scholarly journals Positivity effect in source attributions of arousal-matched emotional and non-emotional words during item-based directed forgetting

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara N. Gallant ◽  
Lixia Yang
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Directed Forgetting ◽  
Attention And Memory ◽  
Source Attribution ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Intentional Forgetting ◽  
Age Related

Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent “tagging” recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect.

scholarly journals Positivity effect in source attributions of arousal-matched emotional and non-emotional words during item-based directed forgetting

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara N. Gallant ◽  
Lixia Yang
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Directed Forgetting ◽  
Attention And Memory ◽  
Source Attribution ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
Emotional Words ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Intentional Forgetting ◽  
Age Related

Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent “tagging” recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect.

scholarly journals Eye movements reveal a similar positivity effect in Chinese and UK older adults

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (11) ◽  
pp. 1921-1929
Author(s):  
Jingxin Wang ◽  
Fang Xie ◽  
Liyuan He ◽  
Katie L Meadmore ◽  
Kevin B Paterson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Eye Movements ◽  
Bayes Factor ◽  
Attention And Memory ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Related Increase

The “positivity effect” (PE) reflects an age-related increase in the preference for positive over negative information in attention and memory. The present experiment investigated whether Chinese and UK participants produce a similar PE. In one experiment, we presented pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures simultaneously and participants decided which picture they liked or disliked on a third of trials, respectively. We recorded participants’ eye movements during this task and compared time looking at, and memory for, pictures. The results suggest that older but not younger adults from both China and UK participant groups showed a preference to focus on and remember pleasant pictures, providing evidence of a PE in both cultures. Bayes Factor analysis supported these observations. These findings are consistent with the view that older people preferentially focus on positive emotional information, and that this effect is observed cross-culturally.

scholarly journals Preparing for the worst: Evidence that older adults proactively downregulate negative affect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittany Corbett ◽  
M. Natasha Rajah ◽  
Audrey Duarte
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Negative Affect ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Impact

AbstractAge-related differences in processing emotional stimuli are well established. However, previous studies have only assessed the impact of age on emotional processing and encoding in response to, not in anticipation of, emotional stimuli. In the current study, we investigated age-related differences in the impact of emotional anticipation on affective responses and episodic memory for emotional images. Young and older were scanned while encoding negative and neutral images preceded by cues that were either valid or invalid predictors of image valence. Participants were asked to rate the emotional intensity of the images and to complete an episodic recognition task immediately after scanning. Using multivariate behavioral partial least squares (PLS) analysis, we found that young and older adults recruit the same set of brain regions to differentially support emotional processing during the anticipation of emotional images. Specifically, anticipatory recruitment of the amygdala, ventromedial PFC, and hippocampus in older adults predicts reduced memory for negative than neutral images for older adults and the opposite for young adults. Seed PLS analyses further show inverse coupling between the amygdala and ventromedial PFC activation following negative cues, consistent with the top-down spontaneous suppression of negative affect. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to provide evidence that the “positivity effect” seen in older adults’ memory performance is related to the spontaneous suppression of negative affect in anticipation of, not just in response to, negative stimuli.

scholarly journals Effects of aging on emotion recognition from dynamic multimodal expressions and vocalizations

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana S. Cortes ◽  
Christina Tornberg ◽  
Tanja Bänziger ◽  
Hillary Anger Elfenbein ◽  
Håkan Fischer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Effects Of Aging

AbstractAge-related differences in emotion recognition have predominantly been investigated using static pictures of facial expressions, and positive emotions beyond happiness have rarely been included. The current study instead used dynamic facial and vocal stimuli, and included a wider than usual range of positive emotions. In Task 1, younger and older adults were tested for their abilities to recognize 12 emotions from brief video recordings presented in visual, auditory, and multimodal blocks. Task 2 assessed recognition of 18 emotions conveyed by non-linguistic vocalizations (e.g., laughter, sobs, and sighs). Results from both tasks showed that younger adults had significantly higher overall recognition rates than older adults. In Task 1, significant group differences (younger > older) were only observed for the auditory block (across all emotions), and for expressions of anger, irritation, and relief (across all presentation blocks). In Task 2, significant group differences were observed for 6 out of 9 positive, and 8 out of 9 negative emotions. Overall, results indicate that recognition of both positive and negative emotions show age-related differences. This suggests that the age-related positivity effect in emotion recognition may become less evident when dynamic emotional stimuli are used and happiness is not the only positive emotion under study.

scholarly journals Adult age differences in subjective responses to dynamic socioemotional incentives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sade J Abiodun ◽  
Galen McAllister ◽  
Gregory Russell Samanez-Larkin ◽  
Kendra Leigh Seaman
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Incentive Motivation ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Adult Age Differences

Facial expressions are powerful communicative social signals that motivate feelings and action in the observer. However, research on incentive motivation has overwhelmingly focused on money and points and the limited research on social incentives has been mostly focused on responses in young adulthood. Previous research on the age-related positivity effect and adult age differences in social motivation suggest that older adults might experience higher levels of positive arousal to socioemotional stimuli than younger adults. Affect ratings following dynamic emotional expressions (anger, happiness, sadness) varying in magnitude of expression showed that higher magnitude expressions elicited higher arousal and valence ratings. Older adults did not differ significantly in levels of arousal when compared to younger adults, however their ratings of emotional valence were significantly higher as the magnitude of expressions increased. The findings provide novel evidence that socioemotional incentives may be relatively more reinforcing as adults age. More generally, these dynamic socioemotional stimuli that vary in magnitude are ideal for future studies of more naturalistic affect elicitation, studies of social incentive processing, and use in incentive-driven choice tasks.

scholarly journals Age-related positivity effect on behavioural responses of dogs to human vocalisations

