Blackett Deena Schwen, Harnish Stacy M, Lundine Jennifer P, Zezinka Alexandra, Healy Eric W
Department of Speech and Hearing Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Jul 12;60(7):2081-2089. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-L-16-0268.
Although there is evidence that emotional valence of stimuli impacts lexical processes, there is limited work investigating its specific impact on lexical retrieval. The current study aimed to determine the degree to which emotional valence of pictured stimuli impacts naming latencies in healthy younger and older adults.
Eighteen healthy younger adults and 18 healthy older adults named positive, negative, and neutral images, and reaction time was measured.
Reaction times for positive and negative images were significantly longer than reaction times for neutral images. Reaction times for positive and negative images were not significantly different. Whereas older adults demonstrated significantly longer naming latencies overall than younger adults, the discrepancy in latency with age was far greater when naming emotional pictures.
Emotional arousal of pictures appears to impact naming latency in younger and older adults. We hypothesize that the increase in naming latency for emotional stimuli is the result of a necessary disengagement of attentional resources from the emotional images prior to completion of the naming task. We propose that this process may affect older adults disproportionately due to a decline in attentional resources as part of normal aging, combined with a greater attentional preference for emotional stimuli.
尽管有证据表明刺激的情感效价会影响词汇加工过程，但研究其对词汇检索具体影响的工作有限。本研究旨在确定图片刺激的情感效价对健康的年轻人和老年人命名潜伏期的影响程度。
18名健康的年轻人和18名健康的老年人对积极、消极和中性图像进行命名，并测量反应时间。
积极和消极图像的反应时间显著长于中性图像的反应时间。积极和消极图像的反应时间没有显著差异。虽然老年人的总体命名潜伏期明显长于年轻人，但在命名情感图片时，潜伏期随年龄的差异要大得多。
图片的情感唤起似乎会影响年轻人和老年人的命名潜伏期。我们假设，情感刺激命名潜伏期的增加是在命名任务完成之前，注意力资源从情感图像中必要脱离的结果。我们提出，由于作为正常衰老一部分的注意力资源下降，再加上对情感刺激有更大的注意力偏好，这个过程可能对老年人的影响更大。
