EMOTIONAL AGING: CONTROL PROCESSES AND EMOTION REGULATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE

描述(申请人提供)：在健康的成年人中，情感生活似乎普遍随着年龄的增长而改善，特别是在降低负面情绪和建立更积极的人际关系方面(Blanchard-field，2007；Carstensen，&Mikels，2005)。研究人员认为，这是因为特定的情绪处理和情绪控制技能的增加，有助于在日常生活中更好地自我调节情绪。然而，通过将情绪控制和情绪处理的实验室措施与日常生活中的情绪反应和调节联系起来，直接验证这一假设的研究还缺乏。填补我们对老年人情绪自我调节潜在机制的了解的这一空白是这项申请的首要主题。我们建议分两个阶段研究一个大的(N=150)寿命样本(年龄在18到80岁之间)。在第一阶段，我们建议实施一系列基于实验室的情绪处理和情绪反应控制措施。后面这些任务将使用情绪的双过程模型进行分析，该模型旨在帮助我们理解关于情绪控制和调节的终生问题。具体地说，我们假设情绪反应的后期过程控制成分随着年龄的增长而改善，特别是对消极情绪。我们建议使用过程分离程序开发基于实验室的情绪控制措施(Jacoby，1991)。这些情绪处理和情绪控制的实验室措施将被检查有效性，以及在一生样本中的年龄趋势。此外，我们进一步假设，情绪反应的这个控制成分，通过实验室任务进行评估，将与情绪调节的问卷和日常经验抽样措施相关。因此，在第二阶段中，我们将包括对日常情绪的自然主义研究，使用经验抽样方法来评估日常生活中的情绪调节和反应性。总体而言，这项研究的数据应该会产生一些发现，这些发现将增加我们对基本认知和情绪处理技能的理解，这些技能是老年人日常生活中情绪调节成功形式的基础和支持。与NIA的使命相关，拟议的研究将导致对情绪控制过程的更深入和更精细的理解，即情绪控制过程是否随着正常衰老而改善，以及它们是否与老年人日常生活中情绪调节的自然努力和有效性有关。这项拟议的研究确定了情绪自我调节的基本机制，考察了这些机制在男性和女性一生中的发展变化，并系统地表征了这些机制在日常生活中随着时间的推移对情绪调节的重要性。这项工作有可能确定操作干预目标，以优化情绪自我调节行为，以促进老年人的健康和积极发展。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Among healthy adults, emotional life appears to generally improve with age, particularly in term of lowered negative affect and more positive interpersonal relations (Blanchard-Field, 2007; Carstensen, & Mikels, 2005). Researchers have assumed this is due to increases in specific emotional processing and emotional control skills that contribute to better self-regulation of emotions in daily life. However, research directly testing this assumption, by linking laboratory measures of emotional control and emotional processing to emotional reactivity and regulation in everyday life, is lacking. Filling this gap in our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying emotional self-regulation in older persons is the overarching theme of this application. We propose to study a large (N=150) life span sample (ages 18 to 80) in two phases. In Phase 1 we propose to administer a battery of laboratory-based measures of emotional processing and the control of emotional responses. These latter tasks will be analyzed using a dual-process model of emotion developed to aid our understanding of life-span questions about emotional control and regulation. Specifically, we hypothesize that latter-stage process control components of emotional responding improve with age, especially for negative affect. We propose to develop laboratory-based measures of emotional control using the Process Dissociation Procedure (Jacoby, 1991). These laboratory measures of emotion processing and emotion control will be examined for validity, as well as for age trends in a life-span sample. Moreover, we further hypothesize that this control component of emotional responding, assessed using laboratory tasks, will correlated with questionnaire and daily experience sampling measures of emotion regulation. As such, in Phase 2 we will include a naturalistic study of daily emotion, using experience-sampling methods, to assess emotion regulation and reactivity in everyday life. Overall, data from this study should produce findings that will increase our understanding of the basic cognitive and emotion processing skills that underlie and support successful forms of emotion regulation in everyday life among older persons. Relevant to the mission of the NIA, the proposed research will lead to a deeper and more refined understanding of emotional control processes, whether they improve with normal aging, and whether they relate to naturalistic efforts towards, and effectiveness at, emotion regulation in everyday life in older persons. The proposed research identifies basic mechanisms involved in the self-regulation of emotion, examines developmental changes in these mechanisms across the lifespan in both men and women, and systematically characterizes the importance of these mechanisms for emotional regulation over time in daily life. This work has the potential to identify operational intervention targets for optimizing emotional self-regulatory behaviors to facilitate health and positive development in older persons.