Links Between Daily Life and Laboratory Emotion Regulation Processes: The Role of Age and Cognitive Status

Abstract

Objectives

This study investigates how daily use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies predicts ER processes in the laboratory among young adults and cognitively diverse older adults.

Methods

Young adults (aged 21–34, n = 66), cognitively normal (CN) older adults (aged 70–83, n = 87), and older adults with researcher-defined mild cognitive impairment (MCI; aged 70–84; n = 58) completed an experience sampling procedure (7×/day for 9 days) reporting their distraction and reappraisal use in daily life. In a laboratory task inducing high-arousal negative emotion, they reported their (a) distraction and reappraisal use when instructed to reduce negative emotion and (b) ER success and perceptions when randomly assigned to regulate using distraction or reappraisal.

Results

Among CN older adults, a higher frequency of using a strategy in daily life predicted greater success deploying the strategy when instructed to do so but was unrelated to spontaneous strategy use in the laboratory. In contrast, among older adults with researcher-defined MCI, greater daily life strategy use predicted greater laboratory use, but not greater success. Daily strategy use in younger adults was unrelated to strategy use and success in the laboratory. Older adults with researcher-defined MCI experienced ER as more demanding but did not differ from non-impaired individuals in terms of perceived ER effort.

Discussion

Cognitively normal older adults may be better able to leverage their ER experience in novel contexts than younger adults. Older adults with MCI may be motivated to manage their emotions but experience more ER difficulty, perhaps in part due to reliance on default strategies.

Emotion regulation (ER) is viewed as a cognitively demanding process involving modulation of one’s experience or expression of emotion (Gross, 1998). Nevertheless, older adults, who normatively experience declines in some aspects of cognitive ability (Salthouse, 2009), tend to maintain or improve their emotional well-being (Charles & Carstensen, 2010). ER expertise and practiced strategy selection may compensate for certain cognitive deficits and contribute to older adults’ emotions (Urry & Gross, 2010). However, ER processes in older adults who experience accelerated cognitive decline are not well understood. This study takes a novel approach that combines experience sampling and experimental methods to examine how ER patterns in daily life predict strategy selection and success in the laboratory among young adults, cognitively normal (CN) older adults, and older adults with researcher-defined mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

MCI describes individuals experiencing cognitive decline beyond that which is considered part of the normative aging process, but who do not have dementia (Petersen, 2004). Those with MCI largely have intact functional activities, but significant impairments in at least one cognitive domain (e.g., memory, language, executive functioning, and visuospatial skills). Little is known about ER processes among older adults with MCI, but there is evidence they have reduced ability to accurately recognize emotion (McCade et al., 2011) and enhanced automatic emotional synchronization with social stimuli (Sturm et al., 2013), suggesting it may be more effortful for older adults with MCI to activate deliberate regulatory processes. Older adults with MCI tend to have lower emotional well-being compared with CN older adults (Bárrios et al., 2013; Stites et al., 2017). This difference may be due in part to deficits in cognitive control, which is central to effective ER (Ochsner & Gross, 2005).

Effectively regulating emotions is a complex task, entailing several processes that draw on cognitive resources. Regulators must identify a discrepancy between actual and desired emotions to activate an emotional goal, select and implement an adaptive ER strategy in service of the goal, and monitor changes in emotion to know when to make adjustments (Pruessner et al., 2020). Several studies have identified positive associations between cognitive ability and successful implementation of an instructed strategy in laboratory tasks (e.g., Hendricks & Buchanan, 2016; McRae et al., 2012; Opitz et al., 2014). Complex tasks typically involve a combination of automatic processes, which require little attention or awareness, and controlled processes, which require deliberate, effortful attention and awareness (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977). With practice and experience, cognitive operations can shift from requiring more cognitive control to being more automatic (Craik & Byrd, 1982). This line of reasoning has been applied to ER, with Gross and John (2003) proposing a practice effects model in which individuals gain proficiency in implementing frequently used strategies through repeated practice. Individuals also may be likely to select strategies with which they have experience because of the low demands associated with recruiting automatic processes, and tendencies to implement low-demand strategies over high-demand strategies (Sheppes et al., 2014). A recent study of undergraduate participants found some support for this practice hypothesis, with habitual reappraisal being associated with self-perceived reappraisal success in daily life (Wylie et al., 2023). Another study of young adults showed that training in reappraisal over the course of a few weeks was associated with improved emotional experience (Denny & Ochsner, 2014). It is unclear, however, whether and the extent to which older adults may spontaneously implement and benefit from well-practiced ER strategies.

