Effect of attentional control on the expression of the negativity bias in aging

描述（由申请人提供）：情感和注意力都能以一种适应性的方式集中我们的思想。然而，随着年龄的增长，情绪机制似乎发生了变化，改变了我们对相关或不相关事物的优先级。据报道，在年轻人中，有强烈的消极偏见，他们更关注情绪上的消极信息，而不太关注积极信息。在老年人中，有证据表明，他们的注意力从把注意力吸引到消极刺激转向了在消极和积极刺激之间更平等的平衡，甚至转向了对积极信息的偏好。迄今为止，人们已经对这种情绪优先级的变化（通常称为“积极效应”）及其对衰老认知的影响进行了广泛的研究。然而，很少有人研究情绪调节的变化如何与注意机制相互作用，从而导致这些变化。具体来说，自下而上（非自愿）和自上而下（自愿）因素在驱动这种变化中可能扮演的角色尚未确定。深入了解老年人基于情绪的注意力分配至关重要，至少有两个原因：1)注意力影响所有其他认知功能，包括记忆和充满情绪的决策（例如，健康、个人财务）；ii)选择性地将注意力集中于或远离充满情绪的刺激是一种有效的“情绪调节”形式。这与现有的衰老描述高度相关，如社会情绪选择理论，该理论预测老年人在注意力分配方面表现出积极的倾向，以增加积极的情绪状态和整体幸福感。最近有一种假设认为，这是由于人们自愿将注意力从消极刺激转移到积极刺激上的结果。本文提出的研究旨在使用事件相关脑电位（ERP）方法来检查情绪偏差背后的注意机制可能与年龄相关的变化。计划进行三项研究。在前两项研究中，任务指令将被操纵，以隔离自下而上和自上而下的注意力分配对基于erp的年轻人和老年人信息处理情感优先级测量的影响。如果与年龄相关的更“积极”优先级的转变是由自愿努力驱动的，那么在“自下而上”的条件下，年轻人和老年人都应该表现出消极的偏见。在第二项研究中，参与者将被要求改变他们的情绪“框架”，以便调查是否可以通过自上而下的控制来克服自动的情绪偏见。最后一项研究是比较大脑对认知功能的反应。如果与衰老相关的积极影响是有目的的，那么应该是具有最高执行认知能力的老年人在大脑活动中表现出最弱的消极偏见。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emotion and attention both work to focus our thoughts in a manner that is adaptive. However, it appears that as we age, emotional mechanisms shift, changing our priorities in terms of what is deemed to be relevant or irrelevant. In younger adults, a strong negativity bias has been reported, where individuals pay more attention to emotionally negative information and less attention to positive information. In older adults, there is evidence of a shift in focus from drawing attention towards the negative to a more equal balance between negative and positive stimuli, or even a shift towards a preference for positive information. To date, there has been extensive research on this change in emotional prioritization (often termed the "positivity effect") and its influence on cognition in aging. However, there has been little work examining how changes in emotional regulation interact with attentional mechanisms to cause these shifts. Specifically, the possible roles that bottom-up (involuntary) versus top-down (voluntary) factors play in driving this change has not been determined. Generating a deeper understanding of emotionally-based attention allocation in older adults is critical for at least two reasons: i) attention impacts all other cognitive functions including memory and emotion-laden decision making (e.g., health, personal finances); and ii) selective deployment of attention towards or away from emotionally-charged stimuli is an effective form of "emotional regulation." This is highly relevant for existing descriptions of aging, such as Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, which predict that older adults exhibit positivity biases in attention allocation in order to increase positive mood states and overall feelings of well-being. This has recently been hypothesized to arise from voluntary efforts to direct attention towards positive stimuli and away from negative ones. The research proposed here was designed to examine possible age-related changes in the attentional mechanisms behind emotional biases using an event-related brain potential (ERP) approach. Three studies are planned. In the first two, task instructions will be manipulated in order to isolate the influence of bottom-up and top-down attention allocation on an ERP-based measure of emotional prioritization of information processing in younger and older adults. If age-related shifts toward more "positive" prioritization are driven by voluntary efforts, then both younger and older adults should exhibit a negativity bias during the "bottom-up" condition. In the second study, participants will be asked to change their emotional 'frame,' allowing for an investigation into whether automatic emotional biases can be overcome through top-down control. The final study involves a comparison brain response measures to cognitive functions. If positivity effects associated with aging are purposeful then it should be the older adults with the greatest executive cognitive capacity that exhibit the weakest negativity biases in brain activity. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research stands to improve the understanding of how emotional factors can influence cognitive function, and also how this influence might change with aging. The possibility that voluntary cognitive operations performed on "positive" information might not change with age in the same manner as those performed on "negative" information forces a revision of the widely-held view that cognition undergoes uniform, inexorable change. This has specific implications for the effective daily function of older adults including regulation and control of overall well-being, susceptibility to persuasion in advertising, and decision making in domains with emotionally-laden factors such as health care, personal finances, and family relationships.