Aging of theory of mind: The influence of educational level and cognitive processing

Previous studies of theory of mind (ToM) in old age have provided mixed results. We predicted that educational level and cognitive processing are two factors influencing the pattern of the aging of ToM. To test this hypothesis, a younger group who received higher education (mean age 20.46 years), an older group with an education level equal to that of the young group (mean age 76.29 years), and an older group with less education (mean age 73.52 years) were recruited. ToM tasks included the following tests: the second‐order false‐belief task, the faux‐pas task, the eyes test, and tests of fundamental aspects of cognitive function that included two background tests (memory span and processing speed) and three subcomponents of executive function (inhibition, updating, and shifting). We found that the younger group and the older group with equally high education outperformed the older group with less education in false‐belief and faux‐pas tasks. However, there was no significant difference between the two former groups. The three groups of participants performed equivalently in the eyes test as well as in control tasks (false‐belief control question, faux‐pas control question, faux‐pas control story, and Eyes Test control task). The younger group outperformed the other two groups in the cognitive processing tasks. Mediation analyses showed that difficulties in inhibition, memory span, and processing speed mediated the age differences in false‐belief reasoning. Also, the variables of inhibition, updating, memory span, and processing speed mediated age‐related variance in faux‐pas. Discussion focused on the links between ToM aging, educational level, and cognitive processing.     

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.     

Age differences in vocal emotion perception: on the role of speaker age and listener sex

Older adults have greater difficulty than younger adults perceiving vocal emotions. To better characterise this effect, we explored its relation to age differences in sensory, cognitive and emotional functioning. Additionally, we examined the role of speaker age and listener sex. Participants (N?=?163) aged 19–34 years and 60–85 years categorised neutral sentences spoken by ten younger and ten older speakers with a happy, neutral, sad, or angry voice. Acoustic analyses indicated that expressions from younger and older speakers denoted the intended emotion with similar accuracy. As expected, younger participants outperformed older participants and this effect was statistically mediated by an age-related decline in both optimism and working-memory. Additionally, age differences in emotion perception were larger for younger as compared to older speakers and a better perception of younger as compared to older speakers was greater in younger as compared to older participants. Last, a female perception benefit was less pervasive in the older than the younger group. Together, these findings suggest that the role of age for emotion perception is multi-faceted. It is linked to emotional and cognitive change, to processing biases that benefit young and own-age expressions, and to the different aptitudes of women and men.     

成年个体的心理理论与执行功能

为了说明成年个体心理理论与执行功能的发展及两者的关系,在匹配了智商和教育水平条件下,采用心理理论故事理解任务、失言理解任务和威斯康星卡片分类任务分别探察了30名62~77岁的老年人和30名19~25岁青年人的心理理论和执行功能。结果表明,老年人和青年人在2种心理理论任务上的得分与卡片分类任务的得分都不存在显著相关,老年人在失言任务上的得分显著低于青年人,在心理理论故事理解任务上和威斯康星卡片分类任务上,老年人的表现与青年人没有显著差异。结合已有的研究结果提示：心理理论与执行功能的相关模式在成年和学前阶段是不同的。     

7~9岁儿童二级错误信念和失言理解的发展

采用二级错误信念任务、失言理解任务分别考察了90名7-9岁学龄儿童心理理论的发展。结果表明,7岁组儿童在二级错误信念和失言理解任务上的成绩与8岁组、9岁组存在显著差异,但8岁组和9岁组儿童之间没有显著差异,提示8岁可能是个体心理理论发展的又一个转折点。三组被试在二级错误信念理解上的成绩显著高于失言理解任务上的成绩,在控制年龄后,他们在两种心理理论任务上的成绩显著相关。另外,失言任务中三种心理状态理解的得分两两相关。综合以上结果,在学龄期,心理理论仍有质的发展,且心理理论的信念、情绪和意图等核心概念仍然相互关联。     

