A meta-analytic review of emotion recognition and aging: Implications for neuropsychological models of aging

Older adults' decoding of emotions: Role of dynamic versus static cues and age-related cognitive decline.

“…The DANVA2 presents social stimuli displaying discrete emotions in a static (adult faces) presentation. While older adults have been found to be impaired relative to young adults at identifying discrete negative social emotions from static stimuli, it remains an open question as to whether these deficits are exacerbated by executive function decline (for review, see Ruffman et al, 2008). We will examine this question in Experiment 1.…”

“…Successful social interactions rely on an ability to accurately interpret target's emotions (Carton, Kessler, & Pape, 1999;Cooley & Nowicki, 1989;DePaulo, 1992;Feldman, Philippot, & Custrinim, 1991;Nowicki & Duke, 1994b), a task at which older adults are notably impaired (for a review, see Ruffman, Henry, Livingstone, & Phillips, 2008). In the current article, we examine a potential mechanism that may lead to these deficits-age-related cognitive decline-and explore the contexts in which these deficits are most pronounced.…”

“…However, there is not a clear understanding as to why that might be (for review, see Ruffman et al, 2008). One possibility for older adults' emotion recognition deficits is that they may pay less attention to images portraying negative emotions (e.g., Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999).…”

“…Indeed, research with young adults has shown that young adults are more accurate on emotion recognition tasks when evaluating dynamic compared with static stimuli (Bassili, 1979). Emotion recognition research with older adults that uses dynamic emotional stimuli has had mixed results (for review, see Ruffman et al, 2008), perhaps because these studies typically present dynamic auditory information or body cues without including other modalities such as dynamic facial cues.…”

Emotion recognition in music changes across the adult life span

“…In this study, we focus on the recognition of emotions in music and on how it changes across the adult life span. Most research on aging and emotion recognition has been conducted on facial expressions (Ruffman, Henry, Livingstone, & Phillips, 2008) leaving the auditory modality much less explored, and it has typically compared adults aged seventies or so with young adults, without including the intermediate middle age years (e.g., GunningDixon et al, 2003). Here we investigate how aging may affect the recognition of emotions in music from young adulthood to older age, including the middle years.…”