years). All participants were invited to the laboratory to answer several questionnaires and perform 1 CCT session, which consisted of 4 cognitive exercises supervised by a virtual assistant animated by a human pilot via the Wizard of Oz method. The participants evaluated the virtual assistant and CCT at the end of the session. ResultsAnalyses were performed using the Bayesian framework. The results suggest that the virtual assistant was appreciated and perceived as useful during CCT in both age groups. However, older adults rated the assistant and CCT more positively overall than young adults. Certain characteristics of users, especially their current affective state (ie, arousal, intrinsic relevance, goal conduciveness, and anxiety state), appeared to be related to their evaluation of the session. ConclusionsThis study provides, for the first time, insight into how young and older adults perceive a virtual assistant during CCT. The results suggest that such an assistant could have a beneficial influence on users’ motivation, provided that it can handle different situations, particularly their emotional state. The next step of our project will be to evaluate our device with patients experiencing mild cognitive impairment and to test its effectiveness in long-term cognitive training.

Previous research has shown that working memory processes are affected by emotions. However, it is not clear if both components - maintenance and processing of information - are modulated by emotion. Since emotion is intimately related to attention, we focused on attentional maintenance in working memory. In a previous study, using a complex span task, we showed that processing emotionally negative information reduced maintenance of neutral information in working memory. The objective of the present study was first to replicate the results of our previous study and second to investigate whether maintaining emotional information would affect processing of neutral information. In Experiment 1, young adults were asked to remember a series of five letters each followed by images, either negative or neutral, to be categorized. In Experiment 2, participants were required to memorize a series of five images, either negative or neutral, each followed by digits to be categorized. In order to focus on attentional maintenance, in both experiments the tasks were performed under continuous articulatory suppression. In Experiment 1, longer processing times were observed for emotional stimuli than neutral ones, and lower recall of series of letters when negative stimuli were processed. In Experiment 2, higher memory performance was observed for negative images than neutral ones and longer processing times of digits when a series of negative stimuli was maintained. Overall, our results show that emotion impacts both processing and attentional maintenance in working memory. This is consistent with models of working memory suggesting an attentional trade-off between maintenance and processing.

Neurodegenerative diseases have become increasingly prevalent, particularly among the elderly population, with conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) affecting millions of individuals in France. The incidence of neurodegenerative disorders has been increasing over the last decades due to the aging population and the lack of curative treatments. One critical consequence of this growing issue is the substantial demand for speech therapy services, as cognitive impairments are common symptoms of these conditions. However, the availability of trained speech therapists fails to meet the rising needs, leading to lengthy waiting times for appointments. This situation causes a severe public health problem, as the lack of timely interventions can exacerbate the patients' condition, impacting their quality of life. In this context, the integration of agents as virtual speech therapy assistants emerges as a potential solution to alleviate the strain on the existing healthcare system and provide timely support to elderly individuals with neurodegenerative disorders. Virtual agents can be designed to deliver personalized and interactive therapy sessions tailored to the specific needs of each patient. By leveraging artificial intelligence and natural language processing technologies, these embodied conversational agents (ECA) can engage in conversations with patients, guide them through exercises, and monitor their progress over time, in the comfort of their own homes at their preferred schedule. However, while ECA-assisted therapy shows promise, its effectiveness and acceptance among the elderly population need further investigation. To address this crucial aspect, an acceptability study is being conducted to assess the feasibility and user satisfaction with autonomous avatar-assisted therapy, in comparison to a previous study, conducted by the same team, with human-directed avatar-assisted therapy in the context of elderly individuals. The current study aims to evaluate the willingness of elderly patients to incorporate the avatar-assisted therapy into their daily care routine and explore factors influencing their acceptance or reluctance towards the technology. By gathering feedback, from participants through questionnaires and from observers through qualitative data, we sought to understand their perceptions regarding the utility, usability, and overall experience with the avatar-assisted therapy. The insights gained from this study will be instrumental in refining the design of the technology, tailoring it to better suit the preferences and capabilities of elderly patients, and informing decision-making for its potential integration as a complementary solution in neurodegenerative disorder care programs. Ultimately, this research aims to explore how avatar-assisted therapy may address speech therapy shortages and enhance the well-being and autonomy of elderly individuals with neurodegenerative conditions.

