Age Deficits in Facial Affect Recognition: The Influence of Dynamic Cues

Grainger, Sarah A.; Henry, Julie D.; Phillips, Louise H.; Vanman, Eric J.; Allen, Roy

doi:10.1093/geronb/gbv100

Cited by 51 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…This might be explained by the fact that the healthy participants in our study, whose ages matched those of the individuals who had had brain injury, were significantly older than the participants in other studies, who were mostly recruited from the student bodies of universities and were, therefore, mostly in their 20s (12,15,16). As reported in previous studies, poorer performance at identifying emotional expressions is expected in older age (64,65). In addition, although the images used in our study were extracted from the same database used in other studies (12,15,16), and the images were randomly selected, the emotions shown in the images may have been more difficult to recognize than in the images used in other studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Visual Behavior, Pupil Dilation, and Ability to Identify Emotions From Facial Expressions After Stroke

et al. 2020

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Social cognition is the innate human ability to interpret the emotional state of others from contextual verbal and non-verbal information, and to self-regulate accordingly. Facial expressions are one of the most relevant sources of non-verbal communication, and their interpretation has been extensively investigated in the literature, using both behavioral and physiological measures, such as those derived from visual activity and visual responses. The decoding of facial expressions of emotion is performed by conscious and unconscious cognitive processes that involve a complex brain network that can be damaged after cerebrovascular accidents. A diminished ability to identify facial expressions of emotion has been reported after stroke, which has traditionally been attributed to impaired emotional processing. While this can be true, an alteration in visual behavior after brain injury could also negatively contribute to this ability. This study investigated the accuracy, distribution of responses, visual behavior, and pupil dilation of individuals with stroke while identifying emotional facial expressions. Our results corroborated impaired performance after stroke and exhibited decreased attention to the eyes, evidenced by a diminished time and number of fixations made in this area in comparison to healthy subjects and comparable pupil dilation. The differences in visual behavior reached statistical significance in some emotions when comparing individuals with stroke with impaired performance with healthy subjects, but not when individuals post-stroke with comparable performance were considered. The performance dependence of visual behavior, although not determinant, might indicate that altered visual behavior could be a negatively contributing factor for emotion recognition from facial expressions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Visual Behavior, Pupil Dilation, and Ability to Identify Emotions From Facial Expressions After Stroke

et al. 2020

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“…Thus, it is not surprising that facial emotion recognition has been extensively investigated across the lifespan (Somerville et al, 2011), with particular focus on aging, which is frequently associated with isolation and social withdrawal. Results from previous studies are generally consistent, showing that older adults are less accurate than younger adults at discriminating and identifying negative facial expressions, especially those of “anger,” “fear,” and “sadness” (Calder et al, 2003; Ruffman et al, 2008; Chaby et al, 2015; Grainger et al, 2015; Templier et al, 2015; Mather, 2016). This emotional shift could emerge stepwise from the fourth decade of life (Calder et al, 2003; Chaby and Narme, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…For example, some previous research found deficits in recognizing “sadness,” but not “fear” nor “anger” (e.g., Suzuki et al, 2007), whereas other studies found older adults' difficulties in recognizing “fear” and “anger,” but not “sadness” (e.g., Calder et al, 2003; Circelli et al, 2013). Finally, some studies found impairments for all the three emotions of “fear,” “anger,” and “sadness” (Wong et al, 2005; Grainger et al, 2015). The fact that older adults showed better expression identification for “joy” and “disgust” is consistent with other reports (Ruffman et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaze Behavior Consistency among Older and Younger Adults When Looking at Emotional Faces

