Reconocimiento de Emociones Faciales en Adultos Mayores de la Ciudad de Córdoba

This study evaluated facial emotions recognition in a non-probability sample of 116 older adults over 60 years of age from the city of Cordoba, Argentina. It examined the relationship between this capability and sociodemographic variables (age, sex, years of schooling, and years of working life), affective variables (depression and anxiety), and cognitive performance. A set of photographs, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory- II, and Addenbrooke ’ s Cognitive Examination – Revised were used. Cognitive performance and age were observed to correlate (directly and inversely, respectively) with emotions as a whole and specifically with surprise, anger, sadness, and a neutral category; no correlations were found with happiness, disgust, or fear. Student’s t test revealed that older adults with more than 12 years of schooling displayed better recognition of emotions as a whole and specifically of disgust, anger, surprise, and fear. Years of working life, anxiety, and depression were not found to correlate with emotion recognition. A regression analysis revealed that cognitive performance was the best predictor of recognition of the set of photographs.