Theories of adult development suggest that older adults may compensate for their relatively low cognitive ability by relying on other resources for ER. The Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation model (Urry & Gross, 2010) posits that individuals can effectively manage their emotions across adulthood by selecting ER strategies that align with their available resources. According to this perspective, older adults are more likely than younger adults to regulate their emotions using strategies that capitalize on their knowledge and experience. The Strength and Vulnerability Integration (SAVI; Charles, 2010) model describes how aging is associated not only with vulnerabilities, such as reduced cognitive control and less physiological flexibility but also strengths, such as accumulated life experience (Urry & Gross, 2010). This model suggests older adults can benefit emotionally from their expertise in navigating the social–emotional world through selection of more well-practiced strategies.

Individuals build knowledge with age and generally retain access to that knowledge into older adulthood (Umanath & Marsh, 2014). Work on cognitive test performance has documented that prior knowledge and experience disproportionately benefit older (vs younger) adults’ memory performance when that knowledge provides extra strategic support (Badham et al., 2016). Longitudinal studies that entail yearly cognitive testing of older adults show that those who remain CN exhibit practice effects across cognitive domains, whereas those with MCI do not show practice effects in any domain (Howieson et al., 2008; Machulda et al., 2013). These differential benefits of experience may extend to other cognitive domains that are pertinent for effective ER. Thus, we expect CN older adults to experience more benefits from relying on prior ER experience than younger adults and older adults with MCI.

The Present Study

In this study, we assessed ER in daily life and in a standardized laboratory context for young adults, CN older adults, and older adults with researcher-defined MCI. Participants completed an experience sampling protocol in which they reported on their momentary use of two commonly used ER strategies theorized to vary in cognitive demands: distraction and reappraisal (Scheibe et al., 2015; Sheppes & Meiran, 2008). In a laboratory film-viewing task, participants were instructed to (1) respond naturally to film clips and report on their emotions, (2) regulate their emotions using any ER strategy, and then (3) regulate emotions using either distraction or reappraisal (based on random assignment). Assessing emotions under natural viewing conditions allows us to account for individual differences in emotional reactivity, or natural emotional responses to a stimulus (Gross et al., 2000). By accounting for emotional reactivity, we are able to examine emotion that is more likely a result of conscious attempts to regulate by accounting for variance in naturally occurring emotion. Recent work suggests that cognitive ability may be most important for strategy selection in high-arousal and negative contexts (Growney & English, 2023), so we used films eliciting disgust and fear (high-arousal, negative emotions). We assessed spontaneous ER strategy selection and successful implementation of the instructed strategy, indexed by emotional experience and self-perception.

We preregistered the following hypotheses about the role of ER experience in young adults, CN older adults, and older adults with researcher-defined MCI:

• (1) Daily life use of distraction and reappraisal are positively associated with spontaneous selection of distraction and reappraisal, respectively, in the laboratory (H1a), especially among CN older adults (H1b).

• (2) Daily life use of distraction or reappraisal is associated with greater ER success when instructed to use that same strategy in a laboratory (H2a), especially among CN older adults (H2b).

• (3) Daily life use of distraction or reappraisal is associated with lower perceived demands implementing the strategy when instructed to do so in the laboratory (H3a), especially among CN older adults (H3b).

