Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of context on emotional word processing in healthy younger and older adults

博士论文研究：上下文对健康年轻人和老年人情绪文字处理的影响

• 批准号: 2213622
• 负责人: Tzu yin Lai
• 金额: $ 1.71万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2025-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2213622&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Effects; context

Emotional representations of a word depend on different sentential contexts. For instance, “holiday” feels pleasant when it appears as a single word. But when it is embedded in a sentential context, e.g., “holidays are stressful”, the emotional connotation of the word can be instantaneously changed into something negative. This project investigates the effect of context on the emotional connotations of words in older adults, in two ways. First, older adults typically show a positivity bias--i.e., the tendency to focus on positive information. How do older adults update the emotional connotations of words in positive or negative contexts, compared with younger adults? Second, in emotionally ambiguous scenarios, would older adults predict positive endings, as a result of their positivity bias? These findings shed light on the link between sentence processing and emotion regulation, and how such age-related positivity bias can be leveraged to improve older adults’ emotional well-being, which is a pressing issue in this aging society.This project uses web-based surveys and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate how the emotional representation of a word is retrieved, updated, and pre-activated during language comprehension in older and younger adults. The overarching hypothesis is that age-related positivity bias influences the affective features of a word, not only during the reading of the target word given its preceding context, but also the prediction or predicted features prior to reading the target word. Two studies are conducted. One study examines whether and how age-related positivity bias influences the updating of emotional features of a word during sentence comprehension. Target words are embedded in positive or negative sentences, e.g., "Holiday is stressful/wonderful", first and then are presented again, e.g., "holiday". Brainwave analyses are performed at the first and the second occurrences of the target word, to identify changes of emotional representations of the word. The expected outcome is that older adults will be more effective in contextual updating in a positive context than in a negative context, in comparison to younger adults. The other study investigates whether and how age-related positivity bias influences prediction of affective features in emotionally ambiguous sentences, e.g., "Mary received the exam results". Participants read such sentences first, and then an emotionally congruent or incongruent target word, e.g., "pass" or "fail". The expected outcome is that older adults will pre-activate positive features congruent with the positive target, but incongruent with the negative target. These results will contribute to emotional language comprehension and predictive mechanisms in language across the lifespan.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

一个词的情感表征取决于不同的语境。例如，“holiday”作为一个单词出现时，会让人感到愉快。但是当它被嵌入到一个连续的上下文中时，例如，“假期是有压力的”，这个词的情感内涵可以瞬间变成消极的东西。本研究从两个方面探讨了语境对老年人词汇情感内涵的影响。首先，老年人通常表现出积极的偏见-即，倾向于关注积极的信息。与年轻人相比，老年人如何更新积极或消极语境中词语的情感内涵？第二，在情感模糊的场景中，老年人会因为他们的积极性偏见而预测积极的结局吗？这些发现揭示了句子处理和情绪调节之间的联系，以及如何利用这种与年龄相关的积极偏见来改善老年人的情绪健康，这是这个老龄化社会的一个紧迫问题。本项目使用基于网络的调查和脑电图（EEG）来研究一个单词的情绪表征是如何被检索，更新，在老年人和年轻人的语言理解过程中被预先激活。最重要的假设是，年龄相关的积极性偏见影响的情感特征的一个词，不仅在阅读的目标词之前的背景下，但也预测或预测功能之前，阅读的目标词。进行了两项研究。一项研究探讨了年龄相关的积极性偏见是否以及如何影响句子理解过程中单词情感特征的更新。目标词嵌入在肯定或否定的句子中，例如，“假期是紧张/美妙的”，首先，然后再次提出，例如，“假日”。在目标词的第一次和第二次出现时进行脑波分析，以识别词的情感表征的变化。预期的结果是，老年人将更有效的上下文更新在积极的背景下比在消极的背景下，相比年轻的成年人。另一项研究调查了年龄相关的积极性偏见是否以及如何影响情感模糊句子中情感特征的预测，例如，“玛丽收到了考试结果”。参与者首先阅读这些句子，然后阅读情感一致或不一致的目标词，例如，“通过”或“失败”。预期的结果是，老年人将预先激活与积极目标一致的积极特征，但与消极目标不一致。这些结果将有助于整个生命周期的情感语言理解和语言预测机制。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。