Department of Psychology, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston Upon Thames, KT1 2EE, UK.
School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7FH, UK.
Exp Brain Res. 2021 Apr;239(4):1261-1271. doi: 10.1007/s00221-021-06053-4. Epub 2021 Feb 20.
The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine differences in the temporal dynamics of emotion processing in young and older adults, with a specific focus on the positivity effect, that is, the preferential processing of positive over negative information. To this aim, we used a language paradigm that allowed us to investigate early ERP components as well as later components, namely the N400 and the late positive complex (LPC). Young and older adults were presented with neutral sentence stems with positive, negative or neutral/semantically-incongruent critical word endings while their electrical brain activity was recorded. There were no effects of emotional valence on early ERP components. Instead, a positivity effect was evident in young adults indexed by reduced N400s for positive sentence endings. Perhaps due to reduced semantic processing abilities, older adults did not show any N400 effect. ERP effects in this group were evident at a later processing stage and took the form of larger LPCs for neutral/incongruent information. Overall, there was no effect of emotional valence on either the N400 or the LPC in older adults. Our data suggest that with age, more effortful semantic processing may deplete resources for emotional processing.
本研究使用事件相关电位（ERPs）来考察年轻人和老年人在情绪处理的时间动态上的差异，特别关注正性效应，即对正性信息的优先加工。为此，我们使用了一种语言范式，使我们能够研究早期 ERP 成分以及晚期成分，即 N400 和晚期正性复合（LPC）。当年轻和年长的成年人的大脑电活动被记录时，他们被呈现中性的句子干，带有积极的、消极的或中性/语义上不一致的关键词结尾。情绪效价对早期 ERP 成分没有影响。相反，在年轻人中，积极的句子结尾会减少 N400，这表明存在正性效应。也许是由于语义处理能力的下降，老年人没有表现出任何 N400 效应。该组的 ERP 效应在较晚的处理阶段明显，并表现为对中性/不一致信息的更大的 LPC。总的来说，情绪效价对老年人的 N400 或 LPC 都没有影响。我们的数据表明，随着年龄的增长，更多的费力的语义处理可能会耗尽情绪处理的资源。
