Exploring Emotional Well‐Being in Exceptional Aging: Data from the SuperAging Research Initiative
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Emotional and social well-being factors including purpose in life, emotional support, social engagement, and self-efficacy predict better cognitive functioning among older adults. These factors may contribute to the extraordinary memory of "SuperAgers," adults age 80+ with episodic memory at least comparable to 50-60-year-olds. Previous single-site SuperAging studies suggest stronger interpersonal relationships may contribute to the SuperAging phenotype. Building on initial findings, we examine emotional well-being using the NIH Toolbox-Emotion Battery (NIHTB-EB) in SuperAgers compared to cognitively-average peers (Controls). METHOD: Cross-sectional cognitive, demographic, and NIHTB-EB data were queried from the SuperAging Research Initiative, a multisite longitudinal cohort with harmonized multidisciplinary data collection. We examined NIHTB-EB T-scores between SuperAgers (n = 65) and Controls (n = 71), by sex, and within self-reported socialized racial identity using independent samples t-tests. RESULT: Most participants self-identified as female (58.8%) and White (84.6%), with an average age of 85 (range=80-100). Overall, SuperAgers did not differ from Controls on NIHTB-EB measures, with both groups reporting trends toward lower anger, sadness, and perceived stress compared to the normative sample, and slightly higher general life satisfaction (effect sizes ∼0.5-1 SD). Across the sample, males reported slightly higher availability of instrumental support (p = .003) and slightly lower affective fear (p = .046) compared to females. Within White participants, SuperAgers did not differ from Controls on NIHTB-EB measures. However, within the small subset of Black/African-American participants, SuperAgers reported lower affective fear compared to Controls (p = .036). CONCLUSION: These findings further characterize the emotional well-being of cognitively healthy adults age 80+. Consistent with prior SuperAging reports, positive emotional well-being was observed. Whereas prior research indicates older men tend to report higher social isolation and less social support compared to women, males in our study reported a higher perception of available resources from their social networks than females. Other studies have shown similarly contradictory findings, with men reporting more social ties but women reporting greater group involvement and emotional support. Within-race comparisons require cautious interpretation given limited sample size; however, the reported lower affective fear in Black SuperAgers compared to Black Controls may reflect the impact of social determinants of health, life stressors, or allostatic load on cognitive aging.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".