Premium
Older adults' decoding of emotions: age‐related differences in interpreting dynamic emotional displays and the well‐preserved ability to recognize happiness
Author(s) -
Moraitou Despina,
Papantoniou Georgia,
Gkinopoulos Theofilos,
Nigritinou Magdalini
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
psychogeriatrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.647
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1479-8301
pISSN - 1346-3500
DOI - 10.1111/psyg.12016
Subject(s) - surprise , happiness , psychology , modalities , affect (linguistics) , everyday life , emotional expression , sadness , cognitive psychology , test (biology) , disgust , facial expression , decoding methods , emotion classification , emotion perception , developmental psychology , anger , social psychology , communication , computer science , social science , paleontology , telecommunications , sociology , political science , law , biology
Aim Although the ability to recognize emotions through bodily and facial muscular movements is vital to everyday life, numerous studies have found that older adults are less adept at identifying emotions than younger adults. The message gleaned from research has been one of greater decline in abilities to recognize specific negative emotions than positive ones. At the same time, these results raise methodological issues with regard to different modalities in which emotion decoding is measured. The main aim of the present study is to identify the pattern of age differences in the ability to decode basic emotions from naturalistic visual emotional displays. Method The sample comprised a total of 208 adults from G reece, aged from 18 to 86 years. Participants were examined using the Emotion Evaluation Test, which is the first part of a broader audiovisual tool, The Awareness of Social Inference Test. The Emotion Evaluation Test was designed to examine a person's ability to identify six emotions and discriminate these from neutral expressions, as portrayed dynamically by professional actors. Results The findings indicate that decoding of basic emotions occurs along the broad affective dimension of uncertainty, and a basic step in emotion decoding involves recognizing whether information presented is emotional or not. Age was found to negatively affect the ability to decode basic negatively valenced emotions as well as pleasant surprise. Happiness decoding is the only ability that was found well‐preserved with advancing age. Conclusion The main conclusion drawn from the study is that the pattern in which emotion decoding from visual cues is affected by normal ageing depends on the rate of uncertainty, which either is related to decoding difficulties or is inherent to a specific emotion.