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Age‐related differences in attention and memory toward emotional stimuli
Author(s) -
Bi Dandan,
Han Buxin
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
psych journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 2046-0260
pISSN - 2046-0252
DOI - 10.1002/pchj.99
Subject(s) - socioemotional selectivity theory , psychology , negative information , developmental psychology , young adult , perception , affection , cognitive psychology , social psychology , neuroscience
From the perspectives of time perception and motivation, socioemotional selectivity theory ( SST ) postulates that in comparison with younger adults, older adults tend to prefer positive stimuli and avoid negative stimuli. Currently the cross‐cultural consistency of this positivity effect ( PE ) is still not clear. While empirical evidence for W estern populations is accumulating, the validation of the PE in A sians is still rare. The current study compared 28 younger and 24 older C hinese adults in the processing of emotional information. Eye‐tracking and recognition data of participants in processing pictures with positive, negative, or neutral emotional information sampled from the I nternational A ffection P icture S ystem were collected. The results showed less negative bias for emotional attention in older adults than in younger adults, whereas for emotional recognition, only younger adults showed a negative bias while older adults showed no bias between negative and positive emotional information. Overall, compared with younger adults, emotional processing was more positive in older adults. It was concluded that C hinese older adults show a PE .