Noh Soo Rim, Larcom Mary Jo, Liu Xiaodong, Isaacowitz Derek M
Department of Psychology, Duksung Women's University Seoul, South Korea.
Front Psychol. 2012 Aug 31;3:311. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00311. eCollection 2012.
Although previous research has shown that positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) modulate attentional functioning in distinct ways, few studies have considered whether the links between affect and attentional functioning may vary as a function of age. Using the Attention Network Test (Fan et al., 2002), we tested whether participants' current state of PA and NA influenced distinct attentional functions (i.e., alerting, orienting, and executive attention) and how the relationships between affective states and attentional functioning differ in younger (18-25 years) and older (60-85 years) age groups. While there were age differences in alerting efficiency, these age differences were mediated by PA, indicating that the higher state PA found in older adults may contribute to age differences in alerting. Furthermore, age group moderated the relationship between PA and orienting as well as NA and orienting. That is, higher levels of PA and lower levels of NA were associated with enhanced orienting efficiency in older adults. Neither PA nor NA had any influence on executive attention. The current results suggest that PA and NA may influence attentional functioning in distinct ways, but that these patterns may depend on age groups.
尽管先前的研究表明，积极情绪（PA）和消极情绪（NA）以不同的方式调节注意力功能，但很少有研究考虑情绪与注意力功能之间的联系是否会随年龄而变化。使用注意力网络测试（范等人，2002年），我们测试了参与者当前的PA和NA状态是否会影响不同的注意力功能（即警觉、定向和执行性注意力），以及情绪状态与注意力功能之间的关系在较年轻（18 - 25岁）和较年长（60 - 85岁）年龄组中有何不同。虽然在警觉效率上存在年龄差异，但这些年龄差异由PA介导，这表明在老年人中发现的较高水平的PA可能导致了警觉方面的年龄差异。此外，年龄组调节了PA与定向以及NA与定向之间的关系。也就是说，在老年人中，较高水平的PA和较低水平的NA与增强的定向效率相关。PA和NA对执行性注意力均无任何影响。当前的结果表明，PA和NA可能以不同的方式影响注意力功能，但这些模式可能取决于年龄组。
