Bringing an Ecological Perspective to the Study of Aging and Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions: Past, Current, and Future Methods

Abstract

Older adults perform worse on traditional tests of emotion recognition accuracy than do young adults. In this paper, we review descriptive research to date on age differences in emotion recognition from facial expressions, as well as the primary theoretical frameworks that have been offered to explain these patterns. We propose that this is an area of inquiry that would benefit from an ecological approach in which contextual elements are more explicitly considered and reflected in experimental methods. Use of dynamic displays and examination of specific cues to accuracy, for example, may reveal more nuanced age-related patterns and may suggest heretofore unexplored underlying mechanisms.

Getting at Developmental Processes Through Experiments

“…In the area of emotion recognition and aging, Isaacowitz and Stanley (2011) argued that the results of many studies might lead to erroneous conclusions because tasks fail to include important contextual cues for emotion recognition in older adults' ecologies (e.g., temporal,…”

Age and Musical Expertise Influence Emotion Recognition in Music

“…Modalities other than facial expressions are less studied, but there is evidence for age-related decrements in emotion recognition in lexical stimuli (Isaacowitz et al, 2007), body postures (Ruffman, Halberstadt, & Murray, 2009), visual scenes (St. Jacques, Dolcos, & Cabeza, 2008), and in dynamic auditory cues, namely speech prosody (e.g., Lambrecht et al, 2012;Mitchell, 2007;Mitchell, Kingston, & Bouças, 2011) and nonverbal vocalizations (Lima, Alves, Scott, & Castro, 2013). Although typically young adults are compared with individuals aged 60 and over (''extreme age group'' design; Isaacowitz & Stanley, 2011), a few studies using finer gradations in age revealed that decrements may proceed linearly with advancing age, with significant differences already in middle-age (e.g., Isaacowitz et al, 2007;Lambrecht et al, 2012;Mill, Allik, Realo, & Valk, 2009;Paulmann, Pell, & Kotz, 2008).…”

“…Including middle-aged participants is a significant difference with respect to previous research. In the aging literature, the middle-years are largely neglected and this contributes to obscure continuous shifts in emotion recognition that may be significant relatively early in the adult life span (Isaacowitz & Stanley, 2011). For instance, Isaacowitz et al (2007) found that the greatest decrements in the recognition of facial expressions and lexical stimuli occurred between younger and middle-aged participants (performance remained relatively stable afterwards).…”

“…This measure was included because music training may influence executive control, namely inhibitory abilities (Bialystok & DePape, 2009;Moreno et al, 2011;Stewart et al, 2003). Additionally, it is plausible that attention and executive control play a role for age-related differences in emotion recognition, and yet it is not usually featured in aging research (Isaacowitz & Stanley, 2011). In the MoCA test, all participants scored within the normative range for their age (!…”

Aging Revitalizes Nonverbal Challenges

“…Over the intervening years, tremendous developments have taken place in the study of aging, especially regarding emotion-related issues such as changes in aging adults' perception of emotional information. The feature paper by Isaacowitz and Stanley (2011) in the present Special Issue is evidence of these changes and offers theorists and researchers exciting challenges for the study of aging and emotion recognition in the coming years. Commentaries by other scholars echo these challenges and suggest even more ways the study of aging and nonverbal behavior revitalizes attention to basic nonverbal questions and methodological strategies.…”