Is there an age-related positivity effect in visual attention? A comparison of two methodologies

Research suggests a positivity effect in older adults' memory for emotional material, but the evidence from the attentional domain is mixed. The present study combined 2 methodologies for studying preferences in visual attention, eye tracking, and dot-probe, as younger and older adults viewed synthetic emotional faces. Eye tracking most consistently revealed a positivity effect in older adults' attention, so that older adults showed preferential looking toward happy faces and away from sad faces. Dot-probe results were less robust, but in the same direction. Methodological and theoretical implications for the study of socioemotional aging are discussed.     

镇静与镇痛在ICU机械通气患者中的应用变化

探讨ICU内机械通气患者应用镇痛剂、镇静剂及肌松剂的情况及其对机械通气和预后的影响。回顾性分析我院中心ICU2006年、2007年收治的244例行有创机械通气治疗超过48h患者的临床资料,并将患者分为2006年组和2007年纽,用统计软件分析患者在年龄、性别、入ICU时APACHEⅡ评分、血糖、血浆白蛋白、基础疾病,气管插管时间、机械通气时间、ICU住院天数、镇痛与镇静剂应用的时间、机械通气时是否使用肌松剂、Ramsay评分及病死率方面是否存在差别。统计分析显示2006年组和2007年组在年龄、性剐、入ICU时APACHEⅡ评分、血糖、血浆白蛋白、是否使用肌松剂及基础疾病方面无差别;与2006年组相比2007年组患者气管插管时间、机械通气时间及ICU住院天数均缩短,镇痛与镇静剂应用时间均缩短,Ramsay评分降低,病死率下降。提示对机械通气的危重症患者应合理使用镇痛剂与镇静剂。     

Looking happy: the experimental manipulation of a positive visual attention bias

Individuals with a positive visual attention bias may use their gaze to regulate their emotions while under stress. The current study experimentally trained differential biases in participants' (N = 55) attention toward positive or neutral information. In each training trial, one positive and one neutral word were presented and then a visual target appeared consistently in the location of the positive or neutral words. Participants were instructed to make a simple perceptual discrimination response to the target. Immediately before and after attentional training, participants were exposed to a stress task consisting of viewing a series of extremely negative images while having their eyes tracked. Visual fixation time to negative images, assessed with an eye tracker, served as an indicator of using gaze to successfully regulate emotion. Those participants experimentally trained to selectively attend to affectively positive information looked significantly less at the negative images in the visual stress task following the attentional training, thus demonstrating a learned aversion to negative stimuli. Participants trained toward neutral information did not show this biased gaze pattern.     

Positive Gaze Preferences in Older Adults: Assessing the Role of Cognitive Effort with Pupil Dilation

ABSTRACT

Older adults display positive preferences in their gaze, consistent with their prioritization of emotion regulation goals. While some research has argued that substantial amounts of cognitive effort are necessary for these information-processing preferences to occur, other work suggests that these attentional patterns unfold with minimal cognitive exertion. The current study used an implicit regulatory context (i.e., viewing facial stimuli of varying emotions) to assess how much cognitive effort was required for positive attentional preferences to occur. Effortful cognitive processing was assessed with a direct measure of change in pupil dilation. Results indicated that minimal cognitive effort was expended when older adults engaged in positive gaze preferences. This finding suggests that gaze acts as a rather effortless and economical regulatory tool for individuals to shape their affective experience.     

Positive mood broadens visual attention to positive stimuli

In an attempt to investigate the impact of positive emotions on visual attention within the context of Fredrickson’s (1998) broaden-and-build model, eye tracking was used in two studies to measure visual attentional preferences of college students (n=58, n=26) to emotional pictures. Half of each sample experienced induced positive mood immediately before viewing slides of three similarly-valenced images, in varying central-peripheral arrays. Attentional breadth was determined by measuring the percentage viewing time to peripheral images as well as by the number of visual saccades participants made per slide. Consistent with Fredrickson’s theory, the first study showed that individuals induced into positive mood fixated more on peripheral stimuli than did control participants; however, this only held true for highly-valenced positive stimuli. Participants under induced positive mood also made more frequent saccades for slides of neutral and positive valence. A second study showed that these effects were not simply due to differences in emotional arousal between stimuli. Selective attentional broadening to positive stimuli may act both to facilitate later building of resources as well as to maintain current positive affective states.     

Selective preference in visual fixation away from negative images in old age? An eye-tracking study

Recent studies have suggested that older individuals selectively forget negative information. However, findings on a positivity effect in the attention of older adults have been more mixed. In the current study, eye tracking was used to record visual fixation in nearly real-time to investigate whether older individuals show a positivity effect in their visual attention to emotional information. Young and old individuals (N = 64) viewed pairs of synthetic faces that included the same face in a nonemotional expression and in 1 of 4 emotional expressions (happiness, sadness, anger, or fear). Gaze patterns were recorded as individuals viewed the face pairs. Older adults showed an attentional preference toward happy faces and away from angry ones; the only preference shown by young adults was toward afraid faces. The age groups were not different in overall cognitive functioning, suggesting that these attentional differences are specific and motivated rather than due to general cognitive change with age.     

王岱舆的“天命有三品”论与儒家的天命观

王岱舆作为明末清初四教（儒、释、道、回）皆通的伊斯兰著名学者,他提出的“天命有三品”论,既适应了当时以儒家为主流文化的背景,也保持了其独特的伊斯兰性,在巧妙地处理与儒家天命观分歧的同时,又开放地拿儒家文化为己所用,从而为两种文明都赢得了宽松的环境,使得两种文明能够共存、共荣、共同发展。本文从王岱舆天命观与儒家天命观的介绍入手,分析其与儒家天命观的契合与分歧。     

Age-related positivity enhancement is not universal: older Chinese look away from positive stimuli

Socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that with age, people are motivated to derive emotional meaning from life, leading them to pay more attention to positive relative to negative/neutral stimuli. The authors argue that cultures that differ in what they consider to be emotionally meaningful may show this preference to different extents. Using eye-tracking techniques, the authors compared visual attention toward emotional (happy, fearful, sad, and angry) and neutral facial expressions among 46 younger and 57 older Hong Kong Chinese. In contrast to prior Western findings, older but not younger Chinese looked away from happy facial expressions, suggesting that they do not show attentional preferences toward positive stimuli.