We also predicted that adults with researcher-defined MCI generally perceive higher ER demands compared with CN older adults and younger adults (H4). Additionally, we explored group differences in ER effort exertion (i.e., how hard participants tried to regulate) as well as the association between daily life use of strategies and ER effort.

Method

Participants

Participants were 216 individuals recruited from the St. Louis, MO, USA community through phone calls, letters, flyers, and databases of research participants. We used the Telephone Mini-Mental State Exam (Newkirk et al., 2004) as a cognitive screener, and required participants to score at least 22 to be eligible for the study. To be eligible to participate, participants needed to be fluent in English. We did not include psychiatric screeners in the recruitment process. Five individuals completed the ER task but did not complete experience sampling, so they were excluded from the present study. The final sample was 211 individuals: 55.9% women, 42.7% men, and 1.4% other gender. The racial/ethnic composition of the sample reflects that of the St. Louis area, with 66.8% identifying as White, Caucasian, or European American, 27.0% as Black or African American, 2.4% as Asian, Asian American, or Pacific Islander, 2.4% as Hispanic or Latino, 0.5% as American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.5% as Middle Eastern or Arab American, and 1.9% as other race or ethnicity.

The sample was comprised of 66 young adults (aged 21–34, M = 27.15, SD = 3.90), 87 cognitively normal older adults (CN older: aged 70–83, M = 75.24, SD = 3.81), and 58 older adults with researcher-defined mild cognitive impairment (MCI older: aged 70–84, M = 76.81, SD = 4.39). Additional participant characteristics are shown in Supplementary Tables 1–3.

Procedure

After providing informed consent, participants provided the contact information for someone who knows them well to serve as an informant in the study. An experimenter conducted an interview with each informant asking about participants’ social and cognitive functioning. Participants also completed cognitive assessments in the lab. Participants completed trait-level questionnaires regarding demographics and well-being, including depressive symptoms as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression-Revised (CESD-R) scale (Eaton et al., 2004; findings are not altered when omitting participants who were at risk for clinical depression according to the CESD-R scale’s criteria for a major depressive episode). In an experience sampling protocol, they completed 9 days of surveys in which they were prompted to complete short questionnaires about their momentary experiences seven times throughout the day. Prompts were sent randomly in each 2-h interval during a 14-h period of participants’ choice. Participants could only complete a survey in response to a random survey prompt, and it was not possible to complete more than seven surveys in 1 day. Participants completed an average of 38.92 prompts (SD = 15.97). Older adults with researcher-defined MCI completed fewer prompts, M = 34.33 (17.13; observed minimum–maximum = 1–59), than CN older adults, M = 41.00 (15.10; observed minimum–maximum = 3–63) and young adults, M = 41.79 (14.79; observed minimum–maximum = 4–62). Participants were required to begin taking surveys within 15 min of the prompt, otherwise the survey window would close. This short time window minimizes effects of recall bias but also results in somewhat lower compliance compared with experience sampling protocols that do not close surveys or allow longer response time windows. A trained experimenter carried out an in-depth, interactive tutorial with participants to clarify each survey question, ensure understanding (e.g., asking for ER strategy examples), and explained how to use a smartphone device. Participants borrowed a device from the lab if they did not have their own.

During a separate lab session, a subset of participants (n = 36 young adults, n = 7 CN older adults, n = 3 researcher-defined MCI older adults) completed the laboratory ER task and the laboratory cognitive testing in the same session to comply with Coronavirus Disease 2019 guidelines restricting the number of in-person sessions we could run. In these cases, participants completed the ER task before other laboratory activities) which occurred after experience sampling, participants completed an ER task involving short clips (approximately 2 min) eliciting high-arousal negative emotions. In each of three blocks, participants viewed one clip eliciting disgust and one clip eliciting fear, with clips counterbalanced across blocks. Disgust clips depicted Fear Factor contestants participating in an unappetizing eating competition and fear clips were taken from The Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, and The Blair Witch Project; all clips were validated to elicit the target emotion in age-diverse groups (Beaudreau et al., 2009; Growney & English, 2023; Schaefer et al., 2010).

