Positivity Effect In Older Adults Research Articles

Metacognitive Illusions: A Positivity Effect in Judgments of Learning for Older but Not Younger Adults

The positivity effect for metacognitive judgments (judgments of learning, JOLs) of emotional words in recognition memory was shown in older adults, in contrast to younger adults, who typically displayed the emotional salience effect. This is compatible with the socioemotional selection theory, which suggests the presence of a positive stimulus bias in older adults' cognitive processes. This study examined whether the positivity effect and age-related differences could be extended to a picture study to determine whether the positivity effect in older adults is robust in the metacognitive domain. Younger and older adults studied negative, positive, and neutral pictures, followed by JOLs and then a recognition test that asked participants to judge whether the picture was shown in the studying stage or not. Age-related differences were found not only in recognition memory performance for emotional pictures but also in JOLs and their accuracy. Younger adults showed an emotional salience effect for both memory performance and JOLs. Older adults' JOLs showed a positivity effect, but their actual memory performance was influenced by emotion, and this inconsistency between metacognitive judgments and memory performance is a metacognitive illusion. These findings support the cross-material replicability of a positivity bias in older adults in the metacognitive domain and suggest that we should be cautioned about the detrimental effects of this metacognitive illusion in older adults. It illustrates an age difference in the effect of emotion on individual metacognitive monitoring ability.

An age-related positivity effect in semantic true memory but not false memory.

The positivity effect in older adults (i.e., over 60 years old) has been demonstrated across a wide range of stimuli with a wide range of experimental paradigms that are designed to assess memory; however, very little research has investigated the positivity effect in semantic memory. The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm is one of the best procedures to investigate age-related changes in the key cognitive mechanisms of semantic memory, including associative activation and gist extraction. Here we used the DRM paradigm to investigate whether mood, particularly positive mood, at the time of encoding would influence age-related differences in semantic memory in younger and older adults. Participants were induced into a positive, negative, or neutral mood and were then presented with word lists consisting of positive, negative, or neutral words. Older relative to younger adults exhibited higher true recognition for positive over negative words, but this pattern was not shown in false recognition. When participants were induced in positive moods, older adults exhibited more false recognition than did young adults. The age-related difference in false recognition, however, had nothing to do with the valence of information. Taken together, these findings support Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, a life span theory of motivation, and Fuzzy-Trace Theory, a dual-process theory of false memory, as well as the assumptions regarding the impact of mood on information processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The relationship between the positivity effect and facial-cue based trustworthiness evaluations in older adults

This study investigates if there is an age-related positivity effect on how older adults in eastern cultures perform trustworthiness evaluations based on facial cues. Furthermore, it explores the potential method information processing affected by the positivity effect during trustworthiness evaluations. The results show that the level of trustworthiness older adults in China assign to faces is significantly higher than that of younger adults; older adults’ trustworthiness evaluations based on facial cues in the valid cueing condition is significantly higher than in the invalid cueing condition; and for younger adults, trustworthiness evaluation of untrustworthy faces in the valid cueing condition was significantly lower than in the invalid cueing condition. Overall, these results show that positive information processing in older adults is regulated by attention capacity, while negative information processing by young adults is regulated by attention capacity, which indicates that the age-related positivity effect in older adults is due to increased positive information processing.

The influence of task complexity and information value on feedback processing in younger and older adults: No evidence for a positivity bias during feedback-induced learning in older adults

Humans flexibly adapt their behavior using feedback from their environment. This ability is impaired in old age, but recent research suggests this mainly concerns processing of negative feedback and that positive feedback might be spared. The aim of this study was to test this idea of an age-related positivity bias against the possibility of a strategic focus on relevant feedback due to limited processing resources in old age. For this purpose, 17 younger (aged 19 to 28 years) and 18 older (aged 69 to 79 years) adults performed a learning task in which they learned the correct response to a stimulus via feedback. Learning relevance was manipulated by varying the informational value of positive and negative feedback. To manipulate available processing resources, the task was conducted under two difficulty levels. Our results showed no hint of a positivity bias in older adults. On the contrary, we found that they learned worse when the information value of the negative feedback was reduced. This is in line with the idea that the positivity effect in older adults reflects a strategic change in motivation, i.e., older adults preferably process positive information if they have a choice, but they can process negative information as effectively when it is relevant for the task at hand. For younger adults, negative feedback seemed to be more important, too, because it modulated later higher-order feedback processing as indexed by the P3b. They showed reduced working memory updating and a more frontal P3b distribution indicating a higher processing effort in conditions in which the information value of negative feedback was reduced.

