Dor Yehuda I, Algom Daniel, Shakuf Vered, Ben-David Boaz M
School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Communication, Aging and Neuropsychology Lab (CANlab), Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University (IDC), Herzliya, Israel.
Front Neurosci. 2022 Apr 25;16:846117. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.846117. eCollection 2022.
Older adults process emotions in speech differently than do young adults. However, it is unclear whether these age-related changes impact all speech channels to the same extent, and whether they originate from a sensory or a cognitive source. The current study adopted a psychophysical approach to directly compare young and older adults' sensory thresholds for emotion recognition in two channels of spoken-emotions: prosody (tone) and semantics (words). A total of 29 young adults and 26 older adults listened to 50 spoken sentences presenting different combinations of emotions across prosody and semantics. They were asked to recognize the prosodic or semantic emotion, in separate tasks. Sentences were presented on the background of speech-spectrum noise ranging from SNR of -15 dB (difficult) to +5 dB (easy). Individual recognition thresholds were calculated (by fitting psychometric functions) separately for prosodic and semantic recognition. Results indicated that: (1). recognition thresholds were better for young over older adults, suggesting an age-related general decrease across channels; (2). recognition thresholds were better for prosody over semantics, suggesting a prosodic advantage; (3). importantly, the prosodic advantage in thresholds did not differ between age groups (thus a sensory source for age-related differences in spoken-emotions processing was not supported); and (4). larger failures of selective attention were found for older adults than for young adults, indicating that older adults experienced larger difficulties in inhibiting irrelevant information. Taken together, results do not support a sole sensory source, but rather an interplay of cognitive and sensory sources for age-related differences in spoken-emotions processing.
老年人处理言语中的情感方式与年轻人不同。然而，目前尚不清楚这些与年龄相关的变化是否对所有言语通道产生相同程度的影响，以及它们是源于感官还是认知因素。本研究采用心理物理学方法，直接比较年轻人和老年人在言语情感的两个通道（韵律（语调）和语义（词汇））中识别情感的感官阈值。共有29名年轻人和26名老年人听取了50个口语句子，这些句子呈现了韵律和语义中不同的情感组合。他们被要求在不同的任务中识别韵律或语义情感。句子以言语频谱噪声为背景呈现，信噪比范围从-15分贝（困难）到+5分贝（容易）。分别针对韵律识别和语义识别计算个体识别阈值（通过拟合心理测量函数）。结果表明：（1）年轻人的识别阈值优于老年人，表明各通道存在与年龄相关的普遍下降；（2）韵律的识别阈值优于语义，表明存在韵律优势；（3）重要的是，年龄组之间在阈值上的韵律优势没有差异（因此不支持言语情感处理中与年龄相关差异的感官来源）；（4）发现老年人比年轻人存在更多的选择性注意失败，表明老年人在抑制无关信息方面遇到更大困难。综合来看，结果不支持单一的感官来源，而是支持认知和感官因素在言语情感处理中与年龄相关差异方面的相互作用。