BACKGROUND Alzheimer's disease (AD) negatively impacts patients' ability to make advantageous decisions, i.e., a core ability contributing to the preservation of autonomy. OBJECTIVE The present study aims to analyze the changes that occur in the decision-making competence (DMC) in AD patients and to determine if these changes are related to the deterioration of executive functions and working memory. METHOD To this end, 20 patients with AD and 20 elderly control adults were assessed using executive, working memory, and DMC tasks. The latter comprised the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and a scenarios task based on situations inspired by everyday life and performed under conditions of risk and ambiguity. RESULTS Results revealed lower performances in AD patients than in elderly control adults for all the tasks assessing cognitive functions. The AD patients also made more strategy changes during the IGT. In the scenarios tasks, the two groups took as many ambiguous or risky decisions, but AD patients tended to take more risks in the context of gain than elderly control adults did. Switching and updating ability, as well as working memory, appeared to be involved in decisions in tasks inspired by everyday life, while inhibition was more related to the IGT performances. CONCLUSION Working memory and executive functions seem to be involved in decision-making, but in different ways in gambling and daily-life situations.

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative pathology that disrupts processing of facial expressions of emotion. The impairment was demonstrated for negative emotions in tasks of matching, discriminating, and labeling facial expressions but no study has included the expression of pain in its protocol. Objective: The objective was to study the processing of emotional facial expressions in AD with a particular interest in pain expression. Methods: Twenty-seven controls, 15 mild AD patients, and 15 moderate AD patients had to perform four emotional tasks: identification of facial expressions, matching pain expressions, discriminating the intensity of pain expressions, and judging pain intensity. Results: Some emotions were less efficiently recognized by AD patients compared to controls (p < 0.001), specifically fear from the mild stage (p < 0.05), pain and disgust from the moderate stage (p < 0.05 and p < 0.001 respectively). The Exploratory Factor Analysis showed that recognition of pain and recognition of other discreet emotions were underpinned by two different latent factors. Performances on pain expression matching task and pain intensity discrimination task did not differ by group. (p = 0.334 and p = 0.787 respectively). Finally, moderate AD patients judged the pain less intensively than the Control group for both, moderate, and severe pain intensity (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Our data suggest that AD disrupts the recognition of pain expression along with recognition of fear and disgust. Additionally, AD patients seem to underestimate pain intensity compared to controls. The self-rated pain scales should be adapted to the pain processing deficit of AD patients.

OBJECTIVE:This study investigated whether emotions and enactment can jointly increase memory performance in nondemented Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients.METHOD:Actions' drawings with negative, positive, or neutral valence were presented to 17 PD patients, 17 AD patients, and 37 elderly controls, matched to age. Two conditions of intentional encoding were proposed to each participant: one verbal, in which participants had to name the represented actions; and one motor, in which they had to mime the displayed actions. Thereafter, participants were submitted to an immediate free recall task and a delayed recognition task.RESULTS:The enactment effect was found in all three groups. The effect of emotion was also observed in that all three groups recalled negative actions better than both neutral and positive (PD patients), only neutral (AD patients), or only positive actions (elderly controls). Positive actions were not recalled better than neutral actions in any group.CONCLUSIONS:These results constitute an evidence for the preservation of the enactment effect and of the emotion effect on memory in AD and PD patients. However, they do not support the hypothesis of the combined effect of emotion and enactment on memory, neither in AD and PD patients nor in normal aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

INTRODUCTION:Recent studies on cognitive training in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) showed positive long-term effects on cognition and daily living, suggesting remote computer-based programmes to increase training sessions while reducing patient's travelling. The aim of this study is to examine short-term and long-term benefits of computer-based cognitive training at home in patients with mild to moderate AD, as a complement to the training in speech and language therapists' (SLT) offices. The secondary purpose is to study training frequency required to obtain noticeable effects.METHODS AND ANALYSES:This is a national multicentre study, conducted in SLT offices. The patients follow training in one of three conditions: once a week in SLT office only (regular condition) and once a week in SLT office plus one or three times per week at home. The trainings' content in SLT office and at home is identical. For all three groups near and far transfer will be compared with evaluate training frequency's effect. Our primary outcome is executive and working memory scores in experimental tasks, and the secondary is neuropsychological tests and questionnaires' scores. Linear models' analyses are considered for all measures with a random intercept for patients and another for per practice. The fixed effects will be: three modality groups and time, repeated measures, (T0-pretraining, T1-post-training, T2-long-term follow-up) and the interaction pairs.ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION:The study got ethics approval of the national ethical committee CPP Sud Méditerranée III (No 2019-A00458-49) and of the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties (No 919217). Informed consent is obtained from each participant. Results will be disseminated in oral communications or posters in international conferences and published in scientific journals.TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER:NCT04010175.