Positivity Effect and Working Memory Performance Remains Intact in Older Adults After Sleep Deprivation.

Background: Older adults perform better in tasks which include positive stimuli, referred to as the positivity effect. However, recent research suggests that the positivity effect could be attenuated when additional challenges such as stress or cognitive demands are introduced. Moreover, it is well established that older adults are relatively resilient to many of the adverse effects of sleep deprivation. Our aim was to investigate if the positivity effect in older adults is affected by one night of total sleep deprivation using an emotional working memory task.Methods: A healthy sample of 48 older adults (60-72 years) was either sleep deprived for one night (n = 24) or had a normal night’s sleep (n = 24). They performed an emotional working memory n-back (n = 1 and 3) task containing positive, negative and neutral pictures.Results: Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was best for positive stimuli and worst for negative stimuli. This positivity effect was not altered by sleep deprivation. Results also showed that, despite significantly increased sleepiness, there was no effect of sleep deprivation on working memory performance. A working memory load × valence interaction on the reaction times revealed that the beneficial effect of positive stimuli was only present in the 1-back condition.Conclusion: While the positivity effect and general working memory abilities in older adults are intact after one night of sleep deprivation, increased cognitive demand attenuates the positivity effect on working memory speed.

The impact of emotional faces on younger and older adults’ attentional blink

ABSTRACTThe attentional blink (AB) is the impaired ability to detect a second target (T2) when it follows shortly after the first (T1) among distractors in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). Given questions about the automaticity of age differences in emotion processing, the current study examined whether emotion cues differentially impact the AB elicited in older and younger adults. Twenty-two younger (18–22 years) and 22 older adult participants (62–78 years) reported on the emotional content of target face stimulus pairs embedded in a RSVP of scrambled-face distractor images. Target pairs included photo-realistic faces of angry, happy, and neutral expressions. The order of emotional and neutral stimuli as T1 or T2 and the degree of temporal separation within the RSVP systematically varied. Target detection accuracy was used to operationalise the AB. Although older adults displayed a larger AB than younger adults, no age differences emerged in the impact of emotion on the AB. Angry T1 faces increased the AB of both age groups. Neither emotional T2 attenuated the AB. Negative facial expressions held the attention of younger and older adults in a comparable manner, exacerbating the AB and supporting a negativity bias instead of a positivity effect in older adults.

Advanced Aging Enhances the Positivity Effect in Memory: Due to Cognitive Control or Age-Related Decline in Emotional Processing?

Older adults typically remember more positive than negative information compared to their younger counterparts; a phenomenon referred to as the ‘positivity effect.’ According to the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), the positivity effect derives from the age-related motivational shift towards attaining emotionally meaningful goals which become more important as the perception of future time becomes more limited. Cognitive control mechanisms are critical in achieving such goals and therefore SST predicts that the positivity effect is associated with preserved cognitive control mechanisms in older adults. In contrast, the aging-brain model suggests that the positivity effect is driven by an age-related decline in the amygdala which is responsible for emotional processing and emotional learning. The aim of the current research was to address whether the age-related positivity effect is associated with cognitive control or impaired emotional processing associated with aging. We included older old adults, younger old adults and younger adults and tested their memory for emotional stimuli, cognitive control and amygdala-dependent fear conditioned responses. Consistent with prior research, older adults, relative to younger adults, demonstrate better memory for positive over negative images. We further found that within a group of older adults, the positivity effect increases as a function of age, such that older old adults demonstrated a greater positivity effect compared to younger older adults. Furthermore, the positivity effect in older old adults was associated with preserved cognitive control, supporting the prediction of SST. Contrary to the prediction of the aging-brain model, participants across all groups demonstrated similar enhanced skin conductance responses to fear conditioned stimuli – responses known to rely on the amygdala. Our results support SST and suggest that the positivity effect in older adults is achieved by the preserved cognitive control mechanisms and is not a reflection of the impaired emotional function associated with age.

When Do Older Adults Show a Positivity Effect in Emotional Memory?

