简化的联合再认范式中情绪对错误记忆影响的年龄差异

以康奈尔情绪DRM词表为主要实验材料, 使用简化的联合再认范式(DRM范式的变式), 结合多项式加工树建模的统计手段, 对34名年轻人(23 ± 2岁)和28名老年人(68 ± 5岁)的再认记忆进行比较, 以考察不同年龄组中情绪效价对错误记忆的作用机制。结果发现材料的情绪效价对错误记忆的影响存在显著年龄差异：(1) 积极情绪能够有效降低老年人的错误记忆, 其作用机制为积极情绪增强了老年人的字面痕迹而减弱了要点痕迹提取; (2) 消极情绪能够有效地降低年轻人的错误记忆, 其作用机制为消极情绪使年轻人反应偏向降低, 但不影响其记忆痕迹的提取。结果表明, 简化的联合再认范式下, 情绪效价对错误记忆的效应存在明显的年龄差异：老年人表现出积极情绪降低错误记忆的积极偏向; 年轻人表现出消极情绪降低错误记忆的消极偏向; 情绪效应对错误记忆的认知机制存在年龄差异。     

Strength and vulnerability integration: a model of emotional well-being across adulthood

The following article presents the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) to explain factors that influence emotion regulation and emotional well-being across adulthood. The model posits that trajectories of adult development are marked by age-related enhancement in the use of strategies that serve to avoid or limit exposure to negative stimuli but by age-related vulnerabilities in situations that elicit high levels of sustained emotional arousal. When older adults avoid or reduce exposure to emotional distress, they often respond better than younger adults; when they experience high levels of sustained emotional arousal, however, age-related advantages in emotional well-being are attenuated, and older adults are hypothesized to have greater difficulties returning to homeostasis. SAVI provides a testable model to understand the literature on emotion and aging and to predict trajectories of emotional experience across the adult life span.     

Delayed reconfiguration of a non-emotional task set through reactivation of an emotional task set in task switching: an ageing study

ABSTRACT

In our everyday life, we frequently switch between different tasks, a faculty that changes with age. However, it is still not understood how emotion impacts on age-related changes in task switching. Using faces with emotional and neutral expressions, Experiment 1 investigated younger (n?=?29; 18–38 years old) and older adults’ (n?=?32; 61–80 years old) ability to switch between an emotional and a non-emotional task (i.e. responding to the face's expression vs. age). In Experiment 2, younger and older adults also viewed emotional and neutral faces, but switched between two non-emotional tasks (i.e. responding to the face's age vs. gender). Data from Experiment 1 demonstrated that switching from an emotional to a non-emotional task was slower when the expression of the new face was emotional rather than neutral. This impairment was observed in both age groups. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that neither younger nor older adults were affected by block-wise irrelevant emotion when switching between two non-emotional tasks. Overall, the findings suggest that task-irrelevant emotion can impair task switching through reactivation of the competing emotional task set. They also suggest that this effect and the ability to shield task-switching performance from block-wise irrelevant emotion are preserved in ageing.     

Age-related differences in medial prefrontal activation in response to emotional images

Research has suggested that aging results in a "positivity effect," with young adults dwelling on negative information, and older adults attending to positive information. In order to understand age-related changes in emotional processing underlying this effect, the present fMRI study compared neural activity in young and older adults as they viewed positive, negative, and neutral images. Results indicated a striking age-related reversal in the valence of information eliciting activity within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). Negative in comparison with positive images activated the VMPFC more for young adults, whereas positive in comparison with negative images activated the VMPFC more for the older adults. The VMPFC is a region associated with the processing of emotional information, and more specifically, with emotion generation and emotion regulation. Therefore, the present results suggest that age-related changes in these processes implemented by the VMPFC contribute to older adults' "positivity effect."     

Sleep facilitates consolidation of positive emotional memory in healthy older adults

ABSTRACT

Evidence has demonstrated that sleep-related memory consolidation declines in ageing. However, little is known about age-related changes to sleep-related emotional memory consolidation, especially when considering the positivity effect observed in older adults. In the present study, we sought to explore whether there is a positive emotional bias in sleep-related memory consolidation among healthy older adults. Young and older adults were randomly assigned either into a sleep or wake condition. All participants encoded positive, negative, and neutral stimuli and underwent recognition tests immediately (test 1), after a 12-hour sleep/wake interval (test 2), and 3 days after test 2 (test 3). Results showed that age-related differences of sleep beneficial effect were modulated by emotion valence. In particular, sleep selectively enhanced positive memory in older adults, while in young adults sleep beneficial effect was manifested in neutral memory. Moreover, the sleep beneficial effect can be maintained at least 3 days in both young and older adults. These findings suggest that older adults had preserved but positive bias of sleep-related memory consolidation, which could be one of the underlying mechanisms for their generally better emotional well-being in daily life. These findings highlight the dynamic interplay among sleep and emotional memory in older adults.     

