Zhang Ni, Wang Jingxin
Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China.
Center of College Student Mental Health, Weifang Medical University, Weifang 261053, China.
Brain Sci. 2022 Aug 5;12(8):1043. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12081043.
Greater well-being in older adults stems from more effective emotion regulation strategies, highlighting the role of cognitive control. However, cognitive control involves different subsystems, and it is still unclear whether different subsystems have different effects on different emotional information processing. The Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) theory postulates that cognitive control can operate in two distinct modes, namely proactive control (a "proactive" preparatory mode) and reactive control (a "reactive" wait-and-see mode). This study created an emotional AX-CPT task to explore differences in cognitive control tradeoff between youth and older adults when processing emotional information. The results found that youth had significantly higher error rates on the emotional-neutral sequence than older adults regardless of the valence of emotional information; only in the negative condition did older adults have higher error rates on both the sad-sad and neutral-sad sequences than youth; this phenomenon was not found in the positive condition. The study showed that, in emotional information processing, youth preferred proactive control over older adults; in negative information processing, older adults preferred reactive control strategies over youth; in positive information processing, older adults showed a similar cognitive control pattern to youth, and proactive control was enhanced.
老年人更高的幸福感源于更有效的情绪调节策略，这凸显了认知控制的作用。然而，认知控制涉及不同的子系统，不同子系统对不同情绪信息处理是否有不同影响仍不清楚。控制的双重机制（DMC）理论假定，认知控制可以在两种不同模式下运行，即主动控制（一种“主动”的准备模式）和反应控制（一种“反应性”的观望模式）。本研究创建了一个情绪AX-CPT任务，以探讨年轻人和老年人在处理情绪信息时认知控制权衡的差异。结果发现，无论情绪信息的效价如何，年轻人在情绪-中性序列上的错误率都显著高于老年人；只有在消极条件下，老年人在悲伤-悲伤和中性-悲伤序列上的错误率才高于年轻人；在积极条件下未发现此现象。研究表明，在情绪信息处理中，年轻人比老年人更喜欢主动控制；在消极信息处理中，老年人比年轻人更喜欢反应控制策略；在积极信息处理中，老年人表现出与年轻人相似的认知控制模式，且主动控制得到增强。
