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

描述(由申请人提供)：成功老龄化是一个关键的公共卫生挑战。由于准确的面部特征印象为适应性社交提供了重要的指导，因此改善与年龄相关的准确性下降是应对这一挑战不可或缺的一部分，这也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，很少有研究调查老年人(OA)对这些特征的印象的准确性，尽管有理由预计与年龄相关的减退。年轻人(YA)的特质印象受到对面部品质的过度概括的反应的影响，这些特质提供了关于社交可能性的有用信息。更具体地说，YA倾向于将他们对婴儿、低健康或情感表情的面部特征的适应性反应概括为面部结构只是像婴儿(娃娃脸过度泛化)、低健康(异常面孔过度泛化)或情感表达(情感面孔过度泛化)的人。此外，从负面的面部特征概括，包括与愤怒的脸或反常的脸相似，可以培养准确的特质印象，而从积极的面部特征概括，如高吸引力或长得像一张快乐的脸或婴儿的脸，则不能。另一项单独的研究表明，在识别包括愤怒在内的负面情绪表达方面，OA比YA更差，对其他负价刺激的反应也比YA低，而在识别快乐表情或对正价刺激的反应方面，年龄差异不大。消极作价的面部线索对获得准确印象的效用，再加上OA可能对此类线索不那么敏感的证据，促使了拟议研究的具体目标。九项研究使用行为、神经和心理药理学方法来确定：1)OA和YA对积极程度不同(中等到积极效价线索)的面孔的特质印象比消极程度不同(中等到消极效价线索)的面孔的特质印象显示出更多的一致性；2)OA表现出的特质印象不如YA准确；以及面孔特质印象的年龄差异是否受到以下因素的影响：3)OA的多巴胺功能降低；4)OA的情绪调节更强；5)OA对个人相关面孔的选择性加工更多；以及6)OA的视觉去分化更多。通过将YA对面孔特质印象的研究与与年龄相关的神经功能、动机和信息加工变化的研究相结合，以实现这些特定的目标，本研究将有助于理解印象何时以及为什么会随着年龄变化，以及哪些因素对任何年龄的准确特质印象有贡献。这些发现将推动老龄化和社会情感神经科学领域的发展，并对开发干预措施产生影响，以减少与年龄相关的社会互动不良的脆弱性，这些社交互动可能会产生负面的身体、经济或心理影响。 公共卫生相关性：成功老龄化是一项关键的公共卫生挑战。由于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，因此了解这一过程中与年龄相关的变化对于解决这一挑战是不可或缺的。这项研究填补了文献中的空白，评估了年龄差异以及神经、动机和知觉解释机制，从而推动了老龄化和神经科学领域的发展，并为减少老年人对不适应社会互动的脆弱性提供了干预措施。

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.