In Block 1, participants passively viewed clips without instructions to regulate. In Block 2, participants viewed clips under instructions to regulate emotions to feel less negative using any strategy they wanted (selected strategy): “Please watch the next film clip carefully. Although you are watching the film clip, please use any strategy to get rid of your negative feelings.” In Block 3, participants viewed clips under instructions to regulate emotions to feel less negative using either distraction or reappraisal, depending on randomly assigned conditions (instructed strategy): “Please watch the next film clip carefully. This time please try to think about something unrelated to what you are seeing. That is, as you watch the film clip, please try to shift your attention away from what’s making you feel negatively” (distraction), or “Please watch the next film clip carefully. This time please stay focused on the film but try to adopt a detached and unemotional attitude. That is, as you watch the film clip, please try to think about what you are seeing objectively” (reappraisal; based on instructions from Shiota & Levenson, 2009). After each clip participants reported their emotional experience. After clips in the two regulation blocks, they also reported on their experiences with regulating emotions. Before each clip, participants completed a distractor task involving letters and words designed to bring emotions to baseline (Joorman et al., 2007).

Measures

Cognitive status

Older adults were classified as CN or researcher-defined MCI based on a protocol informed by recommendations from Petersen et al. (2018). Participants completed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox Cognitive Battery (Mungas et al., 2014) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; Nasreddine et al., 2005). A researcher certified in clinical dementia rating also conducted the Structured Interview and Scoring Tool (Okereke et al., 2011), a semistructured interview including questions about how memory and thinking interfere with the participant’s daily functioning. We interviewed both participants and participant-nominated informants. Older adults were classified as having researcher-defined MCI if (a) semistructured interviews with both participant and informant resulted in a score of 0.5 (i.e., possible dementia), (b) one semistructured interview resulted in a score of 0.5 (possible dementia) and another resulted in a score of 0 (cognitively normal), plus participant scored below a 26 on the MoCA or below 1.5 SD from the age-adjusted U.S. population mean on one of the fluid cognitive ability tests from the NIH Toolbox, or (c) participant scored below a 26 on the MoCA plus below 1.5 SD from the age-adjusted U.S. population mean on one of the fluid cognitive ability tests from the NIH Toolbox.

Daily life emotion regulation strategy use

For each experience sampling survey, participants responded Yes or No to the item “Since the last survey, have you done anything to try to influence your emotions?” They were then asked to select their primary ER strategy from a list of 15 options and subsequently endorsed any additional strategies. In this study, we preregistered a focus on the two strategies that were manipulated in the laboratory task (described subsequently): distraction (I distracted myself by thinking about something else) and reappraisal (I minimized the importance of an unpleasant event). We examined the proportion of occasions participants reported using these strategies because the last prompt out of the total number of prompts to which the participant responded (in Supplementary Table 4, we have shown information about the number of times each strategy was endorsed during the experience sampling period).

Laboratory-selected emotion regulation strategy use

After watching each film clip in the selected strategy block, participants indicated how much they used distraction (I thought about something else unrelated to the clip) and reappraisal (I minimized the importance of what was happening in the clip) to influence their emotions during the clip. Each strategy was rated on a scale of 1 = Not at all to 7 = A great deal.

Laboratory emotion regulation success

Immediately after watching each film clip, participants indicated their current experience of specific emotions on a scale of 1 = Not at all to 7 = A great deal. We focused on reports of “disgusted” and “scared” as indicators of success for disgust and fear-eliciting clips, respectively, with higher values indicating lower success. For exploratory analyses, we created a positive emotion composite, which included amused, relaxed, happy, and calm (average α = 0.777).

We also measured perceived ER success using the item “How successful were you in managing your emotions during this clip?,” rated on a scale of 1 = Not at all to 7 = Extremely successful. Following our preregistered analytic plan, we examined target emotion experience and perceived success as separate indicators of ER success because they were only moderately correlated (r = −0.31, p < .001).

