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The Influence of Emotional Valence on Age Differences in Early Processing and Memory

R.C. Thomas and L. Hasher

Focus of the Study: Thomas and Hasher investigated older and younger adults’ in attentional biases and subsequent incidental recognition for distracting positive, negative, and neutral words.

Predictions:

  • Researchers expected that older adults were more likely to recognize more positive than negative and neutral words.
  • Older adults should slow down when the distractor is a positive word in comparison to negatively and neutrally valenced words.
  • Researchers expected that young adults were more likely to recognize more negative words than positive or neutral words.
  • Younger should slow down when the distractor is a negative word in comparison to positively and neutrally valenced words.

Methods:

Participants: 48 younger (18-28 years old) and 48 older (60-75 years old) adults. Younger adults were university students who earned course credit or monetary compensation for their participation. All participants either were native English speakers or had learned English before the age of 5 years.

Design: 2 (age) X 3 (distractor valence) mixed factorial with age (young, older) as a between subjects factor and valence (neutral, positive, negative) as a within-subject factor. The dependent measures were reaction time in the digit parity task and corrected recognition.

Materials:

  • Digit Parity Task: words were drawn from Bradley and Lang’s Affective Norms for English Words set. 240 words were selected and divided into 2 sets of 120 each: each composed of 40 neutral, 40 positive, and 40 negative words. All were between four and seven letters.
    • The task consisted of 120 experimental trials: 40 trials each with neutral, positive, and negative words. 40 unique digit pairs presented throughout the experiment: each pair was presented with a single word in the middle.
  • Recognition Task: All participants saw the same set of 72 words in an old/new recognition test.
  • Mood Measure: The Brief Mood Introspection consists of 10 adjectives describing different emotions (i.e.: sad, annoyed, content, gloomy, happy).

Procedure: The target task was to make a parity decision about two numbers in a pair (if they are both odd or even or one is a mismatch). Irrelevant words (positive, negative, and neutral) appeared between the two digits on each trial. Each display of digits plus word was presented for a brief and fixed duration of 200ms.

Results: Both hypotheses were confirmed:

  • Positivity bias was more readily found amongst older adults. They were unable to discriminate between old and new words that were either negative or neutral.
  • Negativity bias was more readily found amongst younger adults. Younger adults preferentially recognized negative words than of neutral and positive words. *
  • Early processing does not fully explain age differences in memory for valenced words. Post-encoding processes are responsible for memory patterns observed in this study because there are no early biases in older adults nor did mood play a role in differential recognition of positive items.
  • Processes might have occurred in the interval between the end of the presentation of the list and the time the unexpected test occurred. So the elders might have just deliberately or spontaneously decided to dwell more on positive stimuli.

*Why?

Take-Home Messages from study:

  • Age-related difference in memory biases occurs even when participants do not expect a memory test.
  • “Here’s the good news about aging: When it comes to remembering emotional images, we tend to—as we get older— to do what the song said, and ‘accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.” –APA Article, “As we get older, memory ‘accentuates the positive,’ helping explain why aging can foster good feelings”. June 2003

References:

Thomas, R.C. & Hasher, L. (2006). The influence of emotional valence on age differences in

early processing and memory. Psychology and Aging, 21, 821-825.

Charles, S.T. (2003). “As we get older, memory ‘accentuates the positive,’ helping explain

why aging can foster good feelings. American Psychological Journal.

http://www.apa.org/releases/aging_memory.html

Presentation by May Sobhy

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