RESUMEN
OBJECTIVES: Facial expressions are powerful social signals that motivate feelings and actions in the observer. Research on face processing has overwhelmingly used static facial images, which have limited ecological validity. Previous research on the age-related positivity effect and age differences in social motivation suggest that older adults might experience different evoked emotional responses to facial expressions than younger adults. Here, we introduce a new method to explore age-related differences in evoked responses to dynamic facial expressions across adulthood. METHODS: We used dynamic facial expressions which varied by expression type (happy, sad, and angry) and expression magnitude (low, medium, and full) to gather participant ratings on their evoked emotional response to these stimuli along the dimensions of valence (positive vs negative) and arousal. RESULTS: As predicted, older adults rated the emotions evoked by positive facial expressions (happy) more positively than younger adults. Furthermore, older adults rated the emotion evoked by negative facial expressions (angry and sad) more negatively than younger adults. Contrary to our predictions, older adults did not differ significantly in arousal to negative expressions compared with younger adults. Across all ages, individuals rated positive expressions as more arousing than negative expressions. DISCUSSION: The findings provide some evidence that older adults may be more sensitive to variations in dynamic facial expressions than younger adults, particularly in terms of their estimates of valence. These dynamic facial stimuli that vary in magnitude are promising for future studies of more naturalistic affect elicitation, studies of social incentive processing, and use in incentive-driven choice tasks.
Asunto(s)
Emociones , Expresión Facial , Humanos , Anciano , Adulto , Emociones/fisiología , Felicidad , Ira , Nivel de AlertaRESUMEN
Covid-19-related social-distancing measures have dramatically limited physical social contact between individuals and increased monetary and health concerns for individuals of all ages. We wondered how these new societal conditions would impact the choices individuals make about monetary, health, and social rewards, and if these unprecedented conditions would have a differential impact on older individuals. We conducted two online studies to examine temporal discounting of monetary, health, and social rewards; stated preferences for monetary, health, and social rewards; and physical distancing behaviors. Both studies recruited equal numbers of White/Caucasian, Black/African American, and Hispanic/Latinx participants. We found that older adults were more likely to prefer smaller, sooner social and health-related rewards in decision-making tasks. These data further support the assertion that older adults have increased motivation for social and health rewards compared to younger individuals and that these age differences in motivation are important to consider when examining decision-making across the adult life span.
Asunto(s)
COVID-19 , Descuento por Demora , Humanos , Anciano , Adulto , Distanciamiento Físico , Recompensa , Conducta de Elección , Toma de DecisionesRESUMEN
Age-related deficits in associative processing are well-documented (e.g., Naveh-Benjamin, 2000) and have been assumed to be the result of a general deficit that affects all types of binding. However, recent behavioral research has indicated that the visual configuration of the information that is presented to older adults influences the degree to which this binding deficit is exhibited by older adults (Overman, Dennis et al, 2019; Overman, Dennis, et al., 2018). The purpose of the present study was to further clarify the neural underpinnings of the associative deficit in aging and to examine whether functional activity at encoding differs with respect to the visual configuration and the type of associative being encoded. Using both univariate and multi-voxel pattern analysis, we found differences in both the magnitude of activation and pattern of neural responses associated with the type of association encoded (item-item and item-context). Specifically, our results suggest that, when controlling for stimuli composition, patterns of activation in sensory and frontal regions within the associative encoding network are able to distinguish between different types of associations. With respect to the MTL, multivariate results suggest that only patterns of activation in the PrC in older, but not younger adults, can distinguish between associations types. These findings extend prior work regarding the neural basis of associative memory in young and older adults, and extends the predictions of the binding of item and context model (BIC; Diana, Yonelinas, Ranganath, 2007) to older adults.
Asunto(s)
Envejecimiento/fisiología , Envejecimiento/psicología , Aprendizaje por Asociación/fisiología , Encéfalo/fisiología , Adulto , Anciano , Análisis de Varianza , Mapeo Encefálico , Femenino , Hipocampo/fisiología , Humanos , Imagen por Resonancia Magnética , Masculino , Lóbulo Occipital/fisiología , Corteza Prefrontal/fisiología , Adulto JovenRESUMEN
Relative to young adults, older adults typically exhibit a reduced ability to accurately remember associations between stimuli. Prior research has assumed that this age-related memory impairment affects different types of associations similarly. However, research in young adults has suggested that item-item and item-context associations are supported by different underlying neural mechanisms that could be unequally affected by aging. This experiment compared memory across association types in younger and older adults by presenting the same types of stimuli as either item-item or item-context pairs. Manner of presentation during retrieval was also manipulated so that pairs were presented in a manner that was either congruent or incongruent with their presentation during encoding. Older adults showed a particular benefit of encoding-retrieval congruency for item-context associations, supporting the idea that the associative deficit may be reduced by unitization at encoding and reinstatement of this prior stimulus configuration at retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record