Laboratory perceived emotion regulation demands and effort

After watching each film clip in the regulation blocks, the level of perceived ER demands was assessed with two items: “How difficult was it to manage your emotions during this clip?” (1 = Not at all to 7 = Extremely difficult) and “How strong were your emotions during this clip?” (1 = Not at all to 7 = Extremely strong). Following our preregistered analytic plan, we computed the mean of these items because they were highly correlated (r = 0.60, p < .001). We also measured ER effort exerted: “How much did you try to manage your emotions during this clip?” (1 = Not at all to 7 = A great deal). ER demands and effort were examined separately because they were only moderately correlated (r = 0.40, p < .001).

Analytic Plan

Analyses were preregistered. Using the “lme4” package in R Version 4.6.1 (R Core Team, 2022), we conducted a series of “no-intercept” multilevel models, which estimate separate intercepts and slopes for each group (i.e., young adults, CN older adults, and researcher-defined MCI older adults) in the same model. Compared to the traditional approach of running a model with a reference group and then running post hoc tests to understand the nature of effects within groups, this approach is a more parsimonious model for understanding the nature of effects within groups. We first examined daily life use of target strategies (distraction and reappraisal) predicting spontaneous selection of the strategies in the laboratory task. Next, we examined daily life use of the target strategy (distraction or reappraisal, depending on assigned condition) predicting ER success on instructed strategy trials in the laboratory task. We preregistered the examination of two indices of success: experience of the target negative emotion and perceived success. Additionally, we explored the effect on positive emotion. Finally, we examined daily life use of the target strategy predicting perceived ER demands and ER effort on instructed strategy trials. In all models, continuous predictor variables were grand-mean centered. In models examining instructed strategy trials, we first examined main effects of daily life ER strategy use, with assigned condition as a covariate, and then examined interactions between daily life ER strategy use and assigned condition to explore strategy-specific effects (in Supplementary Tables 5 and 6, we have shown results with an alternate index of daily strategy use where frequency of target strategy use is divided by the frequency of emotion regulation). We preregistered examination of this alternate index as a representation of the proportion of reported use of the target strategy over the total number of prompts where regulation was reported, whereas the primary index represents the proportion of reported use of the target strategy over the total number of survey prompts the participant completed). As a robustness check, we also present non-preregistered models examining effects when controlling for emotional reactivity in the laboratory task on natural viewing trials.

Results

Descriptive statistics and correlations among study variables are shown in Table 1.

Daily Life ER Strategy Use Predicting Laboratory ER Strategy Selection

Results from no-intercept multilevel models examining ER strategy selection are shown in Table 2. Older adults with researcher-defined MCI who used distraction more in daily life also reported greater use of distraction in the laboratory, b = 12.25(5.70), p = .033. Similarly, daily life reappraisal was associated with higher reappraisal selection among older adults with researcher-defined MCI, b = 11.60(5.07), p = .023. However, daily life strategy use was not associated with laboratory selection for either strategy among young adults or CN older adults.

When controlling for experience of the target negative emotion on natural viewing trials, effects were held for older adults with researcher-defined MCI. In addition, an effect emerged for CN older adults: ecological momentary assessment (EMA) distraction was associated with higher use of distraction on selected strategy trials, b = 4.49(2.25), p = .048.

Daily Life ER Strategy Use Predicting Laboratory ER Success on Instructed Strategy Trials