7-11岁儿童心理状态信息理解与使用的发展特点及关系

采用失言任务和改进的说服任务考察了153名7-11岁儿童的心理理论理解和使用能力的发展状况。结果发现：儿童的失言理解能力和心理状态信息使用能力7-9岁时发展迅速,9岁后趋于稳定;两种能力的发展趋势基本一致,两者呈现中度相关;8-9岁是儿童失言理解和心理状态信息使用发展的转折点。结果表明：心理状态理解和使用的能力是儿童心理理论发展的重要组成部分,两者的发展基本同步。     

Age differences in trade-off decisions: older adults prefer choice deferral

Our primary purpose in this study was to examine age differences in using choice deferral when young and older adults made trade-off decisions. Ninety-two young and 92 older adults were asked to make a trade-off decision among four cars or to use choice deferral (i.e., not buy any of these cars and keep looking for other cars). High and low emotional trade-off difficulty were manipulated between participants through different attribute labels of available cars. Older adults were more likely than young adults to choose deferral. Older adults who used deferral reported less retrospective negative emotion than those who did not.     

Language and the perception of emotion

Three studies assessed the relationship between language and the perception of emotion. The authors predicted and found that the accessibility of emotion words influenced participants' speed or accuracy in perceiving facial behaviors depicting emotion. Specifically, emotion words were either primed or temporarily made less accessible using a semantic satiation procedure. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were slower to categorize facial behaviors depicting emotion (i.e., a face depicting anger) after an emotion word (e.g., "anger") was satiated. In Study 3, participants were less accurate to categorize facial behaviors depicting emotion after an emotion word was satiated. The implications of these findings for a linguistically relative view of emotion perception are discussed.     

Contact high: Mania proneness and positive perception of emotional touches

How do extreme degrees of positive emotion—such as those characteristic of mania—influence emotion perception? The present study investigated how mania proneness, assessed using the Hypomanic Personality Scale, influences the perception of emotion via touch. Using a validated dyadic interaction paradigm for communicating emotion through touch (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006), participants (N=53) received eight different touches to their forearm from a stranger and then identified the emotion via forced-choice methodology. Mania proneness predicted increased overall accuracy in touch perception, particularly for positive emotion touches, as well as the over-attribution of positive and under-attribution of negative emotions across all touches. These findings highlight the effects of positive emotion extremes on the perception of emotion in social interactions.     

Contact high: Mania proneness and positive perception of emotional touches

How do extreme degrees of positive emotion-such as those characteristic of mania-influence emotion perception? The present study investigated how mania proneness, assessed using the Hypomanic Personality Scale, influences the perception of emotion via touch. Using a validated dyadic interaction paradigm for communicating emotion through touch (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006), participants (N=53) received eight different touches to their forearm from a stranger and then identified the emotion via forced-choice methodology. Mania proneness predicted increased overall accuracy in touch perception, particularly for positive emotion touches, as well as the over-attribution of positive and under-attribution of negative emotions across all touches. These findings highlight the effects of positive emotion extremes on the perception of emotion in social interactions.     

The Influence of Employers' Use of Social Networking Websites in Selection,Online Self‐promotion,and Personality on the Likelihood of Faux Pas Postings

Employers' selection practices sometimes involve reviewing applicants' profile on social networking websites (SNWs) and invading applicants' privacy (e.g., asking for their passwords). Applicants can be eliminated because of faux pas (i.e., inappropriate content) they post online. Yet, little research has examined factors related to faux pas postings. The present study examines employers' use of SNWs in selection, participants' internet and SNWs use, personality, and SNWs self‐promotion as predictors of the likelihood of faux pas postings. Results show lower likelihood of faux pas postings when participants are informed that a high proportion of employers use SNWs in selection, but mainly when it includes invasion of applicants' privacy. Moreover, participants' age, privacy settings, extraversion, and SNWs self‐promotion are related to faux pas.     