General and contextualized emotion goals and its link with well-being across late,middle, and young adulthood

Prior research with young adults has shown how emotion goals (i.e., cognitive representations of preferred emotional states) can be instrumental (positive or negative) depending on the context and how this context sensitivity is linked to higher well-being. However, this research has overlooked older adults. We argue it is important looking at this age group as there is mixed evidence given that on one hand they have been described as exhibiting a positivity bias (hedonic orientation; preference for positive emotion goals), and on the other hand, being capable of suppressing this when it is adaptive to do so. Importantly, this bias towards positive emotion goals has been linked to better emotion regulation and higher well-being in older adults. In order to understand whether older adults can also exhibit instrumental emotion goals and whether this is linked to well-being, we conducted an exploratory study with older (N = 43, M_age = 68.33), middle (N = 47, M_age = 43.83), and young adults (N = 47; M_age = 21.98) who reported about their general and contextual emotion goals (in collaboration and confrontation), their well-being, and their current positive and negative affect. Although older adults reported lower negative affect than young adults, there were no age differences for general and contextualized emotion goals. Across the three age groups, a higher preference for happiness in general and in collaboration was linked to higher well-being. The obtained results highlight the need to study emotion goals longitudinally to better understand their possible changes throughout the lifespan and their influence on well-being.     

Emotion experience and expression across the adult life span: insights from a multimodal assessment study

This investigation represents a multimodal study of age-related differences in experienced and expressed affect and in emotion regulatory skills in a sample of young, middle-aged, and older adults (N=96), testing formulations derived from differential emotions theory. The experimental session consisted of a 10-min anger induction and a 10-min sadness induction using a relived emotion task; participants were also randomly assigned to an inhibition or noninhibition condition. In addition to subjective ratings of emotional experience provided by participants, their facial behavior was coded using an objective facial affect coding system; a content analysis also was applied to the emotion narratives. Separate repeated measures analyses of variance applied to each emotion domain indicated age differences in the co-occurrence of negative emotions and co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions across domains, thus extending the finding of emotion heterogeneity or complexity in emotion experience to facial behavior and verbal narratives. The authors also found that the inhibition condition resulted in a different pattern of results in the older versus middle-aged and younger adults. The intensity and frequency of discrete emotions were similar across age groups, with a few exceptions. Overall, the findings were generally consistent with differential emotions theory.     

Age and motivation predict gaze behavior for facial expressions

This study investigated age-related differences between younger (M = 25.52 years) and older (M = 70.51 years) adults in avoidance motivation and the influence of avoidance motivation on gaze preferences for happy, neutral, and angry faces. In line with the hypothesis of reduced negativity effect later in life, older adults avoided angry faces and (to a lesser degree) preferred happy faces more than younger adults did. This effect cannot be explained by age-related changes in dispositional motivation. Irrespective of age, avoidance motivation predicted gaze behavior towards emotional faces. The study demonstrates the importance of interindividual differences beyond young adulthood.     

Effects of induced sad mood on facial emotion perception in young and older adults

Older adults perceive less intense negative emotion in facial expressions compared to younger counterparts. Prior research has also demonstrated that mood alters facial emotion perception. Nevertheless, there is little evidence which evaluates the interactive effects of age and mood on emotion perception. This study investigated the effects of sad mood on younger and older adults’ perception of emotional and neutral faces. Participants rated the intensity of stimuli while listening to sad music and in silence. Measures of mood were administered. Younger and older participants’ rated sad faces as displaying stronger sadness when they experienced sad mood. While younger participants showed no influence of sad mood on happiness ratings of happy faces, older adults rated happy faces as conveying less happiness when they experienced sad mood. This study demonstrates how emotion perception can change when a controlled mood induction procedure is applied to alter mood in young and older participants.     

