Tomaszczyk Jennifer C, Fernandes Myra A
a Department of Psychology , University of Waterloo , Waterloo , Ontario , Canada.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2014;21(5):544-59. doi: 10.1080/13825585.2013.838201. Epub 2013 Sep 24.
Past research suggests an aging-related positivity effect in orienting to faces. However, these studies have eschewed direct comparison of orienting when positive and negative faces are presented simultaneously, thereby potentially underestimating the degree to which emotional valence influences such effects. In the current study younger and older adults viewed face pairs for 1000 ms, and upon face-pair offset indicated the location of a dot that appeared in the former location of one of the faces, to assess attentional orienting. When shown negative-neutral pairs, both age groups were biased to attend to negative faces, but when shown positive-negative pairs only younger adults showed a bias toward negative; older adults showed a lack of orienting toward either emotional face. Results suggest younger adults have a negativity bias in attention orienting regardless of the valence of nearby stimuli, whereas older adults show an absence of this bias when positive information is present.
过去的研究表明，在对面部进行定向时存在与年龄相关的积极效应。然而，这些研究回避了同时呈现正面和负面面孔时对定向的直接比较，从而可能低估了情绪效价对这种效应的影响程度。在当前的研究中，年轻和年长的成年人观看面孔对1000毫秒，在面孔对消失后指出出现在其中一张面孔先前位置的一个点的位置，以评估注意力定向。当呈现负面-中性对时，两个年龄组都倾向于关注负面面孔，但当呈现正面-负面对时，只有年轻成年人表现出对负面的偏向；年长成年人对任何一张情绪面孔都没有表现出定向偏向。结果表明，无论附近刺激的效价如何，年轻成年人在注意力定向上都有消极偏向，而当存在积极信息时，年长成年人则没有这种偏向。