It's not what you play,it's how you play it: Timbre affects perception of emotion in music

Salient sensory experiences often have a strong emotional tone, but the neuropsychological relations between perceptual characteristics of sensory objects and the affective information they convey remain poorly defined. Here we addressed the relationship between sound identity and emotional information using music. In two experiments, we investigated whether perception of emotions is influenced by altering the musical instrument on which the music is played, independently of other musical features. In the first experiment, 40 novel melodies each representing one of four emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, or anger) were each recorded on four different instruments (an electronic synthesizer, a piano, a violin, and a trumpet), controlling for melody, tempo, and loudness between instruments. Healthy participants (23 young adults aged 18–30 years, 24 older adults aged 58–75 years) were asked to select which emotion they thought each musical stimulus represented in a four-alternative forced-choice task. Using a generalized linear mixed model we found a significant interaction between instrument and emotion judgement with a similar pattern in young and older adults (p < .0001 for each age group). The effect was not attributable to musical expertise. In the second experiment using the same melodies and experimental design, the interaction between timbre and perceived emotion was replicated (p < .05) in another group of young adults for novel synthetic timbres designed to incorporate timbral cues to particular emotions. Our findings show that timbre (instrument identity) independently affects the perception of emotions in music after controlling for other acoustic, cognitive, and performance factors.     

Age and emotion affect how we look at a face: visual scan patterns differ for own-age versus other-age emotional faces

We investigated how age of faces and emotion expressed in faces affect young (n=30) and older (n=20) adults' visual inspection while viewing faces and judging their expressions. Overall, expression identification was better for young than older faces, suggesting that interpreting expressions in young faces is easier than in older faces, even for older participants. Moreover, there were age-group differences in misattributions of expressions, in that young participants were more likely to label disgusted faces as angry, whereas older adults were more likely to label angry faces as disgusted. In addition to effects of emotion expressed in faces, age of faces affected visual inspection of faces: Both young and older participants spent more time looking at own-age than other-age faces, with longer looking at own-age faces predicting better own-age expression identification. Thus, cues used in expression identification may shift as a function of emotion and age of faces, in interaction with age of participants.     

Age similarities in matching pro- and contra-hedonic emotional strategies to everyday scenarios

ABSTRACT

Older adults are motivated to maximize positive affect in the present. Young adults will purposely feel negative and high arousal emotions in order to achieve a goal. However, this type of contra-hedonic emotional alignment has not been extensively studied with older adults. We expected older adults are less likely than young adults to select high arousal and negative emotions within specific scenarios where those states could be useful. In two studies, participants selected the emotion they preferred in hypothetical problems that varied on the arousal and valence best suited for goal achievement. Young and older adults were equally likely to endorse affective strategies that matched both pro and contra-hedonic scenarios. While older adults may be generally motivated to avoid negative and high-arousing emotions, they are just as likely as young adults to indicate that these states could be helpful in certain situations.     

Age,Emotion Regulation,and Affect in Adulthood: The Mediating Role of Cognitive Reappraisal

Evidence indicates that older adults experience high levels of emotional well‐being. However, little is known empirically about the underlying mechanism of this state. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether emotion regulation mediates the link between age and affect in adulthood. The sample consisted of 516 Japanese participants aged 30 (±1), 50 (±1), and 70 (±1) years, who were registered with an Internet survey company. Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression were measured as emotion regulation strategies. Positive and negative affect were assessed. Older participants reported lower negative affect than younger participants, while positive affect was not correlated with age. Cognitive reappraisal partially mediated the relationship between age and affect, whereas expressive suppression did not. The results suggested that age‐related increase in cognitive reappraisal could contribute to improvements in affect, but that another adaptive form of emotion regulation may mediate the relationship between age and affect. Our study thus indicates that developments in emotion regulation could explain the mechanism of stable everyday affect throughout adulthood, and that researchers should further explore another form of adaptive emotion regulation.     

