Time's Eye: Aging and Attention to Emotional Stimuli

NIA试点研究补助金计划，目标12：在上下文中的认知：该项目旨在使用一种新的方法来调查成年和老年社会情感发展研究中的一个主要问题：即，尽管随着年龄的增长，他们面临着变化，但大多数老年人如何报告他们的生活幸福和满意。有一种理论可以解释这种现象，那就是社会情绪理论 选择性理论，假设情绪随着年龄的增长而变得更加突出;这种对认知过程中情绪的关注增加，使老年人能够主动调节自己的情绪。 如果情感材料确实对老年人更重要，这是如何发生的？情绪对老年人来说不太可能更显着，仅仅因为他们比年轻人更注重情绪地评估或解释信息，这表明情绪对他们来说更显着的方式发生在信息处理的早期，而不是最后的阶段解释和重构的步骤。情感材料可能因此接收 在老年人的注意力过程中的优先处理，这种偏好或偏见在信息处理相对早期可能是他们功能的许多领域中情绪显着性增加的基础。可能是这样的情况，情感材料只是整体上比非情感材料对老年人更突出，或者 相反，老年人表现出对积极情绪刺激的注意偏好。任何一种都有助于促进成功的情绪调节。 本研究旨在通过眼动仪测量不同年龄的成年人在真实的时间内对情绪和非情绪刺激的注意，直接研究老年人情绪显著性增加的注意机制。该项目有两个主要目标：1。通过评估老年人对情绪与非情绪、积极与消极情绪刺激的注意偏好，研究情绪对老年人认知加工的影响是否比年轻人更显著; 2.开发和测试不同的方法来评估不同年龄的成年人的这些偏好。 该项目的主要假设是，与年轻人相比，老年人将表现出对情感而非情感以及积极而非消极的视觉刺激的更大的注意力偏好。将进行两项研究，以检验这些假设，并改进进行这类研究的方法， 未来在一定程度上，这些假设得到了支持，这表明许多老年人所表现出的成功的情绪调节来自于他们信息处理早期注意阶段的偏见和偏好。这些结果也将对抑郁症的病因和治疗产生影响。

NIA Pilot Research Grant Program, Objective 12: Cognition in Context : This project aims to use a novel methodological approach to the investigation of a primary issue in the study of socioemotional development in adulthood and old age: namely, how it is possible that most older individuals report being happy and satisfied with their lives, despite the changes they face as they age. One theory that has been offered to account for this phenomenon is socioemotional selectivity theory, which posits that emotions become more salient to individuals with age; this increased focus on emotion in cognitive processing allows older individuals to proactively regulate their emotions. If emotional material is indeed more salient to older individuals, how does this happen? It is unlikely that emotions are more salient to older individuals simply because they appraise or interpret information in a more emotion-focused way than do younger adults, suggesting that the way in which emotion is more salient to them takes place earlier in information processing than the final steps of interpretation and reframing. Emotional material may thus receive preferential treatment in the attentional processes of older adults, and this preference or bias relatively early in information processing may underlie the increased salience of emotion across many domains of their functioning. It may be the case that emotional material is simply more salient overall than is nonemotional material to older adults, or rather that older individuals show an attentional preference for positive over negative emotional stimuli. Either could help promote successful emotion regulation. This proposal aims to directly study whether there are attentional mechanisms underlying the increased salience of emotion to older individuals by using an eye tracker to measure attention to emotional and nonemotional stimuli in real time in adults of different ages. The project has two primary goals: 1. To examine whether emotion is more salient to the cognitive processing of older as compared with younger individuals, by evaluating attentional preferences to emotional vs. nonemotional and to positive vs. negative emotional stimuli; and 2. To develop and test different methods for assessing these preferences in adults of different ages. The primary hypotheses of the project are that older individuals will demonstrate greater attentional preferences for emotional over non-emotional, as well as for positive over negative, visual stimuli as compared to young adults. Two studies will be conducted to test these hypotheses, as well as to refine methods for conducting this type of research in the future. To the extent that these hypotheses are supported, it would suggest that the successful emotion regulation shown by many older individuals arises from biases and preferences in the early, attentional stages of their information processing. The results would also have implications for the etiology and treatment of depression.