Age effects to negative arousal differ for self‐report and electrodermal activity

Gavazzeni, Joachim; Wiens, Stefan; Fischer, Håkan

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00596.x

Cited by 75 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Previous research reveals age-related declines on measures of visual perception (Bennet, et al, 2007; Flaubert, 2002; Habak & Faubert, 2000) and visual search (Madden, 2007). Moreover, older adults also show weaker physiological responses to emotional stimuli (Gavazzeni, et al, 2008; Levenson, et al, 1991), suggesting that emotional arousal may have less of an influence on attention in later age. Thus one possible hypothesis was that these age-related declines would interfere with emotion-induced attention biases to subsequently presented stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, the ability to detect perceptual contrasts (Bennet, Sekuler, & Sekuler, 2007; Flaubert, 2002; Habak & Faubert, 2000) and the targets in visual search tasks (Madden, 2007) declines. Moreover, physiological responses to emotional stimuli also diminish with age (Gavazzeni, Wiens, & Fischer, 2008; Levenson, Carstensen, Friesen, & Ekman, 1991), suggesting that the impact of emotion on attention in older adults may also decline. Nevertheless, there is evidence that emotionally arousing stimuli continue to attract increased attention in older adults.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Negative Arousal Increases the Effects of Stimulus Salience in Older Adults

Sutherland

Mather

2015

Experimental Aging Research

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Background/Study Context Stimuli compete for mental representation, with salient stimuli attracting more attention than less salient stimuli. In a recent study, we found that presenting an emotionally negative arousing sound before briefly showing an array of letters with different levels of salience increased the reporting of the more salient letters but decreased reporting of the less salient letters (Sutherland & Mather, 2012). In the current study we examined whether negative arousal produces similar effects on attention in older adults. Methods Data from 55 older adults (61–80 years; M = 70.7; SD = 5.1) were compared with those from 110 younger adults (18–29 years; M = 20.3; SD = 2.3) from Sutherland and Mather (2012). Neutral or negative arousing sound clips were played before a brief presentation of eight letters, three of which were presented in a darker font than the others to create a group of high and low salience targets. Next, participants recalled as many of the letters as they could. At the end of the study, participants rated the emotional arousal and the valence of the sounds. Results Higher ratings of emotional arousal for the sounds predicted a greater advantage for high salience letters in recall. This influence of arousal did not significantly differ by age. Conclusion The effects of negative arousal on subsequent attention were similar in older adults as in younger adults. Moreover, the results support arousal-biased competition theory (Mather & Sutherland, 2011), which predicts that emotional arousal amplifies the effects of stimulus salience in attention and memory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative Arousal Increases the Effects of Stimulus Salience in Older Adults

Sutherland

Mather

2015

Experimental Aging Research

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“…In addition, older adults generally show attenuated electrodermal activity (Gavazzeni, Wiens, & Fischer, 2008), which might lead to a main effect of age on the physiological response.…”

Section: Study Design and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of age and motivation for the experience of social acceptance and rejection.

Nikitin¹,

Schoch²,

Freund³

2014

Developmental Psychology

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A study with n = 55 younger (18-33 years, M = 23.67) and n = 58 older (61-85 years, M = 71.44) adults investigated age-related differences in social approach and avoidance motivation and their consequences for the experience of social interactions. Results confirmed the hypothesis that a predominant habitual approach motivation in younger adults shifts toward a stronger avoidance motivation in older adults. Moreover, age and momentary motivation predicted the experience of an actual social interaction. Younger adults reported stronger negative emotions in a rejection situation when striving to approach acceptance rather than avoid rejection. Conversely, older adults reported fewer positive emotions in a rejection situation when they attempted to avoid rejection rather than approach acceptance. Taken together, the present study demonstrates that the same motivation has different consequences for the experience of potentially threatening social situations in younger and older adults. People seem to react emotionally when the achievement of important developmental goals (approaching others in young adulthood, avoiding negative social interactions in older adulthood) is thwarted. Moreover, results suggest that approach and avoidance motivation play an important role for socioemotional development.

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“…Given that it has previously been reported that older adults rate emotional images as less arousing (Grühn and Scheibe, 2008;Pôrto et al, 2011) and show a reduced SCR in response to arousal (Gavazzeni et al, 2008), we predicted that the older adults would show less BOLD modulation than the young group in response to increasing levels of arousal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…There have been conflicting reports of older adults' autonomic response to emotional arousal however. Older adults have been found to show less increases in the skin conductance response (SCR) to highly-arousing negative images compared with younger adults, despite higher self-reports of arousal levels (Gavazzeni et al, 2008). This would imply that aging is associated with a decreased autonomic response to emotional arousal; however, other studies have contradicted this result (Denburg et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Healthy aging is associated with increased neural processing of positive valence but attenuated processing of emotional arousal: an fMRI study

Kehoe

Toomey²,

Balsters

et al. 2013

Neurobiology of Aging

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Arousal and valence play key roles in emotional perception, with normal aging leading to changes in the neural substrates supporting valence processing. The objective of this study was to investigate normal age-related changes in the neural substrates of emotional arousal processing. Twenty-three young and 23 older, healthy women underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging as they viewed images which were neutral or positive in valence and which varied in arousal level from low to high. Using a parametric modulation approach, we examined how the blood oxygen-level dependent signal varied with single trial subjective ratings of valence and arousal, and whether this differed with age. In accordance with previous studies we found that the older group showed greater activation in response to positive valence, in the left amygdala, left middle temporal gyrus and right lingual gyrus. In contrast however, they showed reduced reactivity to emotional arousal, in occipital and temporal visual cortices bilaterally, the left inferior parietal cortex, and the supplementary motor area bilaterally. This study represents the first of its kind to clearly dissociate how aging affects the neural correlates of emotional arousal and valence. The changes in arousal processing may in part be mediated by the functional reorganization evident in the aging brain, such as reduced activation of the posterior cortices as described by the posterior-anterior shift in ageing (PASA) effect.

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Age effects to negative arousal differ for self‐report and electrodermal activity

Cited by 75 publications

References 26 publications

Negative Arousal Increases the Effects of Stimulus Salience in Older Adults

Negative Arousal Increases the Effects of Stimulus Salience in Older Adults

The role of age and motivation for the experience of social acceptance and rejection.

Healthy aging is associated with increased neural processing of positive valence but attenuated processing of emotional arousal: an fMRI study

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