The benefits of nostalgia within spatial environments for people with and without Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, is a mostly positive, social emotion. The regulatory model of nostalgia proposes that the emotion is triggered by adverse psychological and physical states. In turn, nostalgia counters those threatening states and facilitates psychological equanimity. My first objective was to extend this model to a new environmental threat; spatial anxiety, that is, apprehension and fear about environmental navigation. To date, there are no experimental inductions of spatial anxiety. In Chapter 2, I addressed this lacuna and developed a novel protocol for inducing spatial-anxiety within a virtual environment. Then, in Chapter 3, I tested the regulatory model of nostalgia in relation to spatial anxiety. In Experiment 3.1, I implemented the validated spatial-anxiety induction (developed in Chapter 2) and demonstrated its effect on nostalgia. Experiment 3.2 and 3.3 installed wall-mounted nostalgic (versus non-nostalgic) pictures within a virtual environment to assess its effect on spatial anxiety. Passive and active navigation of a nostalgic (versus non-nostalgic) environment reduced spatial anxiety. Nostalgia assuages spatial anxiety during navigation. As well as curtailing adverse conditions, nostalgia serves a number of psychological functions, including social connectedness, self-continuity, meaning in life, self-esteem, and positive affect. The second objective of this thesis was to investigate the potential benefits of nostalgia among a clinical population that experiences navigation difficulties in daily life. In Chapter 4, I further developed the pictorial nostalgia induction of Chapter 3 and implemented it among people living with Alzheimer’s disease. In Experiment 4.1, I generated wall-mounted nostalgic (versus non-nostalgic) pictures associated with the decade during which middle-aged older adults lived most of their childhood. Then in Experiment 4.2, I interviewed people with Alzheimer’s disease about fond memories from their past and selected personal images corresponding each event. Nostalgic (versus non-nostalgic) pictures boosted social connectedness, self-continuity, meaning in life, self-esteem, and positive (but not negative) affect. Among people with Alzheimer’s disease, the nostalgic landmarks enhanced picture recognition (but not spatial memory). This work holds real-world applications, in particular, for dementia-friendly design.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Alice Oliver: orcid.org/0000-0001-8812-315X

ORCID for Tim Wildschut: orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-5487

ORCID for Edward Redhead: orcid.org/0000-0002-7771-1228

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