Results from no-intercept multilevel models examining ER success on instructed strategy trials are shown in Table 3. In terms of modulating the target negative emotion, daily life strategy use was not associated with success in implementing the strategy in the laboratory for any of the three groups. There were no Strategy Condition × Daily Life Use interactions, indicating that this nonsignificant pattern did not vary by strategy. However, there was some evidence that daily use predicted perceived success in the laboratory. Unexpectedly, among older adults with researcher-defined MCI, daily life strategy use was associated with lower perceived success when using the strategy in the laboratory, b = −9.14(4.18), p = .030. Furthermore, among CN older adults, there was a Strategy Condition × Daily Life ER Strategy Use interaction, b = −8.57(4.32), p = .048. Specifically, daily life reappraisal predicted higher perceived success for CN older adults when instructed to use reappraisal, b = 7.58(3.02), p = .015, but daily life distraction did not significantly predict perceived success for CN older adults when instructed to use distraction, b = −1.09(2.43), p = .657. Exploratory analyses revealed that this pattern was also reflected in positive emotional experience. As reported in Table 4, among only CN older adults, a Strategy Condition × Daily Life ER Strategy Use interaction was present, b = −8.11(3.97), p = .043, such that individuals who use reappraisal more in daily life reported higher positive emotion after implementing reappraisal in the laboratory, b = 6.39(2.76), p = .025, but there was no benefit of daily life distraction use when CN older adults were instructed to implement distraction, b = −1.74(2.68), p = .520.

When controlling reactivity, an effect of EMA target strategy use among CN older adults emerged in the model predicting experience of the target negative emotion. EMA target strategy use was negatively associated with experience of the target emotion among CN older adults, b = −5.08(2.50), p = .043, indicating those with more experience using the instructed strategy reported lower disgust or fear (i.e., higher ER success). Two effects in the model predicting perceived ER success became nonsignificant after controlling reactivity. Specifically, for older adults with researcher-defined MCI, there was no longer a significant negative association between EMA target strategy use and perceived ER success, b = −8.40(4.43), p = .059, and for CN older adults, the EMA target strategy use × Condition interaction became nonsignificant, b = −8.42(4.33), p = .053. However, the parallel EMA target strategy use × Condition interaction predicting positive emotion remained significant when controlling for reactivity, b = −8.04(3.59), p = .026.

Daily Life ER Strategy Use Predicting Laboratory Perceived ER Demands and Effort on Instructed Strategy Trials

Results from no-intercept multilevel models examining perceived ER demands and ER effort are shown in Table 5. Older adults with researcher-defined MCI perceived higher ER demands compared with the other two groups, b = 0.50 (0.20), p = .021, but they did not differ significantly from the other groups in reports of ER effort, b = 0.02(0.18), p = .896. Among young adults (but not the two older adult groups), when instructed to use a strategy in the laboratory, daily use of the strategy predicted higher perceived demands, b = 2.48(1.19), p = .039, and higher ER effort, b = 3.20(1.27), p = .012. These effects for perceived demands and effort held when controlling for reactivity and did not vary by condition.

Discussion

This study examined how frequency of ER strategy use in daily life predicts ER strategy selection and implementation in a laboratory task. We expected use of distraction and reappraisal as reported during experience sampling to positively predict selection and success of distraction and reappraisal in the laboratory task, respectively, and for these associations to be stronger among CN older adults than other groups. Contrary to our expectations, daily life use only predicted lab use for older adults with researcher-defined MCI. There was mixed evidence in support of the hypothesis that individuals are more successful in deploying strategies that they use more frequently in daily life. When controlling reactivity, CN older adults’ daily life use of reappraisal and distraction were associated with reduced high-arousal negative emotions when using these strategies in controlled laboratory conditions. Additionally, CN older adults’ daily use of reappraisal predicted higher perceived success and greater experience of positive emotion when instructed to use reappraisal in the laboratory task, but daily life distraction did not significantly predict these outcomes.

Regarding other ER perceptions, as hypothesized, older adults with researcher-defined MCI perceived higher ER demands compared with young adults and CN older adults. However, daily life use of reappraisal or distraction did not translate into lower perceived demands deploying the strategy in the laboratory. For young adults, more frequent use of the target strategy was unexpectedly associated with higher perceived ER demands as well as higher reports of ER effort.

