Caring for a relative with dementia is a chronic stress situation related to negative consequences such as elevated depressive and anxiety symptoms. A possible mediator variable explored to explain pathways from chronic stress to emotional distress is emotional ambivalence towards the care-recipient (the simultaneous experience of positive and negative feelings towards the care-recipient). Emotional ambivalence, measured with questionnaires, presents significant associations with depression and anxiety in family carers of people with dementia. However, the self-report of emotional ambivalence is susceptible to being influenced by social desirability. The aim of this study is to present preliminary results that analyze implicit ambivalence and its association with emotional distress in family carers of people with dementia.

54 caregivers participated in the study (mean age = 61.2, SD = 12.92, 81.5% women). To explore implicit emotional ambivalence, we adapted a sequential priming paradigm developed to measure implicit ambivalence about significant others (Zayas & Shoda, 2015). Two priming stimuli were used: a) neutral (e.g., RRR) and b) valenced prime (i.e., the name of the care-recipient). The targets were positive and negative words that participants have to categorize as positive or negative.

A facilitation-inhibition indexes for positive and negative targets were calculated by subtracting the mean reaction time (RT) for valenced prime from the mean RT for neutral primes. Positive values show a facilitation effect of the valenced prime (i.e., the name of the care-recipient), and negative values inhibition. Participants were classified depending on their results of this indexes: a) positive (facilitation of positive information, inhibition of negative information), b) negative (facilitation of negative information, inhibition of positive information), c) flat (inhibition of positive and negative information), and d) ambivalence (facilitation of positive and negative information). ANOVAS were performed to explore differences between groups in emotional distress. The preliminary results showed that the ambivalence group might present more depressive symptoms compared with the positive group.

This is the first study that analyzed implicit ambivalence in family carers of people with dementia. The preliminary results show the relevance of exploring implicit processes to explain emotional distress in this population.