Abstract
This study sought to examine age-related differences in the influences of social (neutral, emotional faces) and non-social/non-emotional (shapes) distractor stimuli in children, adolescents, and adults. To assess the degree to which distractor, or task-irrelevant, stimuli of varying social and emotional salience interfere with cognitive performance, children (N = 12; 8–12y), adolescents (N = 17; 13–17y), and adults (N = 17; 18–52y) completed the Emotional Identification and Dynamic Faces (EIDF) task. This task included three types of dynamically-changing distractors: (1) neutral-social (neutral face changing into another face); (2) emotional-social (face changing from 0% emotional to 100% emotional); and (3) non-social/non-emotional (shapes changing from small to large) to index the influence of task-irrelevant social and emotional information on cognition. Results yielded no age-related differences in accuracy but showed an age-related linear reduction in correct reaction times across distractor conditions. An age-related effect in interference was observed, such that children and adults showed slower response times on correct trials with socially-salient distractors; whereas adolescents exhibited faster responses on trials with distractors that included faces rather than shapes. A secondary study goal was to explore individual differences in cognitive interference. Results suggested that regardless of age, low trait anxiety and high effortful control were associated with interference to angry faces. Implications for developmental differences in affective processing, notably the importance of considering the contexts in which purportedly irrelevant social and emotional information might impair, vs. improve cognitive control, are discussed.
Highlights
Adaptive behavior, for example goal-directed behavior, often requires resisting interference from salient, but task-irrelevant, information while sustaining attention on relevant information
There was no significant effect of EmoShape difference score type, F(3, 84) = 1.90, p = 0.133, η2 = 0.04 or an age group × difference score type interaction, F(6, 84) = 0.07, p = 0.999, η2 = 0.003. These results suggest that “interference” due to the presence emotional-social distractors, that is, changes in correct reaction time (RT) associated with the presence of emotional-social distractors, did not differ across specific emotions
Using the Emotional Identification and Dynamic Faces (EIDF) task, this study examined ages-related differences in the modulatory influence of distractors that vary in social and emotional significance, focusing on the degree to which cognitive interference is specific to emotionally-salient taskirrelevant information, in the context of distractors with high and low social salience
Summary
For example goal-directed behavior, often requires resisting interference from salient, but task-irrelevant, information while sustaining attention on relevant information. Numerous studies have reported stronger interference to emotional information (e.g., attentional biases) in individuals with anxiety and mood disorders (for a review, see Bar-Haim et al, 2007; Joormann and Quinn, 2014), suggesting that interference from emotionally-salient distractors contributes to affective symptoms. Developmental differences in interference could be important for understanding why adolescence appears to be a period of increased risk for affective disorders (Paus et al, 2008), in part, because of adolescents’ increased sensitivity to social and emotional information (e.g., Casey et al, 2008; Nelson et al, 2016; Schriber and Guyer, 2016). The primary aim of this study was to investigate age-related differences in the influence of distractor stimuli that vary in social (i.e., shapes vs face) and emotional (i.e., neutral vs emotional facial expressions) salience across the child, adolescent, and adult years
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