Abstract
While functioning in multiple domains declines with age, emotional regulation appears to remain preserved in older adults. The Emotion Inhibition (Emotional Stroop) Test requires participants to name the ink color in which neutrally and emotionally valenced words are printed. It was employed in the current investigation as a measure of affective regulation in the context of an interference task in relation to age. Results demonstrated that while participants ranging from 20 to 50 years of age performed significantly worse on the emotion Stroop Inhibition relative to the neutral Stroop Inhibition condition, subjects over 60 years of age displayed the converse of this pattern, performing better on the emotion than the neutral condition, suggesting that they are less affected by the emotional impact of the positive and negative words used in the former condition. This pattern of age-related change in the ability to manage emotion may be related to blunting of affective signaling in limbic structures or, at the psychological level, focusing on emotional regulation.
Highlights
Multiple cognitive processes have been shown to decline with age, including tasks involving cognitive control such as the Stroop test
Results demonstrated that while participants ranging from 20 to 50 years of age performed significantly worse on the emotion Stroop Inhibition relative to the neutral Stroop Inhibition condition, subjects over 60 years of age displayed the converse of this pattern, performing better on the emotion than the neutral condition, suggesting that they are less affected by the emotional impact of the positive and negative words used in the former condition
The response patterns of the older groups demonstrated better performance in affective than neutral inhibition; the younger groups exhibited a greater effect of the emotional material, performing significantly more poorly on the affective relative to the neutral condition
Summary
Multiple cognitive processes have been shown to decline with age, including tasks involving cognitive control such as the Stroop test. Older adults demonstrate better memory for positive material rather than for neutral or negative information as compared to younger adults (Charles et al, 2003; Mather and Cartsensen, 2005; Mikels et al, 2005). A variant of the original Stroop interference paradigm, the emotional Stroop task presents subjects with neutral and emotionally laden words (i.e., murder) presented in different ink colors (Whalen et al, 1998), combining demands for affective regulation and cognitive control. In this paradigm, there are costs in accuracy and/or response time for the emotional interference and management. There is evidence that activation of the anterior cingulate cortex modulates activation in the amygdala (Etkin et al, 2006)
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