Gronchi G, Righi S, Pierguidi L, Giovannelli F, Murasecco I, Viggiano M P
Psychology Section, Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child's Health, University of Florence, Italy.
Psychology Section, Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child's Health, University of Florence, Italy.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018 Apr;185:229-234. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.02.008. Epub 2018 Mar 16.
The positivity effect in the elderly consists of an attentional preference for positive information as well as avoidance of negative information. Extant theories predict either that the positivity effect depends on controlled attentional processes (socio-emotional selectivity theory), or on an automatic gating selection mechanism (dynamic integration theory). This study examined the role of automatic and controlled attention in the positivity effect. Two dot-probe tasks (with the duration of the stimuli lasting 100 ms and 500 ms, respectively) were employed to compare the attentional bias of 35 elderly people to that of 35 young adults. The stimuli used were expressive faces displaying neutral, disgusted, fearful, and happy expressions. In comparison to young people, the elderly allocated more attention to happy faces at 100 ms and they tended to avoid fearful faces at 500 ms. The findings are not predicted by either theory taken alone, but support the hypothesis that the positivity effect in the elderly is driven by two different processes: an automatic attention bias toward positive stimuli, and a controlled mechanism that diverts attention away from negative stimuli.
老年人的积极效应包括对积极信息的注意力偏好以及对消极信息的回避。现有理论预测，积极效应要么取决于控制性注意过程（社会情绪选择理论），要么取决于自动门控选择机制（动态整合理论）。本研究考察了自动注意和控制性注意在积极效应中的作用。采用两个点探测任务（刺激持续时间分别为100毫秒和500毫秒），比较35名老年人与35名年轻人的注意偏向。所使用的刺激是展示中性、厌恶、恐惧和快乐表情的富有表现力的面孔。与年轻人相比，老年人在100毫秒时对快乐面孔分配了更多注意力，而在500毫秒时倾向于回避恐惧面孔。单独来看，这两种理论都无法预测这些结果，但支持了这样一种假设，即老年人的积极效应是由两种不同的过程驱动的：对积极刺激的自动注意偏向，以及将注意力从消极刺激上转移开的控制机制。
