Grühn Daniel, Smith Jacqui, Baltes Paul B
Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
Psychol Aging. 2005 Dec;20(4):579-88. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.20.4.579.
Some authors argue for a memory advantage of older adults for positively toned material. To investigate the contribution of selective processing to a positivity effect, the authors investigated young (n = 72, aged 18 to 31) and older (n = 72, aged 64 to 75) adults' memory for emotionally toned words using a multitrial paradigm that compares performance for heterogeneous (mixed valence) and homogeneous (single valence) lists. Regarding the age comparison, there was no evidence for an aging bias favoring positive material. Moreover, older adults' memory was less affected by emotion-based processing prioritization. Although there was no support for age-specific processing biases in memory for emotionally toned words, the findings are consistent with proposals that negative information receives processing priority in some contexts. Possible limits to the generalizability of the present findings (e.g., to nonverbal material) are discussed.
一些作者认为老年人在处理积极情感内容时具有记忆优势。为了研究选择性加工对积极效应的贡献，作者使用多试验范式，比较了年轻人（n = 72，年龄在18至31岁之间）和老年人（n = 72，年龄在64至75岁之间）对带有情感色彩词汇的记忆，该范式比较了异质（混合效价）和同质（单一效价）列表的表现。关于年龄比较，没有证据表明存在有利于积极内容的年龄偏差。此外，老年人的记忆受基于情感的加工优先级的影响较小。虽然没有证据支持在对带有情感色彩词汇的记忆中存在特定年龄的加工偏差，但这些发现与以下观点一致：在某些情况下，负面信息会优先得到加工。本文还讨论了当前研究结果（如对非语言材料）可推广性的可能限制。