et al. 2017

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The identification of non-verbal emotional signals, and especially of facial expressions, is essential for successful social communication among humans. Previous research has reported an age-related decline in facial emotion identification, and argued for socio-emotional or aging-brain model explanations. However, more perceptual differences in the gaze strategies that accompany facial emotional processing with advancing age have been under-explored yet. In this study, 22 young (22.2 years) and 22 older (70.4 years) adults were instructed to look at basic facial expressions while their gaze movements were recorded by an eye-tracker. Participants were then asked to identify each emotion, and the unbiased hit rate was applied as performance measure. Gaze data were first analyzed using traditional measures of fixations over two preferential regions of the face (upper and lower areas) for each emotion. Then, to better capture core gaze changes with advancing age, spatio-temporal gaze behaviors were deeper examined using data-driven analysis (dimension reduction, clustering). Results first confirmed that older adults performed worse than younger adults at identifying facial expressions, except for “joy” and “disgust,” and this was accompanied by a gaze preference toward the lower-face. Interestingly, this phenomenon was maintained during the whole time course of stimulus presentation. More importantly, trials corresponding to older adults were more tightly clustered, suggesting that the gaze behavior patterns of older adults are more consistent than those of younger adults. This study demonstrates that, confronted to emotional faces, younger and older adults do not prioritize or ignore the same facial areas. Older adults mainly adopted a focused-gaze strategy, consisting in focusing only on the lower part of the face throughout the whole stimuli display time. This consistency may constitute a robust and distinctive “social signature” of emotional identification in aging. Younger adults, however, were more dispersed in terms of gaze behavior and used a more exploratory-gaze strategy, consisting in repeatedly visiting both facial areas.

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“…The amygdala is specialized in the detection of facial expressions of fear [6,[7][8][9][10][11] whereas basal ganglia and insula are specialized in the detection of disgusted faces [3]. Several studies point out that older adults have more difficulty than younger when recognizing emotion from facial expressions, in particular for anger, sadness and fear [12,13]. Although there are many experimental studies that have focused on this aspect, the link between the impairment in other's emotions recognition and the cognitive modifications that occur during life span is still debated.…”

Section: Editorialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion Recognition and Aging: Research Perspectives

Pierguidi¹,

Righi²

2016

Clin Exp Psychol

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EditorialAn important aspect that has raised the interest of many scholars in last decades concerns the changes in conscious and unconscious perception that occurs over the life span. In particular, social perception has gained great consideration due to his fundamental role in the human interaction dynamics. The capacity of forming impressions and make inferences about other people refers broadly to the ability to understand and react appropriately to the social signals sent out by other people. This ability in identify the other people's emotions is a predictor of well-being, mental health and social competency.The recognition of other people's feelings is possible through the decoding of different kinds of expression such as changes in facial expression, eye contact, body posture and movements. A difficulty in emotion recognition, that is a central component of nonverbal communication, is considered a critical factor associated with the maintenance of various psychopathologies [1]. One of the main clues that people grasp to identify emotional states of others is linked to changes in facial expression. There are in fact a wide range of neural systems that are involved in this capacity including: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex [2], ventral striatum [3], superior temporal sulcus [4,5] and processing areas in the parietal and occipital lobes [6]. The amygdala is specialized in the detection of facial expressions of fear [6,[7][8][9][10][11] whereas basal ganglia and insula are specialized in the detection of disgusted faces [3]. Several studies point out that older adults have more difficulty than younger when recognizing emotion from facial expressions, in particular for anger, sadness and fear [12,13]. Although there are many experimental studies that have focused on this aspect, the link between the impairment in other's emotions recognition and the cognitive modifications that occur during life span is still debated. Some scholars have pointed out a correlation between age-related changes in the capacity of emotion recognition and the well-known modifications of brain regions caused by aging [3,14,15]. Specifically, the age-related modifications of frontal and temporal areas may have a main role in emotion recognition impairments. [16,17]. Moreover some studies indicated also a reduction of the volume of amygdala with age [18][19][20][21]. Following this evidences we might hypothesize that the deficit in the recognition of some emotional expressions by older people could depend on the loss of brain volume due to aging neural modifications in some areas relevant for emotion recognition [9,17,23]. On the other hand, some scholars hypothesized a further theory that suggests the establishment of a perceptual bias in elderly people, known as the "Positivity effect". This effect would be the reflection of an information processing bias in attention and memory that impairs the capacity of pay attention on negative emotional stimuli when presented jointly to positive ones [24][25][26]. The "Positivity effect" is evi...

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Age Deficits in Facial Affect Recognition: The Influence of Dynamic Cues

Abstract: Together, these studies provide important and novel insights into the specific circumstances in which older adults may be expected to experience difficulties in perceiving facial emotions.

Cited by 51 publications

References 41 publications

Visual Behavior, Pupil Dilation, and Ability to Identify Emotions From Facial Expressions After Stroke

Visual Behavior, Pupil Dilation, and Ability to Identify Emotions From Facial Expressions After Stroke

Gaze Behavior Consistency among Older and Younger Adults When Looking at Emotional Faces

Emotion Recognition and Aging: Research Perspectives

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