Keightley Michelle L, Winocur Gordon, Burianova Hana, Hongwanishkul Donaya, Grady Cheryl L
Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Psychol Aging. 2006 Sep;21(3):558-72. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.21.3.558.
The authors administered social cognition tasks to younger and older adults to investigate age-related differences in social and emotional processing. Although slower, older adults were as accurate as younger adults in identifying the emotional valence (i.e., positive, negative, or neutral) of facial expressions. However, the age difference in reaction time was largest for negative faces. Older adults were significantly less accurate at identifying specific facial expressions of fear and sadness. No age differences specific to social function were found on tasks of self-reference, identifying emotional words, or theory of mind. Performance on the social tasks in older adults was independent of performance on general cognitive tasks (e.g., working memory) but was related to personality traits and emotional awareness. Older adults also showed more intercorrelations among the social tasks than did the younger adults. These findings suggest that age differences in social cognition are limited to the processing of facial emotion. Nevertheless, with age there appears to be increasing reliance on a common resource to perform social tasks, but one that is not shared with other cognitive domains.
作者对年轻人和老年人进行了社会认知任务测试，以研究社会和情感加工方面与年龄相关的差异。尽管速度较慢，但老年人在识别面部表情的情感效价（即积极、消极或中性）方面与年轻人一样准确。然而，对于负面表情，反应时间的年龄差异最大。老年人在识别恐惧和悲伤等特定面部表情时准确性明显较低。在自我参照、识别情感词汇或心理理论任务中，未发现特定于社会功能的年龄差异。老年人在社会任务上的表现与一般认知任务（如工作记忆）的表现无关，但与人格特质和情感意识有关。与年轻人相比，老年人在社会任务之间的相互关联也更多。这些发现表明，社会认知中的年龄差异仅限于面部情绪加工。然而，随着年龄的增长，执行社会任务似乎越来越依赖一种共同资源，但这种资源与其他认知领域并不共享。
