Zhao Min-Fang, Zimmer Hubert D, Shen Xunbing, Chen Wenfeng, Fu Xiaolan
a State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science , Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing , China.
b School of Humanities , University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing , China.
Exp Aging Res. 2016 Jul-Sep;42(4):348-64. doi: 10.1080/0361073X.2016.1191854.
BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Elderly people do not categorize emotional facial expressions as accurately as younger people, particularly negative emotions. Although age-related impairments in decoding emotions in facial expressions are well documented, the causes of this deficit are poorly understood. This study examined the potential mechanisms that account for this age-related categorization deficit by assessing its dependence on presentation time.
Thirty young (19-27 years old) and 31 older (68-78 years old) Chinese adults were asked to categorize the six basic emotions in facial expressions, each presented for 120, 200, 600, or 1000 ms, before and after exposure to a neutral facial expression.
Shortened presentation times caused an age-related deficit in the recognition of happy faces, whereas no deficit was observed at longer exposure times. An age-related deficit was observed for all negative emotions but was not exacerbated by shorter presentation times.
Age-related deficits in categorization of positive and negative emotions are caused by different mechanisms. Because negative emotions are perceptually similar, they cause high categorization demands. Elderly people may need more evidence in favor of the target emotion than younger people, and they make mistakes if this surplus of evidence is missing. In contrast, perceptually distinct happy faces were easily identified, and elderly people only failed when the presentation time was too short for their slower perceptual processing.
背景/研究背景：老年人对面部表情所表达情绪的分类不如年轻人准确，尤其是对负面情绪的分类。尽管与年龄相关的面部表情情绪解码障碍已有充分记录，但对这种缺陷的成因却知之甚少。本研究通过评估其对呈现时间的依赖性，考察了导致这种与年龄相关的分类缺陷的潜在机制。
30名年轻的（19 - 27岁）和31名年长的（68 - 78岁）中国成年人被要求对面部表情中的六种基本情绪进行分类，每种表情分别呈现120、200、600或1000毫秒，呈现之前和之后会呈现一个中性面部表情。
呈现时间缩短会导致与年龄相关的对快乐表情识别的缺陷，而在较长呈现时间下未观察到缺陷。所有负面情绪都观察到了与年龄相关的缺陷，但较短的呈现时间并未使其加剧。
与年龄相关的积极和消极情绪分类缺陷是由不同机制导致的。由于负面情绪在感知上相似，它们导致了较高的分类要求。老年人可能比年轻人需要更多支持目标情绪的证据，如果缺少这种额外的证据，他们就会犯错。相比之下，在感知上有明显差异的快乐表情很容易识别，而老年人只有在呈现时间过短以至于他们较慢的感知处理无法应对时才会出错。
