Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Pomona College.
Department of Psychology, University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
Psychol Aging. 2024 May;39(3):288-298. doi: 10.1037/pag0000809.
Emotional properties of words can profoundly affect their processing, depending on both the valence (pleasantness) and the degree of arousal (excitation) that the word elicits. Words that are strongly emotionally arousing (such as taboo words) can interfere with subsequent language processing (White & Abrams, 2021). However, little is known about whether or how aging affects the processing of highly arousing language. The present study provides a characterization of how adults across the lifespan evaluate highly arousing language with a simple rating task that included taboo words, which have previously been used to examine lexical interference caused by arousal, and humorous words, which are also highly arousing without being negatively valenced. While arousal ratings were strongly positively correlated with both tabooness and humor ratings for young adults, these relationships weakened with age and overall arousal ratings were lower for middle-aged and older adults compared to young adults. Age effects cannot be readily accounted for by age-related differences in psychosocial variables such as self-reported profanity avoidance or religiosity. The effect of age on arousal should be considered in the design of studies examining age-related changes in emotional language processing. Furthermore, age differences in arousal should be considered as a potential mechanism in studies exploring emotional language processing across adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
词语的情感属性会深刻影响其处理方式，这取决于词语的正负向（愉悦度）和唤起度（兴奋度）。强烈唤起情绪的词语（如禁忌语）可能会干扰后续的语言处理（White & Abrams, 2021）。然而，目前尚不清楚衰老是否会影响高度唤起语言的处理方式，以及影响方式如何。本研究通过简单的评分任务，对整个生命周期的成年人如何评估高度唤起的语言进行了描述，该评分任务包括禁忌语和幽默语。禁忌语此前曾被用于检验因唤起度引起的词汇干扰，而幽默语虽然没有负向情感，但也具有高度唤起性。对于年轻人来说，唤起度评分与禁忌语和幽默语评分呈强烈正相关，而随着年龄的增长，这种相关性减弱，中年和老年成年人的总体唤起度评分低于年轻人。年龄对唤起度的影响不能用与年龄相关的社会心理变量（如自我报告的避免亵渎或宗教信仰）差异来简单解释。在研究情绪语言处理与年龄相关的变化时，应该考虑年龄对唤起度的影响。此外，在探索整个成年期情绪语言处理的研究中，应该将年龄差异引起的唤起度作为一个潜在的机制。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2024 APA，保留所有权利）。
