Selective Control of Attention Supports the Positivity Effect in Aging

Abstract

There is emerging evidence for a positivity effect in healthy aging, which describes an age-specific increased focus on positive compared to negative information. Life-span researchers have attributed this effect to the selective allocation of cognitive resources in the service of prioritized emotional goals. We explored the basic principles of this assumption by assessing selective attention and memory for visual stimuli, differing in emotional content and self-relevance, in young and old participants. To specifically address the impact of cognitive control, voluntary attentional selection during the presentation of multiple-item displays was analyzed and linked to participants' general ability of cognitive control. Results revealed a positivity effect in older adults' selective attention and memory, which was particularly pronounced for self-relevant stimuli. Focusing on positive and ignoring negative information was most evident in older participants with a generally higher ability to exert top-down control during visual search. Our findings highlight the role of controlled selectivity in the occurrence of a positivity effect in aging. Since the effect has been related to well-being in later life, we suggest that the ability to selectively allocate top-down control might represent a resilience factor for emotional health in aging.

The Affective Neuroscience of Aging

“…Behavioral studies provide further support for the notion that older adults engage prefrontal resources in order to help increase positivity and/or diminish negativity of attention and memory by showing that higher executive function is associated with higher positivity among older adults but not younger adults (Isaacowitz et al, 2009b, Knight et al, 2007, Mather and Knight, 2005, Petrican et al, 2008, Sasse et al, 2014, Simón et al, 2013, but see Foster et al, 2013). …”

Modulation of Prepulse Inhibition and Startle Reflex by Emotions: A Comparison between Young and Older Adults

“…When free to look at positive, neutral, or negative pictures, a higher proportion of pictures remembered by older adults consisted of positive than negative information compared with the younger adults. Older adults also display more fixations and of longer duration for positive compared to negative or neutral pictures, a pattern different from younger adults (Sasse et al, 2014 ). A recent meta-analysis including 100 empirical studies on the positivity effect showed that the effect is robust across a wide range of tasks and stimuli (Reed et al, 2014 ).…”

Cognitive Control Modulates Effects of Episodic Simulation on Delay Discounting in Aging

“…Application and analysis was based on our previous work where older participants’ ability to control attention during highly salient distraction explained substantial variance during emotion processing (Sasse et al, 2014). …”