a Department of Psychological Sciences, Western Kentucky University , Bowling Green , KY , USA.
b Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago , Chicago , IL , USA.
Cogn Emot. 2019 Nov;33(7):1436-1447. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2019.1573719. Epub 2019 Feb 3.
The attentional blink (AB) is the impaired ability to detect a second target (T2) when it follows shortly after the first (T1) among distractors in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). Given questions about the automaticity of age differences in emotion processing, the current study examined whether emotion cues differentially impact the AB elicited in older and younger adults. Twenty-two younger (18-22 years) and 22 older adult participants (62-78 years) reported on the emotional content of target face stimulus pairs embedded in a RSVP of scrambled-face distractor images. Target pairs included photo-realistic faces of angry, happy, and neutral expressions. The order of emotional and neutral stimuli as T1 or T2 and the degree of temporal separation within the RSVP systematically varied. Target detection accuracy was used to operationalise the AB. Although older adults displayed a larger AB than younger adults, no age differences emerged in the impact of emotion on the AB. Angry T1 faces increased the AB of both age groups. Neither emotional T2 attenuated the AB. Negative facial expressions held the attention of younger and older adults in a comparable manner, exacerbating the AB and supporting a negativity bias instead of a positivity effect in older adults.
注意瞬脱（AB）是指在快速序列视觉呈现（RSVP）中，当第一个目标（T1）之后紧随分心物中的第二个目标（T2）时，检测第二个目标的能力受损。鉴于人们对情绪处理中年龄差异的自动性存在疑问，本研究考察了情绪线索是否会对老年和年轻成年人产生的 AB 产生不同的影响。22 名年轻（18-22 岁）和 22 名老年参与者（62-78 岁）在 RSVP 中报告了嵌入的目标面孔对刺激的情绪内容，其中分散的面孔图像。目标对包括愤怒、快乐和中性表情的逼真面孔。作为 T1 或 T2 的情绪和中性刺激的顺序以及 RSVP 内的时间分离程度系统地变化。目标检测准确性用于操作 AB。尽管老年组的 AB 大于年轻组，但情绪对 AB 的影响在年龄组之间没有差异。愤怒的 T1 面孔增加了两个年龄组的 AB。情绪 T2 既没有减弱 AB。负面的面部表情以类似的方式吸引了年轻和老年成年人的注意力，从而加剧了 AB，并支持了老年人的负面偏见而不是正面影响。