Age and emotion affect how we look at a face: Visual scan patterns differ for own-age versus other-age emotional faces

We investigated how age of faces and emotion expressed in faces affect young (n=30) and older (n=20) adults’ visual inspection while viewing faces and judging their expressions. Overall, expression identification was better for young than older faces, suggesting that interpreting expressions in young faces is easier than in older faces, even for older participants. Moreover, there were age-group differences in misattributions of expressions, in that young participants were more likely to label disgusted faces as angry, whereas older adults were more likely to label angry faces as disgusted. In addition to effects of emotion expressed in faces, age of faces affected visual inspection of faces: Both young and older participants spent more time looking at own-age than other-age faces, with longer looking at own-age faces predicting better own-age expression identification. Thus, cues used in expression identification may shift as a function of emotion and age of faces, in interaction with age of participants.     

The Emotion Recognition Task: a paradigm to measure the perception of facial emotional expressions at different intensities

The Emotion Recognition Task is a computer-generated paradigm for measuring the recognition of six basic facial emotional expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Video clips of increasing length were presented, starting with a neutral face that changes into a facial expression of different intensities (20%-100%). The present study describes methodological aspects of the paradigm and its applicability in healthy participants (N=58; 34 men; ages between 22 and 75), specifically focusing on differences in recognition performance between the six emotion types and age-related change. The results showed that happiness was the easiest emotion to recognize, while fear was the most difficult. Moreover, older adults performed worse than young adults on anger, sadness, fear, and happiness, but not on disgust and surprise. These findings indicate that this paradigm is probably more sensitive than emotion perception tasks using static images, suggesting it is a useful tool in the assessment of subtle impairments in emotion perception.     

The relativity of time perception produced by facial emotion stimuli

We systematically examined the impact of emotional stimuli on time perception in a temporal reproduction paradigm where participants reproduced the duration of a facial emotion stimulus using an oval-shape stimulus or vice versa. Experiment 1 asked participants to reproduce the duration of an angry face (or the oval) presented for 2,000 ms. Experiment 2 included a range of emotional expressions (happy, sad, angry, and neutral faces as well as the oval stimulus) presented for different durations (500, 1,500, and 2,000 ms). We found that participants over-reproduced the durations of happy and sad faces using the oval stimulus. By contrast, there was a trend of under-reproduction when the duration of the oval stimulus was reproduced using the angry face. We suggest that increased attention to a facial emotion produces the relativity of time perception.     

Emotional intelligence and social perception

One of the key facets of emotional intelligence (EI) is the capacity of an individual to recognise emotions in others. However, this has not been tested cross-culturally, despite the body of research indicating that people are better at recognising facial affect of members of their own culture. Given the emotion recognition aspect of EI, it would seem that EI should be related to correctly identifying emotion in others regardless of race. In order to test this, a social perception inspection time task was carried out in which participants (41 Caucasian and 46 Far-East Asian) were required to identify the emotion on Caucasian and Far-East Asian faces that were happy, sad, or angry. Results from this study indicate that EI was not related to correctly identifying facial expressions. The results did confirm that participants are better able to recognise people of their own ethnicity, though this was only applicable to negative emotions.     

7～9岁儿童失言理解与执行功能的关系

为了说明学龄儿童心理理论与执行功能的关系,研究采用失言理解、威斯康星卡片分类和汉诺塔任务分别考察了90名7—9岁儿童的心理理论和执行功能。结果表明,失言理解与抑制-转换能力相关显著（r=0．34,P〈0．01）,但是与计划能力相关不显著（r=0．06,P〉0．05）。在控制年龄后,失言理解与抑制-转换能力的相关仍然显著（r=0．29,P〈0．05）。研究结果说明,学龄儿童心理理论与执行功能的相关模式与学龄前儿童完全一致,提示心理理论与执行功能的相关关系从学龄前延续到了学龄阶段。