工作记忆中的积极效应：情绪效价与任务相关性的影响

积极效应指相比于年轻人, 老年人更倾向于优先加工积极情绪刺激而非消极情绪刺激。近年来工作记忆的研究发现积极效应会受到情绪效价与任务相关性的影响：情绪效价作为任务相关属性的研究支持工作记忆中存在积极效应, 具体表现为老年人对积极情绪刺激记忆的增强, 以及对消极情绪刺激记忆的减弱; 情绪效价作为工作记忆任务无关属性的研究相对较少, 且未发现一致的积极效应, 提示情绪效价及任务相关性均为影响工作记忆积极效应的关键因素。脑成像的研究初步表明, 工作记忆中情绪加工上的年龄效应与背侧执行系统和腹侧情绪系统的随龄功能变化有关。社会情绪选择理论与双竞争模型对工作记忆中的积极效应具备较大的解释力, 而动态整合理论尚缺乏实证研究支持。未来研究可进一步探究老年人工作记忆不同阶段情绪加工的特点, 澄清不同情绪材料内在编码过程上的差异对积极效应发生机制的潜在影响, 探讨情绪效价及任务相关性影响工作记忆积极效应的关键神经环路, 并揭示情绪工作记忆训练提升老年人认知功能与情绪体验的内在机制及其潜在应用价值。     

Anger management: age differences in emotional modulation of visual processing

Although positive and negative images enhance the visual processing of young adults, recent work suggests that a life-span shift in emotion processing goals may lead older adults to avoid negative images. To examine this tendency for older adults to regulate their intake of negative emotional information, the current study investigated age-related differences in the perceptual boost received by probes appearing over facial expressions of emotion. Visually-evoked event-related potentials were recorded from the scalp over cortical regions associated with visual processing as a probe appeared over facial expressions depicting anger, sadness, happiness, or no emotion. The activity of the visual system in response to each probe was operationalized in terms of the P1 component of the event-related potentials evoked by the probe. For young adults, the visual system was more active (i.e., greater P1 amplitude) when the probes appeared over any of the emotional facial expressions. However, for older adults, the visual system displayed reduced activity when the probe appeared over angry facial expressions.     

Ageing and autobiographical memory for emotional and neutral events

We investigated age-related effects in recall of emotional and neutral autobiographical memories. Protocols were scored according to episodic and non-episodic detail categories using the Autobiographical Interview. Young adults recalled a greater number of episodic details compared to older adults, whereas older adults recalled more semantic details, replicating previous findings. Both young and older adults' emotional memories contained more overall detail than neutral ones, with the enhancement from emotion-specific to episodic details, but this did not alter the effect of age group on the pattern of episodic and semantic details. However, the age effect on episodic details was attenuated for neutral autobiographical memories. The findings suggest that age differences for emotional autobiographical recollection might reflect a more general pattern of age-related changes in memory, with impaired recall of episodic components and relative sparing of semantic aspects of autobiographical memory in older adults when compared to young adults.     

Local context effects during emotional item directed forgetting in younger and older adults

This paper explored the differential sensitivity young and older adults exhibit to the local context of items entering memory. We examined trial-to-trial performance during an item directed forgetting task for positive, negative, and neutral (or baseline) words each cued as either to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF). This allowed us to focus on how variations in emotional valence (independent of arousal) and instruction (TBR vs. TBF) of the previous item (trial n-1) impacted memory for the current item (trial n) during encoding. Different from research showing impairing effects of emotional arousal, both age groups showed a memorial boost for stimuli when preceded by items high in positive or negative valence relative to those preceded by neutral items. This advantage was particularly prominent for neutral trial n items that followed emotional items suggesting that, regardless of age, neutral memories may be strengthened by a local context that is high in valence. A trending age difference also emerged with older adults showing greater sensitivity when encoding instructions changed between trial n-1 and n. Results are discussed in light of age-related theories of cognitive and emotional processing, highlighting the need to consider the dynamic, moment-to-moment fluctuations of these systems.     

Lesson of emotions in the family: The role of emotional intelligence in the relation between filial piety and life satisfaction among Taiwanese college students

This study investigated the relationships between reciprocal filial piety beliefs, emotional intelligence, and life satisfaction among Taiwanese young adults. A total of 481 college students from Taiwan were recruited for the study. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyze the data. The analysis produced the following results. First, reciprocal filial piety was positively related to all of the four types of emotional intelligence: self‐emotional appraisal (SEA), others' emotional appraisal (OEA), regulation of emotion (ROE), and use of emotion (UOE). Second, both ROE and UOE had a positive association with life satisfaction whereas SEA and OEA had a nonsignificant association with life satisfaction. Third, the two types of emotional intelligence, ROE and UOE, mediated the relation between reciprocal filial piety and young adults' life satisfaction. The findings suggest that reciprocal filial piety, representing high‐quality interaction between children and parents, can facilitate individuals' ability to control and use their emotions, which in turn improves their life satisfaction.     

