Attention and Adult Emotion Regulation

现在越来越多的证据表明，平均而言，年纪较大的人是成功的情绪调节者。 社会情绪选择性理论(Carstensen，Isaaco witz，&Charles，1999)作为一种 关于老年人如何主动调节面部社会情绪功能的激励性描述 身体和认知资源的减少。认知机制的最新研究 这种情绪调节表明，老年人在信息加工过程中存在积极偏向。然而， 虽然衰老中的积极倾向的发现在记忆领域是一致的，但有证据表明 注意力中的积极偏向则更为复杂。此外，大多数以前关于这些模式的工作 信息处理只是观察到老年人对情绪信息的认知偏差 并假设这些偏见与情绪调节有关。这项建议中的研究旨在 直接研究信息加工在成人情绪状态在线调节中的作用 和晚年。眼球跟踪将被用作视觉注意力的实时测量，并将与 其他认知测量，以提供对在线情绪处理的彻底评估。第一项研究 将重点展示老年人将信息处理作为一种工具来调节他们的 情绪发生时；第二项研究将使用训练范式来更具说服力地证明 面对负面情绪时，信息加工偏差与情绪调节能力之间的因果联系 信息。然后，最后的研究将解决这种情绪的适应功能的关键问题-- 通过呈现与健康相关的负面信息并测试认知能力是否 偏见有助于感觉良好，但会损害促进健康的行为。综上所述，建议中的研究将 使用尖端技术具体识别老年人如何在 情绪调节的服务，以及这是否有其他过程的成本。这项工作有明确的 不仅对理解成人和老年的社会情绪发展有影响，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联系。

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 socieomotionalfunctioning 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 proposal 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 proposal 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.