Abstract
Consistent with their emphasis on emotional goals, older adults often exhibit a positivity bias in attention and memory relative to their young counterparts (i.e., a positivity effect). The current study sought to determine how this age-related positivity effect would impact intentional forgetting of emotional words, a process critical to efficient operation of memory. Using an item-based directed forgetting task, 36 young and 36 older adults studied a series of arousal-equivalent words that varied in valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral). Each word was followed by a cue to either remember or forget the word. A subsequent “tagging” recognition task required classification of items as to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF), or new as a measure of directed forgetting and source attribution in participants' memory. Neither young nor older adults' intentional forgetting was affected by the valence of words. A goal-consistent valence effect did, however, emerge in older adults' source attribution performance. Specifically, older adults assigned more TBR-cues to positive words and more TBF-cues to negative words. Results are discussed in light of existing literature on emotion and directed forgetting as well as the socioemotional selectivity theory underlying the age-related positivity effect.
Highlights
Research demonstrates a divergent trajectory for aging brains, characterized by declines in cognition (Salthouse, 2004) and preservation in emotional processing (Carstensen and Mikels, 2005)
The ability to process emotional information appears to remain intact in late life, age differences often emerge with older relative to young adults, exhibiting a bias toward positive and/or away from negative information in both attention and memory (i.e., Reed and Carstensen, 2012)
When those resources are depleted, older adults’ positivity bias often disappears (Mather and Knight, 2005; Reed et al, 2014), suggesting their bias may be rooted in effortful and resource demanding processes. Such age-related positivity effects in memory have shown to be specific to lowarousing emotional stimuli (Kensinger, 2008), which engage more controlled as opposed to automatic processes commonly involved in processing highly arousing stimuli (Kensinger and Corkin, 2004). These findings demonstrate agerelated positivity effects in attention and memory arising from an increased motivation to satisfy emotional goals
Summary
Research demonstrates a divergent trajectory for aging brains, characterized by declines in cognition (Salthouse, 2004) and preservation in emotional processing (Carstensen and Mikels, 2005). It has been proposed that older adults’ age-related shift in emotional biases may be rooted in a motivation to satisfy emotional goals such as regulating emotion by seeking out positive and ignoring negative information (Reed and Carstensen, 2012) Prior findings support this theory by showing that older adults are selective in their information processing and invest more cognitive resources in the elaboration of positive stimuli, leading to better memory for positive relative to negative or neutral information (e.g., Charles et al, 2003). It is still unclear whether this positivity effect would impact instances where forgetting might be more favorable
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