Age-related emotional bias in processing two emotionally valenced tasks

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• 作者：Philip A. Allen ; Mei-Ching Lien ; Elliott Jardin
• 刊名：Psychological Research
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：81
• 期：1
• 页码：289-308
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Behavioral Science
• 刊物主题：Psychology Research;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1430-2772
• 卷排序：81

文摘

Previous studies suggest that older adults process positive emotions more efficiently than negative emotions, whereas younger adults show the reverse effect. We examined whether this age-related difference in emotional bias still occurs when attention is engaged in two emotional tasks. We used a psychological refractory period paradigm and varied the emotional valence of Task 1 and Task 2. In both experiments, Task 1 was emotional face discrimination (happy vs. angry faces) and Task 2 was sound discrimination (laugh, punch, vs. cork pop in Experiment 1 and laugh vs. scream in Experiment 2). The backward emotional correspondence effect for positively and negatively valenced Task 2 on Task 1 was measured. In both experiments, younger adults showed a backward correspondence effect from a negatively valenced Task 2, suggesting parallel processing of negatively valenced stimuli. Older adults showed similar negativity bias in Experiment 2 with a more salient negative sound (“scream” relative to “punch”). These results are consistent with an arousal-bias competition model [Mather and Sutherland (Perspectives in Psychological Sciences 6:114–133, 2011)], suggesting that emotional arousal modulates top-down attentional control settings (emotional regulation) with age.