Induction and Recognition of Emotions

This study evaluates the differences in cognitive function between healthy older adults, older adults with mild Alzheimer's type dementia and older adults with Parkinson's disease and if there are differences in valence assessment and activation that produce them a mood induction task. Subjects are assessed using neuropsychological tests and then a mood induction task based on movie clips is applied.

Different neuropsychological tests will be used to assess the differences in cognitive function in the different groups, whose scores are expected to be lower in the group of older adults with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and older adults with Parkinson's disease (PD). After studying the cognitive function in the different groups, we proceed to check through a task based on movie clips if there are also differences in the valence assessment (liking/disliking depending on the emotion induced by scenes from different films) and activation (excitement caused by each one of the movie scenes), hoping to find differences for the negative emotions taking into account the cognitive difficulties that both (the EA group and the EP group) may have for processing this type of cognitively more demanding information; instead, it is possible that the positivity effect continues to affect these patients so that for positive emotions there are no differences between the different groups.