Role of arousal in age-related positivity effects in attention

Abstract

Most studies evaluating emotional attention in older adulthood have focused exclusively on valence, demonstrating that older adults show a greater attentional preference for positive over neutral and negative stimuli compared to younger adults (Reed, Chan & Mikels, 2014). The role of arousal in attention has been largely ignored, but this could be potentially important as older adults have demonstrated a greater preference for low arousal situations and affective states compared to younger adults (Sands & Isaacowitz 2017; Kessler & Staudinger, 2009). In two studies we examined potential age differences in attention to affective stimuli that varied by both valence and arousal. In Study 1, we evaluated early attentional orienting and disengagement of attention in a spatial cueing task. Participants were instructed to report the location of a spatial target that appeared either on the same or opposite side of the screen as an affective image cue. Orientation was measured by the reaction time to report the location of a spatial target occurring on the same side of the cue, and disengagement was measured by reaction times when the cue appeared opposite side of the target. Results indicated that both younger and older adults took longer to disengage attention from high compared to low arousal images regardless of valence, with no evidence for age-related positivity effects. In Study 2, we aimed to examine if participants continued to take longer to disengage attention from highly arousing content after having more time to process the semantic content of the stimuli, as well as how attentional patterns were related to mood. Participants in this task were directed to attend to either an emotional or a neutral region of an emotional image for the first 2 seconds of stimulus presentation, but were then able to view the image freely for the remaining seconds while eye movements were monitored. Participants also reported on their mood after viewing each image. Results again indicated no age differences in attention or evidence for age-related positivity effects. Overall when stimuli were highly arousing, participants demonstrated greater positive and less negative gaze patterns evidenced by faster disengagement from high compared to low arousal negative emotional regions and slower attention to negative compared to positive regions when directed to attend neutrally. Results from these two studies highlight the role of arousal in early attentional disengagement, and suggest that valence may become more significant over the course of stimulus presentation. These studies also importantly demonstrate contexts in which age differences in emotional attention are not observed, suggesting that positivity effects in attention may not reliably emerge across tasks. They highlight the importance of considering stimulus arousal in addition to valence, particularly in attentional processes in which arousal has been demonstrated to be important outside of the aging literature.--Author's abstract