Attention and Adult Emotion Regulation

描述（由申请人提供）：现在越来越多的证据表明，平均而言，老年人是成功的情绪调节者。社会情绪选择理论（Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999）被认为是老年人在面对身体和认知资源减少时如何主动调节其社会功能的动机解释。最近对促进这种情绪调节的认知机制的研究表明，老年人的信息处理存在积极偏见。然而，尽管在记忆领域中，衰老中的积极偏见的发现是一致的，但在注意力领域中，积极偏见的证据却更加复杂。此外，大多数关于这些信息处理模式的先前工作只是观察到老年人对情绪信息的认知偏差，并假设这些偏差与情绪调节有关。本研究旨在直接探讨信息加工在成年期和老年期情绪状态在线调节中的作用。眼动追踪将被用作视觉注意力的实时测量，并将与其他认知测量相结合，以提供对在线情绪处理的全面评估。第一项研究将侧重于证明老年人使用信息处理作为一种工具来调节他们的情绪；第二项研究将使用训练范式来更确凿地证明信息处理偏差与面对负面信息时调节情绪的能力之间的因果关系。最后，本研究将通过呈现与健康相关的负面信息和测试认知偏差是否促进感觉良好但损害促进健康的行为，来解决这种情绪调节认知偏差的适应功能的关键问题。总之，应用程序中的研究将使用尖端技术来具体辨别老年人如何在情绪调节中使用信息处理，以及这是否会对其他过程产生影响。这项工作不仅对理解成年期和老年期的社会情感发展有明确的意义，而且对阐明认知、调节情绪的能力和健康相关结果之间的因果关系也有明确的意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Accumulating evidence now points to older individuals being, on average, successful emotion regulators. Socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999) has been offered as a motivational account of how older individuals proactively regulate their socieomotional functioning in the face of decreasing physical and cognitive resources. Recent studies on the cognitive mechanisms that facilitate this emotion regulation have suggested a positivity bias in older adults' information processing. However, while the findings of a positivity bias in aging have been consistent in the memory domain, the evidence for a positivity bias in attention has been more mixed. Moreover, most previous work on these patterns of information processing has simply observed cognitive biases toward emotional information among older adults and assumed that these biases are linked to emotion regulation. The studies in this application aim to directly investigate the role of information processing in on-line regulation of emotional states in adulthood and old age. Eye tracking will be used as a real-time measure of visual attention, and will be combined with other cognitive measures to provide a thorough assessment of on-line emotional processing. The first study will focus on demonstrating that older individuals use information processing as a tool to regulate their emotions as they happen; the second study will use a training paradigm to more conclusively demonstrate causal links between information processing biases and ability to regulate emotions in the face of negative information. Then, the final study will address the critical issue of the adaptive function of such emotion- regulating cognitive biases, by presenting health-relevant negative information and testing whether cognitive biases facilitate feeling good but impair health-promoting behavior. Together, the studies in the application will use cutting-edge technology to discern specifically how older individuals use information processing in the service of emotion regulation and whether this has costs for other processes. This work has clear implications not just for understanding socioemotional development in adulthood and old age, but also for clarifying causal links between cognition, ability to regulate emotions, and health-related outcomes.