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theses

Efforts to address inadequacies in end of life care and reduce negative outcomes for surviving relatives has led to enhancements in advanced care planning, encouraging adults to develop detailed, action-driven and individualized plans. The current exploratory study investigated the influence of age and threat level on affective activation during the planning process by analyzing affective activation in three ways: measuring affective content of each narrative using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program (Pennebaker et al., 2007), measuring a phonemic indicator (average fundamental frequency) of affective activation using the Praat system (Boersman, 2001; Scherer, 2003), and finally through a self-report, Likert scale rating of affect used previously (Addis, Wong & Schacter, 2008). 25 undergraduate students (18- 22) and 23 “older” adults (65+) responded to 6 scenarios: three non-health related and three health-related. The three health-related scenarios varied in threat level; a) Low Threat: having a “flu”, b) Medium Threat: living with a chronic illness, and c) High Threat: having 2-6 months to live. Contrary to expectations, analysis identified a significant effect of threat level on the negative affective content of the narratives, with higher affective content appearing in the lowthreat scenario, than in the medium and high threat scenarios. There was no significant effect of threat level on affective activation measured through fundamental frequency. Results were significant in the expected direction for self-reported affect which increased as threat level increased. Age moderated the effects of threat level on self-reported affect with older adults selfreporting higher levels of negative affect than younger adults for each of the health scenarios. Results for both self-reported affect and fundamental frequency are inconsistent with Reed & Carstensen’s (2012) assumption that differences in affective responding with age reveal a positivity effect - a trend in which older adults express more positive than negative affective reactions to life situations. The data suggest that a positivity effect, if it exists, is context specific, appearing in many everyday events but not in response to health threats. Future analysis, should investigate the effects of affective activation on the specificity of plans which vary from relatively non-life-threatening to highly life-threatening.

ETD_7473

M.S.

Includes bibliographical references

by Emily Frances Roman

doi:10.7282/T3MK6G7R

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.