Aging & Accurate Face Impressions: Perceptual, Neural & Motivational Mechanisms

老化

• 批准号: 8016181
• 负责人: LESLIE A. ZEBROWITZ
• 金额: $ 35.55万
• 依托单位: BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-05-01 至 2016-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8016181
• 关键词: Adaptive Behaviors; Address; Age; Aging; Agreement; Anger; Appearance; Behavioral; Brain region; Categories; Cognitive; Competence; Counseling; Coupled; Cues; Dopamine; Elderly; Emotional; Emotions; Ethnic Origin; Face; Fostering; Fraud; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Goals; Health; Hostility; Intelligence; Intervention; Literature; Longevity; Methods; Metric; Motivation; Neurophysiology - biologic function; Neurosciences; Personal Satisfaction; Persons; Process; Public Health; Research; Social Interaction; Stimulus; Structure; Testing; Time; Variant; Visual; Visual Cortex; affective neuroscience; age difference; age effect; age related; aging brain; contagion; distraction; emotion regulation; face perception; fitness; impression; information processing; interest; programs; psychologic; psychopharmacologic; relating to nervous system; response; sex; showing emotion; social; therapy development; trait; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Successful aging is a crucial public health challenge. Because accurate trait impressions from faces provide a significant guide to adaptive social interactions, ameliorating any age-related declines in accuracy is integral to addressing that challenge, and this is the long range goal of the proposed research. Accurate assessments of traits like health, hostility, honesty, and competence are important for avoiding contagion and physical harm and seeking appropriate counsel across the lifespan. Yet, there is a dearth of research investigating the accuracy of older adults' (OA) impressions of these traits despite reason to expect age-related decrements. Young adults' (YA) trait impressions are influenced by overgeneralized responses to facial qualities that provide useful information about social interaction possibilities. More specifically, YA tend to generalize their adaptive responses to facial qualities that mark babies, low fitness, or emotion expressions to people whose facial structure merely resembles babies (babyface overgeneralization), low fitness (anomalous face overgeneralization) or an emotion expression (emotion face overgeneralization). Moreover, generalizing from negative facial qualities, including resemblance to an angry face or an anomalous face, fosters accurate trait impressions, whereas generalizing from positive facial qualities, such as high attractiveness or resemblance to a happy face or a baby's face does not. A separate body of research reveals that OA are worse than YA at recognizing negative emotion expressions, including anger, and less responsive than YA to other negatively valenced stimuli, whereas there is little age difference in recognition of happy expressions or response to positively valenced stimuli. The utility of negatively valenced facial cues for achieving accurate impressions coupled with evidence that OA may be less sensitive to such cues motivates the specific aims of the proposed research. Nine studies use behavioral, neural, and psychopharmacological methods to determine whether: 1) OA and YA show more agreement in trait impressions of faces that vary in positivity (medium to positively valenced cues) than those that vary in negativity (medium to negatively valenced cues); 2) OA show less accurate trait impressions than YA; and whether age differences in trait impressions from faces are influenced by 3) decreased dopamine function in OA; 4) greater emotion regulation in OA; 5) more selective processing of personally relevant faces in OA; and 6) more visual dedifferentiation in OA. By integrating research on trait impressions from faces in YA with research on age-related changes in neural function, motivation, and information processing to achieve these specific aims, the proposed research will contribute to understanding when and why impressions change with age as well as what factors contribute to accurate trait impressions at any age. The findings will advance the fields of aging as well as social affective neuroscience, with implications for the development of interventions to reduce age-related vulnerabilities to maladaptive social interactions that can have negative physical, financial, or psychological repercussions. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Successful aging is a crucial public health challenge. Because accurate trait impressions from faces provide a significant guide to adaptive social interactions, understanding age-related changes in this process is integral to addressing that challenge. This research fills a void in the literature, assessing age differences as well as neural, motivational, and perceptual explanatory mechanisms, thereby advancing the fields of aging and neuroscience, with implications for interventions to reduce older adults' vulnerability to maladaptive social interactions.

描述（由申请人提供）：成功的老龄化是一个重要的公共卫生挑战。因为准确的面部特征印象为适应性社会互动提供了重要的指导，改善任何与年龄相关的准确性下降是解决这一挑战的必要条件，这是拟议研究的长期目标。对健康、敌意、诚实和能力等特征的准确评估对于避免感染和身体伤害以及在一生中寻求适当的咨询非常重要。然而，调查老年人（OA）对这些特征印象的准确性的研究缺乏，尽管有理由预期与年龄相关的下降。年轻人（YA）的特征印象受到对面部特征的过度概括反应的影响，面部特征提供了有关社会互动可能性的有用信息。更具体地说，YA倾向于将他们对标记婴儿、低适应性或情绪表达的面部特征的适应性反应概括为面部结构与婴儿相似（娃娃脸过度概括）、低适应性（异常面部过度概括）或情绪表达（情绪面部过度概括）的人。此外，从负面的面部特征（包括与愤怒的脸或异常的脸相似）中进行概括可以促进准确的特征印象，而从积极的面部特征（如高吸引力或与快乐的脸或婴儿的脸相似）中进行概括则不会。另一项独立的研究表明，OA在识别包括愤怒在内的负面情绪表达方面比YA差，对其他负面刺激的反应也比YA差，而在识别快乐表达或对积极刺激的反应方面几乎没有年龄差异。利用负价值的面部线索来获得准确的印象，再加上有证据表明OA可能对这些线索不太敏感，这激发了拟议研究的具体目标。9项研究使用行为学、神经学和精神药理学方法来确定：1)OA和YA在正面（中效到正效线索）变化的面部特征印象上是否比负面（中效到负效线索）变化的面部特征印象表现出更多的一致性；2) OA对特质印象的准确度低于YA；面部特征印象的年龄差异是否受3)OA多巴胺功能下降的影响；4) OA患者的情绪调节能力较强；5) OA中个人相关面孔的选择性更强；6) OA有更多的视觉去分化。通过对青少年面部特征印象的研究与神经功能、动机和信息处理的年龄相关变化的研究相结合，以实现这些特定目标，本研究将有助于理解印象何时以及为什么随年龄而变化，以及什么因素有助于在任何年龄形成准确的特征印象。这一发现将推动老龄化和社会情感神经科学领域的发展，并对干预措施的发展产生影响，以减少与年龄相关的易受不适应社会互动影响的脆弱性，这种社会互动可能对身体、经济或心理产生负面影响。