Sullivan Susan, Campbell Anna, Hutton Sam B, Ruffman Ted
School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK.
Psychology Department, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2017 May 1;72(3):441-447. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbv033.
Research indicates that older adults' (≥60 years) emotion recognition is worse than that of young adults, young and older men's emotion recognition is worse than that of young and older women (respectively), older adults' looking at mouths compared with eyes is greater than that of young adults. Nevertheless, previous research has not compared older men's and women's looking at emotion faces so the present study had two aims: (a) to examine whether the tendency to look at mouths is stronger amongst older men compared with older women and (b) to examine whether men's mouth looking correlates with better emotion recognition.
We examined the emotion recognition abilities and spontaneous gaze patterns of young (n = 60) and older (n = 58) males and females as they labelled emotion faces.
Older men spontaneously looked more to mouths than older women, and older men's looking at mouths correlated with their emotion recognition, whereas women's looking at eyes correlated with their emotion recognition.
The findings are discussed in relation to a growing body of research suggesting both age and gender differences in response to emotional stimuli and the differential efficacy of mouth and eyes looking for men and women.
研究表明，老年人（≥60岁）的情绪识别能力比年轻人差，年轻男性和老年男性的情绪识别能力分别比年轻女性和老年女性差，与年轻人相比，老年人看嘴部的时间多于看眼睛的时间。然而，以往研究尚未对老年男性和女性观看情绪面孔的情况进行比较，因此本研究有两个目的：（a）研究老年男性相比于老年女性，看嘴部的倾向是否更强；（b）研究男性看嘴部的行为是否与更好的情绪识别能力相关。
我们观察了年轻（n = 60）和年长（n = 58）男性及女性在标注情绪面孔时的情绪识别能力和自发注视模式。
老年男性比老年女性更自发地看向嘴部，老年男性看嘴部的行为与其情绪识别能力相关，而女性看眼睛的行为与其情绪识别能力相关。
结合越来越多的研究进行讨论，这些研究表明在对情绪刺激的反应中存在年龄和性别差异，以及看嘴部和眼睛对男性和女性的不同功效。