Roles of cognitive load and self-relevance during emotional information searching on decision-making

Older adults have been found to favor positive stimuli over negative stimuli; further, developing a negative preference may be a cognitively demanding process. In the present study, we focused on the joint effects task self-relevance and cognitive load have on older adults' emotional information preferences when performing decision-making. To examine this, we used multi-attribute decision tasks and process-tracing procedure to measure their searching process. The study composed of a 2 (age: young/old) × 2 (cognitive load: load/non-load) × 3 (attribute valence: positive/neutral/negative) × 3 (task self-relevance: high/medium/low) mixed design. Sixty-one young adults and 62 older adults viewed 5 (alternatives) × 5 (attributes) decision matrices that contained positive, negative, and neutral information, with the total views and mean time spent viewing each different valence (positive, negative, and neutral information) set as dependent variables. The results indicated that both young and old adults have no emotional information preference in regard to self-relevance. When under no cognitive load, both positive and negative information were viewed more than neutral information; however, under cognitive load, preference for negative information decreased; this effect size was more robust in older adults. There was also a main effect of self-relevance on total views and mean checking time, with attributes concerning higher self-relevance tasks being more likely to attract attention. Older adults exhibited a consistent hedonic focus, even in highly self-relevant contexts; however, this effect disappeared under cognitive load. Overall, the findings suggest that cognitive resources play an important role in emotional information processing during decision processes.     

"They" are old but "I" feel younger: age-group dissociation as a self-protective strategy in old age

Age becomes an important self-defining aspect particularly during advanced age. With increasing age, negative attributes related to age and aging become salient. Aging-related declines, losses, as well as the finitude of life seem to threaten older adults' sense of self. We hypothesize that older adults will try to avoid the negative consequences of their age group membership by distancing themselves from their age group. Study 1 (N = 544, 65% women; 18-85 years of age) examined the role of age-group identification for self-conception and self-image (subjective age and future time perspective) across the life span. Results show that weakly identified older adults feel younger than their chronological age and report a more expanded future time perspective relative to their same-age counterparts. A second experiment (N = 68, 69% women; 65-85 years of age) tested the impact of age stereotypes on older adults' level of age-group identification. Results suggest that older adults are more likely to psychologically dissociate themselves from their age group when negative age stereotypes are salient. Discussion focuses on (mal)adaptive consequences of age-group dissociation in later adulthood.     

Divergent trajectories in the aging mind: changes in working memory for affective versus visual information with age

Working memory mediates the short-term maintenance of information. Virtually all empirical research on working memory involves investigations of working memory for verbal and visual information. Whereas aging is typically associated with a deficit in working memory for these types of information, recent findings suggestive of relatively well-preserved long-term memory for emotional information in older adults raise questions about working memory for emotional material. This study examined age differences in working memory for emotional versus visual information. Findings demonstrate that, despite an age-related deficit for the latter, working memory for emotion was unimpaired. Further, older adults exhibited superior performance on positive relative to negative emotion trials, whereas their younger counterparts exhibited the opposite pattern.     

The effect of ageing on the recollection of emotional and neutral pictures

This study investigated age-related differences in recognition memory for emotional and neutral pictures. Younger and older participants were asked to rate pictures according to their emotional valence, arousal, and visual complexity. Two weeks later they had to recognise these pictures and the states of awareness associated with memory were assessed with the "remember/know/guess" paradigm. We found that, although the influence of emotion on recognition accuracy (as assessed by d') was similar in both age groups, the tendency for positive and negative pictures to create a rich recollective experience was weaker in older adults. In addition, "remember" responses were more often based on a recollection of emotional reactions in older than in younger participants. We suggest that the elderly tend to focus on their feelings when confronted with emotional pictures, which could have impaired their memory for the contextual information associated with these stimuli.     

The effect of ageing on the recollection of emotional and neutral pictures

This study investigated age-related differences in recognition memory for emotional and neutral pictures. Younger and older participants were asked to rate pictures according to their emotional valence, arousal, and visual complexity. Two weeks later they had to recognise these pictures and the states of awareness associated with memory were assessed with the “remember/know/guess” paradigm. We found that, although the influence of emotion on recognition accuracy (as assessed by d′) was similar in both age groups, the tendency for positive and negative pictures to create a rich recollective experience was weaker in older adults. In addition, “remember” responses were more often based on a recollection of emotional reactions in older than in younger participants. We suggest that the elderly tend to focus on their feelings when confronted with emotional pictures, which could have impaired their memory for the contextual information associated with these stimuli.     

Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions

Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N = 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed.