Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2013 Jan;68(1):41-8. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbs047. Epub 2012 May 4.
The aging literature suggests that life satisfaction and affective well being stabilizes or even increases during the aging process, and that death anxiety would decrease with aging. Experimental psychology literature shows that emotions play a critical role in information processing. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether death related versus nondeath-related threat words would lead to differential attentional processing in middle aged versus older adults.
Twenty-seven older adults between 74 and 90 year and 31 middle-aged adults between 40 and 50 years participated in the study. We used questionnaires to asses death anxiety and an exogenous cueing task to measure attention toward death related versus general threat words.
Our results showed no age-related differences in self-reported death anxiety, but less attentional avoidance of threat in older adults. We failed to demonstrate differences between general and death-related threat.
This is the first study investigating attentional processing of both death- and threat-related information in older versus younger adults. Less avoidance from threat suggests that with aging, death becomes less of a concern, which might be indicative of acceptance of the own finiteness at old age.
衰老文献表明，生活满意度和情感幸福感在衰老过程中趋于稳定甚至增加，而死亡焦虑会随着衰老而减少。实验心理学文献表明，情绪在信息处理中起着关键作用。本研究旨在探讨与死亡相关的威胁词汇与非死亡相关的威胁词汇是否会导致中年人与老年人的注意力加工存在差异。
27 名年龄在 74 至 90 岁之间的老年人和 31 名年龄在 40 至 50 岁之间的中年人参加了这项研究。我们使用问卷调查来评估死亡焦虑，使用外源性线索任务来衡量对死亡相关和一般威胁词汇的注意力。
我们的结果显示，自我报告的死亡焦虑在年龄上没有差异，但老年人对威胁的注意力回避较少。我们未能证明一般威胁和死亡相关威胁之间存在差异。
这是第一项研究，调查了中年人和老年人对死亡和威胁相关信息的注意力加工。对威胁的回避减少表明，随着年龄的增长，死亡不再那么令人担忧，这可能表明老年人对自身有限性的接受。
