Spaniol Julia, Voss Andreas, Grady Cheryl L
Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Psychol Aging. 2008 Dec;23(4):859-72. doi: 10.1037/a0014218.
Younger adults tend to remember negative information better than positive or neutral information (negativity bias). The negativity bias is reduced in aging, with older adults occasionally exhibiting superior memory for positive, as opposed to negative or neutral, information (positivity bias). Two experiments with younger (N=24 in Experiment 1, N=25 in Experiment 2; age range: 18-35 years) and older adults (N=24 in both experiments; age range: 60-85 years) investigated the cognitive mechanisms responsible for age-related differences in recognition memory for emotional information. Results from diffusion model analyses (R. Ratcliff, 1978) indicated that the effects of valence on response bias were similar in both age groups but that Age x Valence interactions emerged in memory retrieval. Specifically, older adults experienced greater overall familiarity for positive items than younger adults. We interpret this finding in terms of an age-related increase in the accessibility of positive information in long-term memory.
较年轻的成年人往往对负面信息的记忆比对正面或中性信息的记忆更好（负性偏向）。随着年龄增长，负性偏向会减弱，老年人偶尔会表现出对正面信息而非负面或中性信息具有更好的记忆力（正性偏向）。两项针对较年轻成年人（实验1中N = 24，实验2中N = 25；年龄范围：18 - 35岁）和老年人（两项实验中N均为24；年龄范围：60 - 85岁）的实验，研究了与情绪信息识别记忆中年龄相关差异有关的认知机制。扩散模型分析（R. Ratcliff，1978）的结果表明，效价对反应偏向的影响在两个年龄组中相似，但在记忆检索中出现了年龄×效价的交互作用。具体而言，老年人对正面项目的总体熟悉度高于较年轻成年人。我们根据长期记忆中正面信息可及性的年龄相关增加来解释这一发现。