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Smit ◽  
Dora Szabo ◽  
Enikő Kubinyi
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Attention And Memory ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Behavioural Responses ◽  
Fundamental Frequencies ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Age Related Changes

AbstractAge-related changes in the brain can alter how emotions are processed. In humans, valence specific changes in attention and memory were reported with increasing age, i.e. older people are less attentive toward and experience fewer negative emotions, while processing of positive emotions remains intact. Little is yet known about this “positivity effect” in non-human animals. We tested young (n = 21, 1–5 years) and old (n = 19, >10 years) family dogs with positive (laugh), negative (cry), and neutral (hiccup, cough) human vocalisations and investigated age-related differences in their behavioural reactions. Only dogs with intact hearing were analysed and the selected sound samples were balanced regarding mean and fundamental frequencies between valence categories. Compared to young dogs, old individuals reacted slower only to the negative sounds and there was no significant difference in the duration of the reactions between groups. The selective response of the aged dogs to the sound stimuli suggests that the results cannot be explained by general cognitive and/or perceptual decline. and supports the presence of an age-related positivity effect in dogs, too. Similarities in emotional processing between humans and dogs may imply analogous changes in subcortical emotional processing in the canine brain during ageing.

scholarly journals Advanced Aging Enhances the Positivity Effect in Memory: Due to Cognitive Control or Age-Related Decline in Emotional Processing?

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiko Sakaki ◽  
Jasmine A. L. Raw ◽  
Jamie Findlay ◽  
Mariel Thottam
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Aging Brain ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Old Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Conditioned Responses

Older adults typically remember more positive than negative information compared to their younger counterparts; a phenomenon referred to as the ‘positivity effect.’ According to the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), the positivity effect derives from the age-related motivational shift towards attaining emotionally meaningful goals which become more important as the perception of future time becomes more limited. Cognitive control mechanisms are critical in achieving such goals and therefore SST predicts that the positivity effect is associated with preserved cognitive control mechanisms in older adults. In contrast, the aging-brain model suggests that the positivity effect is driven by an age-related decline in the amygdala which is responsible for emotional processing and emotional learning. The aim of the current research was to address whether the age-related positivity effect is associated with cognitive control or impaired emotional processing associated with aging. We included older old adults, younger old adults and younger adults and tested their memory for emotional stimuli, cognitive control and amygdala-dependent fear conditioned responses. Consistent with prior research, older adults, relative to younger adults, demonstrate better memory for positive over negative images. We further found that within a group of older adults, the positivity effect increases as a function of age, such that older old adults demonstrated a greater positivity effect compared to younger older adults. Furthermore, the positivity effect in older old adults was associated with preserved cognitive control, supporting the prediction of SST. Contrary to the prediction of the aging-brain model, participants across all groups demonstrated similar enhanced skin conductance responses to fear conditioned stimuli – responses known to rely on the amygdala. Our results support SST and suggest that the positivity effect in older adults is achieved by the preserved cognitive control mechanisms and is not a reflection of the impaired emotional function associated with age.

scholarly journals Me Time, or We Time? Age Differences in Motivation for Exercise

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal N Steltenpohl ◽  
Michael Shuster ◽  
Eric Peist ◽  
Amber Pham ◽  
Joseph A Mikels
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Exercise Motivation ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Motivational Messages ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Important Health ◽  
Important Health Issue ◽  
Meaningful Relationships

Abstract Background and Objectives Increasing exercise continues to be an important health issue for both older and younger adults. Researchers have suggested several methods for increasing exercise motivation. Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) posits that people’s motivation shift from future-oriented instrumental goals to present-oriented emotionally meaningful goals as we age, which provides insight into how people’s motivations for exercise may differ for older versus younger adults. The aim of our study was to examine how exercise motivation differs for older versus younger adults. Research Design and Methods Older (greater than 59 years old) and younger (aged 18–26 years) adults participated in focus groups. They discussed exercise motivation (or lack thereof), motivators and barriers to exercise, and preferences about when, where, and with whom they exercise. Focus group transcripts were analyzed using direct content analysis and iterative categorization. Results Consistent with SST, younger adults generally preferred to exercise alone to achieve instrumental fitness goals, whereas older adults preferred to exercise with others. Additionally, older adults tend to consider peripheral others (e.g., strangers, acquaintances), as a positive rather than a negative influence. Discussion and Implications SST provides a framework for exploring age-related shifts in exercise motivation. Additionally, the positivity effect was reflected in how older adults evaluated the influence of peripheral others. Motivational messages could be tailored to increase health behavior changes by focusing on instrumental exercise goals for younger adults and exercise focused on meaningful relationships for older adults.

Examining Positivity Effect and Working Memory in Young-Old and Very Old Adults Using EEG-Derived Cognitive State Metrics

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 1014-1035
Author(s):  
Joelle C. Ruthig ◽  
Dmitri P. Poltavski ◽  
Thomas Petros
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Very Old ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Old Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Young Old

The positivity effect among older adults is a tendency to process more positive and/or less negative emotional stimuli compared to younger adults, with unknown upper age boundaries. Cognitive and emotional working memory were assessed in young-old adults (60–75) and very old adults (VOAs; 80+) to determine whether emotional working memory declines similar to the age-related decline of cognitive working memory. The moderating role of valence on the link between age and emotional working memory was examined to identify change in positivity effect with advanced age. Electroencephalography (EEG) markers of cognitive workload and engagement were obtained to test the theory of cognitive resource allocation in older adults’ emotional stimuli processing. EEG recordings were collected during cognitive memory task and emotional working memory tasks that required rating emotional intensity of images pairs. Results indicate a positivity effect among VOAs that does not require additional cognitive effort and is not likely to diminish with age.

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