Fairfield Beth, Ambrosini Ettore, Mammarella Nicola, Montefinese Maria
Department of Psychological, Health and Territorial Sciences, University "G. d'Annunzio", Chieti, Italy.
Department of Neuroscience, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
PLoS One. 2017 Jan 3;12(1):e0169472. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169472. eCollection 2017.
In line with the dimensional theory of emotional space, we developed affective norms for words rated in terms of valence, arousal and dominance in a group of older adults to complete the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for Italian and to aid research on aging. Here, as in the original Italian ANEW database, participants evaluated valence, arousal, and dominance by means of the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in a paper-and-pencil procedure. We observed high split-half reliabilities within the older sample and high correlations with the affective ratings of previous research, especially for valence, suggesting that there is large agreement among older adults within and across-languages. More importantly, we found high correlations between younger and older adults, showing that our data are generalizable across different ages. However, despite this across-ages accord, we obtained age-related differences on three affective dimensions for a great number of words. In particular, older adults rated as more arousing and more unpleasant a number of words that younger adults rated as moderately unpleasant and arousing in our previous affective norms. Moreover, older participants rated negative stimuli as more arousing and positive stimuli as less arousing than younger participants, thus leading to a less-curved distribution of ratings in the valence by arousal space. We also found more extreme ratings for older adults for the relationship between dominance and arousal: older adults gave lower dominance and higher arousal ratings for words rated by younger adults with middle dominance and arousal values. Together, these results suggest that our affective norms are reliable and can be confidently used to select words matched for the affective dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance across younger and older participants for future research in aging.
根据情感空间的维度理论，我们针对一组老年人开发了情感规范，这些规范基于效价、唤醒度和支配性对词汇进行评级，以完成《英语情感规范》（ANEW）的意大利语改编，并助力衰老研究。在此，与原始意大利语ANEW数据库一样，参与者通过纸笔程序，借助自我评估人体模型（SAM）对效价、唤醒度和支配性进行评估。我们在老年样本中观察到了较高的分半信度，并且与先前研究的情感评级具有高度相关性，尤其是在效价方面，这表明不同语言背景下的老年人之间存在很大的一致性。更重要的是，我们发现年轻人和老年人之间具有高度相关性，这表明我们的数据可以推广到不同年龄段。然而，尽管存在这种跨年龄段的一致性，但我们在大量词汇的三个情感维度上发现了与年龄相关的差异。具体而言，在我们之前的情感规范中，许多被年轻人评为中度不愉快和唤醒度适中的词汇，老年人却将其评为更高的唤醒度和更不愉快。此外，与年轻参与者相比，老年参与者对负面刺激的唤醒度评价更高，对正面刺激的唤醒度评价更低，从而导致在效价与唤醒度空间中的评级分布曲线更平缓。我们还发现老年人在支配性与唤醒度之间的关系上有更极端的评级：对于年轻人评为具有中等支配性和唤醒度值的词汇，老年人给出的支配性评级更低，唤醒度评级更高。总体而言，这些结果表明我们的情感规范是可靠的，并且可以放心地用于为未来衰老研究选择在效价、唤醒度和支配性情感维度上匹配的词汇，涵盖年轻和老年参与者。
