Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Pomona College.
Department of Psychology, Rhodes College.
Psychol Aging. 2024 May;39(3):299-312. doi: 10.1037/pag0000808.
Emotional content, specifically negative valence, can differentially influence speech production in younger and older adults' autobiographical narratives, which have been interpreted as reflecting age differences in emotion regulation. However, age differences in emotional reactivity are another possible explanation, as younger and older adults frequently differ in their affective responses to negative and positive pictures. The present experiment investigated whether a picture's valence (pleasantness) and arousal (intensity) influenced older adults' production of narratives about those pictures. Thirty younger and 30 older participants produced narratives about pictures that varied in valence (positive, negative, and neutral) and arousal (high, low). Narratives were recorded via Zoom, transcribed, and analyzed with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count-22 to get measures of emotional word use, disfluencies, and linguistic distance. Results showed that negative valence increased age differences in speech production independent of picture arousal: Relative to younger adults, older adults used more positive words, fewer negative words, and had more silent pauses when telling narratives about negative pictures. In contrast, high arousal decreased age differences such that older adults used fewer positive words in narratives about positive pictures and more linguistically distant words evidenced by fewer present-tense verbs, relative to narratives about low-arousal pictures. Contrary to an explanation of enhanced regulation or control over emotions in older adulthood, these findings support the idea that older adults' speech production is influenced by their reactivity or affective response to emotional stimuli even when the task is not to communicate one's emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
情感内容，特别是负性效价，可以不同地影响年轻和老年成年人自传体叙事中的言语产生，这被解释为反映了情绪调节的年龄差异。然而，情绪反应的年龄差异是另一种可能的解释，因为年轻和老年成年人在对负面和正面图片的情感反应上经常存在差异。本实验研究了图片的效价（愉悦度）和唤醒度（强度）是否会影响老年人对这些图片的叙事产生。30 名年轻参与者和 30 名老年参与者根据图片的效价（积极、消极和中性）和唤醒度（高、低）来创作关于图片的叙事。通过 Zoom 录制叙事，转录，并使用语言探究和词汇计数 22 进行分析，以获得情感词汇使用、不流畅和语言距离的度量。结果表明，负性效价增加了言语产生的年龄差异，而与图片唤醒度无关：与年轻成年人相比，老年人在讲述负面图片的叙事时，使用的积极词汇更多，消极词汇更少，沉默停顿更多。相比之下，高唤醒度减少了年龄差异，以至于老年人在讲述积极图片的叙事中使用的积极词汇较少，使用的语言距离较远的词汇较多，表现为较少使用现在时态动词，而讲述低唤醒度图片的叙事则相反。这些发现与老年人对情绪的调节或控制能力增强的解释相悖，支持了这样一种观点，即即使任务不是表达自己的情绪，老年人的言语产生也会受到他们对情绪刺激的反应或情感反应的影响。
