trong>Narrator: This is Science Today. Contrary to a popular stereotype that old age is a depressing time, researchers looking into emotion and aging have found evidence that as people get older, they experience less negative emotions in their lifestyle. Cognitive psychologist, Mara Mather of the University of California , Santa Cruz , led the memory research study.

Mather: It looks like this is actually because they get better at regulating emotion, they focus more on regulating emotion than younger adults do. They say they do on surveys and they actually appear to be better at regulating emotions.

Narrator: Mather says the research provides potential insight into late life depression, especially vascular depression, which includes symptoms of cognitive decline.

Mather: This type of research might be able to answer why that is happening.
That if you're no longer able to do sort of self-directed control over your own thoughts and what you're really paying attention to, that you can no longer regulate your emotions as well and that might be something that contributes to developing depression later in life.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.