Cognitively Impaired Older Adults May Rely on ER Strategies With Which They Have Experience But Do Not Demonstrate Associated Benefits

Recent work has highlighted the importance of considering context in ER processes (Aldao, 2013), as well as how to design laboratory paradigms that best reflect participants’ behavior in the real world (e.g., Springstein et al., 2022). In this study, we consider a feature of the regulator’s personal context outside of the controlled laboratory setting: use of a target strategy in daily life. Only older adults with researcher-defined MCI spontaneously selected strategies in a manner consistent with their daily life strategy use; however, they did not demonstrate benefits associated with doing so. These initial findings highlight that many individuals may not behave in laboratory tasks similarly to how they behave in daily life. Discrepancies observed in CN individuals may be driven by sensitivity to contextual affordances.

Regulators with insufficient cognitive resources (e.g., those with MCI) may experience disproportionate difficulty capitalizing on their experience in demanding contexts, such as when unable to avoid high-arousal negative emotions. The SAVI model (Charles, 2010) posits that age-related vulnerabilities may be more consequential for ER when individuals are faced with high-arousal negative situations such as the experimental protocol in the present study. Notably, the daily regulation contexts of older adults typically do not involve many instances of high-arousal negative emotions (e.g., Stawski et al., 2008) such as those being elicited in the present study’s laboratory task. Individuals—especially those with relatively intact cognitive control—may not draw on regularly used strategies in novel contexts that differ from their familiar contexts if they perceive that these strategies may be less adaptive in the novel setting. In terms of efficacy, it could be the case that, consistent with the context insensitivity hypothesis (Wylie et al., 2023), relying on habitually used strategies in novel contexts is less effective than leveraging other resources to best meet the demands of a given context.

Furthermore, cognitively impaired older adults may have difficulty adapting to environmental demands if they are less attentive to contextual features of the proximal regulation setting than nonimpaired individuals, and they cannot inhibit the use of ER strategies that they typically use in daily life or determine a better approach. One possibility is that older adults with MCI may benefit from their reliance on strategies with which they have prior experience in contexts that better approximate their daily life emotions, particularly those that are viewed as less demanding to regulate. For example, those who frequently use a strategy to enhance low-arousal positive emotions (e.g., relaxed and peaceful) may benefit from instructions to use the strategy in a controlled low-arousal positive context.

CN Older Adults May Skillfully Leverage Their ER Experience in Novel Settings

Among CN older adults only, daily life use of distraction and reappraisal were associated with lower experience of high-arousal negative emotion when instructed to use these strategies in the laboratory task, and daily life use of reappraisal was associated with higher perceived ER success and higher experience of positive emotion, suggesting they may benefit to some degree from ER experience. The SAVI model (Charles, 2010) highlights accumulated life experience as a strength of older adults that may contribute to successful ER. CN older adults may have the life experience and cognitive control necessary to apply their ER skills in novel settings, such as a laboratory task involving high-arousal negative stimuli which are theorized to be difficult to regulate. Life experience implementing ER strategies likely accumulates slowly over time, so even if ER is infrequent (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2021), individuals can learn from experiences as they age. Future work is needed to investigate whether there are consistent benefits associated with CN older adults’ use of well-practiced ER strategies in various settings.

Overall, the findings suggest that the use of ER strategies in daily life may not universally result in ER expertise. Instead, a higher frequency of ER strategy use could reflect a greater need for ER or difficulty maintaining emotional well-being, especially among young adults who have less experience upon which to draw, and older adults with MCI who do not generally exhibit practice effects (Howieson et al., 2008; Machulda et al., 2013). We argue that ER expertise is reflected in (a) one’s experience implementing a strategy coupled with (b) one’s ability to draw from this experience to devise a specific tactic or way to implement the strategy in a given context. Knowing how to effectively leverage one’s experience may require cognitive resources.

Older Adults With MCI May Perceive Relatively High ER Demands

To our knowledge, this is the first study to explicitly examine perceived demands of ER strategies. As expected, older adults with researcher-defined MCI perceived higher demands compared with young adult and CN older adult participants. This finding suggests that individuals with MCI have some degree of insight into their regulatory difficulties, and it provides evidence supporting the idea that ER is cognitively demanding and draws on resources (Ochsner & Gross, 2005). Notably, there were no group differences in reports of effort put forth to regulate emotions, suggesting that older adults with MCI are as motivated as non-impaired individuals to reduce their experience of negative emotion, but they may experience more difficulty successfully doing so. Future work should continue to explore ER perceptions and how they influence ER behavior (e.g., Eldesouky & English, 2023) across adulthood.

