A wrinkle in time: The perception of expressions in the elderly

描述（由申请人提供）：情感识别和表达是人类互动的重要组成部分。很难想象在没有情感交流的情况下会有什么重要的互动，而情感沟通不畅的后果可能会影响深远。卫生保健机构是老年人经常与年轻人互动的一个例子，有效的情感交流是必不可少的。如果情绪表达被错误识别，这不仅可能导致误诊，而且还可能产生更广泛的影响，例如老年人失去信任。现有的研究主要集中在老年人是否存在情绪识别缺陷的问题上。然而，情感交流是双向的，年轻人理解老年人的情感表达同样重要。这可能是一项比通常认为的更困难的任务。具体来说，随着年龄的增长，面部的变化会降低情绪表达的清晰度。皱纹和面部褶皱可以模仿某些表情（例如，嘴角下垂可能看起来很悲伤），或者通过混淆观察者来干扰其他情绪的清晰表达。此外，年轻感知者对老年人情感生活的刻板印象可能会使他们对老年人的情感归因产生偏见。这两个过程反过来又会导致同理心的减少。具体来说，移情反应的一个关键因素，模仿反应（即，自动和无意识地模仿他人的非语言行为，以促进社会互动中的融洽和归属感）可能会因缺乏信号清晰度和刻板印象过程而受到干扰。本文提出的研究考察了老年人所表现出的情绪表达是如何被年轻人感知和反应的。一组研究将集中在年轻人准确标记这种情绪表达的能力上。这组研究将使用创新的基于计算机的方法，克服过去阻碍该问题研究的局限性，例如老年模型缺乏控制的情绪表达以及对表达的客观评估问题。年轻人对老年人的情感生活和反应所持有的情感刻板印象也将被评估，并将调查他们在偏见情感表达感知中的作用。另一组研究将关注移情反应。在这些研究中，我们将评估年轻人在多大程度上模仿老年人的面部和姿势情感表达。缺乏这种模仿会让人觉得缺乏融洽的关系，使互动变得不那么愉快和受欢迎。这项研究将是第一个旨在澄清我们对年轻人感知和应对老年人情绪的方式的理解的研究——鉴于美国人口的老龄化，这个问题的普遍意义越来越大。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emotion recognition and expression are an essential part of human interaction. It is hard to imagine any significant interaction in which no emotions are communicated and the consequences of emotional miscommunications can be far reaching. Health care settings are one example of interactions where the elderly routinely interact with younger people and where efficient emotional communication is essential. If emotion expressions are misidentified, this may not only lead to misdiagnosis, but can also have far broader effects, such as a loss of trust on the part of the elderly. The extant research has largely focused on the question of whether the elderly have emotion recognition deficits. However, emotion communication is a two way street and it is equally important that younger people understand the emotion expressions of older people. This may be a more difficult task than is generally assumed. Specifically, with age the face changes in ways that reduce the clarity of emotion expressions. Wrinkles and facial folds can mimic some expressions (for example, downturned corners of the mouth may look sad) or interfere with the clear expression of other emotions by confusing the observer. Further, the stereotypes that young perceivers hold regarding the emotional lives of the elderly may bias the emotional attributions they make to older persons. Both processes in turn can lead to a reduction in empathy. Specifically, a crucial element of empathic responding, mimicry reactions (i.e., the automatic and unconscious imitation of the nonverbal behavior of others that serves to facilitate feelings of rapport and affiliation in social interaction) can be disturbed both by lack of signal clarity and by stereotype processes. The studies proposed herein examine how emotion expressions shown by the elderly are perceived and reacted to by younger persons. One set of studies will focus on the capacity of younger individuals to accurately label such emotion expressions. This set of studies will use innovative computer based approaches that overcome limitations that have hindered research on this question in the past, such as the absence of controlled emotion expressions by elderly models and the issue of objective assessment of the expression. Emotional stereotypes that young adults hold regarding the emotional lives and responses of older individuals will also be assessed and their role in biasing the perception of emotion expressions will be investigated. Another set of studies will focus on empathic responding. In these studies we will assess to what degree younger individuals imitate the facial and postural emotion expressions of older individuals. The absence of such imitation is felt as a lack of rapport and renders interactions less pleasant and welcoming. This research will be the first aimed at clarifying our understanding of the way younger people perceive and react to the emotions of older people - a question of increasing general significance given the aging of the American population. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: We propose to study (a) the stereotypes that young adults hold regarding the emotional lives of the elderly, (b) the perception of facial expressions shown by the elderly and (c) reactions to these expressions in terms of facial and postural mimicry by the perceiver. Available evidence suggests that young adults do not accurately process the emotional expressions of the elderly. We argue that stereotypes and perceptual biases due to age related appearance changes in the face interact to degrade the signal clarity of expressions shown by the elderly and combine to hinder mimicry of their expressions. The proposed research will be the first to clarify our understanding of these processes.