We expected to find that individuals who frequently used a strategy in daily life would perceive lower demands when instructed to use the strategy in the laboratory due to their assumed expertise. However, we found the opposite pattern among young adults, with daily use predicting higher perceived demands and putting forth more effort when instructed to use the strategy in the laboratory. This finding provides additional support for the inference that the use of a strategy in daily life may not universally reflect expertise. Young adults who use strategies frequently in daily life may be doing so out of necessity because of poorer regulation capacity or higher stressor exposure (Stawski et al., 2008), resulting in a greater likelihood of needing to regulate in daily life (Growney et al., 2023). Although young adults who regulate more frequently in daily life may be more motivated to maintain emotional well-being, as evidenced by the association between daily ER and ER effort during the laboratory task, they may not yet have sufficient lived experience to effectively draw on their ER repertoire.

Limitations, Future Directions, and Conclusion

The current study examined associations by group and did not consider individual constructs used to determine group membership. Although our criteria for determining cognitive status was based on guidelines from clinicians (e.g., Petersen et al., 2018), not all participants in the researcher-defined MCI group had been formally diagnosed with MCI by a clinician. Future work should examine individuals who have received a clinician’s diagnosis and consider subtypes of MCI, as well as how various continuous indices of cognitive ability and impairment in specific domains moderate associations between daily life and laboratory ER processes. Individual differences in protective factors such as self-compassion (Hodgetts et al., 2021), personality characteristics (Ready et al., 2012), emotional clarity (Mattila et al., 2006), and ability to name emotions (Santorelli & Ready, 2015), as well as psychiatric conditions, are potential moderating factors to consider in future work.

Another limitation of this current study is it focused on only two ER strategies. Researchers commonly use distraction and reappraisal in instructed ER laboratory tasks (e.g., Scheibe & Blanchard-Fields, 2009; Scheibe et al., 2015), but we found that these strategies were reported relatively infrequently in daily life so it could be helpful to also consider other strategies with which participants likely have experience. Future work should examine implementation of additional strategies in laboratory settings and perhaps consider idiographic approaches that instruct the use of strategies in a person-specific manner (e.g., the individual’s least vs most commonly used strategy). Researchers may also consider the extent to which participants have experience implementing a strategy in a given context (e.g., at work) and how expertise in that context may or may not contribute to effective ER in other contexts.

Additionally, we did not consider successful implementation of the target strategies in daily life and instead considered daily life strategy use regardless of ER success. Future work should examine the frequency with which individuals successfully versus unsuccessfully select and implement ER strategies in daily life as predictors of laboratory ER processes. Consideration of controlled emotional contexts other than high-arousal negative might also better elucidate the potential for individuals of varying cognitive resources to benefit from ER experience.

The current findings shed light on the complex interplay between experience using ER strategies, cognitive status, and situation-specific ER processes. Although older adults with MCI may be more likely to rely on strategies with which they have experience in unfamiliar contexts, they may not benefit from doing so. CN older adults may have the expertise necessary to benefit from their prior experience with a given strategy when implementing the strategy in high-arousal negative contexts. Future work should build on these findings to explore the role of prior experience in ER processes in person-specific daily life contexts (e.g., expertise regulating sadness using distraction) and standardized situations, giving special attention to regulators’ potential resources, subjective perceptions, and environmental affordances.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers R21AG062841 to T. E., T32AG000030).

Conflict of Interest

None.

Data Availability

Hypotheses and analyses were preregistered, and code is available on OSF: https://osf.io/8b25s; https://osf.io/3bn7u/. Data and study materials will be made available upon request.

References