ABSTRACTBackground: Typically, positive and negative emotional items are easier to remember than neutral ones. Charles, Mather, and Carstensen (2003) reported that older adults preferentially remember positive items, but this age-related “positivity effect” has not been replicated consistently.Methods: We conducted a close replication of Charles et al.’s study to verify that their method yields a clear positivity effect in older adults relative to the young. We also examined the role of attention, which has been argued to influence the presence of the positivity effect in older adults. We used a method similar to Charles et al. (2003). Young and older adults recalled pictures that had been encoded under full or divided attention.Results and Conclusions: Older adults showed a positivity effect, but only under full attention. Young adults did not show any hint of a positivity effect, under either of the encoding conditions. The finding of a positivity effect in older but not young adults replicates the original report from Charles et al. (2003). The attention manipulation results suggest that when the positivity effect occurs in older adults’ memory, it is attributable at least in part to cognitive control during encoding.Key terms: Emotional Enhancement of Memory–Divided attention–Aging

Does the Effort of Processing Potential Incentives Influence the Adaption of Context Updating in Older Adults?

A number of aging studies suggest that older adults process positive and negative information differently. For instance, the socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that older adults preferably process positive information in service of emotional well-being (Reed and Carstensen, 2012). Moreover, recent research has started to investigate whether incentives like gains or losses can influence cognitive control in an ongoing task. In an earlier study (Schmitt et al., 2015), we examined whether incentive cues, indicating potential monetary gains, losses, or neutral outcomes for good performance in the following trial, would influence older adults’ ability to exert cognitive control. Cognitive control was measured in an AX-Continuous-Performance-Task (AX-CPT) in which participants had to select their responses to probe stimuli depending on a preceding context cue. In this study, we did not find support for a positivity effect in older adults, but both gains and losses led to enhanced context processing. As the trial-wise presentation mode may be too demanding on cognitive resources for such a bias to occur, the main goal of the present study was to examine whether motivational mindsets, induced by block-wise presentation of incentives, would result in a positivity effect. For this reason, we examined 17 older participants (65–76 years) in the AX-CPT using a block-wise presentation of incentive cues and compared them to 18 older adults (69–78 years) with the trial-wise presentation mode from our earlier study (Schmitt et al., 2015). Event-related potentials were recorded to the onset of the motivational cue and during the AX-CPT. Our results show that (a) older adults initially process cues signaling potential losses more strongly, but later during the AX-CPT invest more cognitive resources in preparatory processes like context updating in conditions with potential gains, and (b) block-wise and trial-wise presentation of incentive cues differentially influenced cognitive control. When incentives were presented block-wise, the above described valence effects were consistently found. In contrast, when incentives were presented trial-wise, the effects were mixed and salience as well as valence effects can be obtained. Hence, how positive and negative incentive cues influence cognitive control in older adults is dependent on demands of cue processing.

Positivity effect in older adults’ memory

Positivity effect in older adults’ memory

Is There a Paradox of Aging: When the Negative Aging Stereotype Meets the Positivity Effect in Older Adults

Background/Study Context: Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) states that the positivity effect is a result of older adults’ emotion regulation and that older adults derive more emotional satisfaction from prioritizing positive information processing. The authors explored whether the positivity effect appeared when the negative aging stereotype was activated in older adults and also whether the effect differed between mixed and unmixed valence conditions.Methods: Sixty younger (18–23 years of age) and 60 older (60–87 years of age) adults were randomly assigned to a control group and a priming group, in which the negative aging stereotype was activated. All the participants were asked to select 15 words that best described the elderly from a mixed-word list (positive and negative words were mixed together) and from an unmixed-word list (positive and negative words were separated).Results: Older adults in the control group selected more positive words, whereas among younger adults, selection did not differ by valence in either the mixed- or unmixed-word list conditions. There were no differences between the positive and negative word choices of the younger and older adults in the priming group. We calculated the differences between the numbers of positive and negative words, and the differences in the older adults’ word choices were larger than those among the younger adults; the differences were also larger in the control group than in the priming group.Conclusion: The positivity effect worked by choosing positive stimuli rather than avoiding negative stimuli. The role of emotion regulation in older adults was limited, and when the positivity effect faced the effect of the negative aging stereotype, the negative stereotype effect was dominant. Future research should explore the changes in the positivity effect in the face of a positive aging stereotype and what roles other factors (e.g., activation level of the stereotype, arousal level of affective words) might play.

Age-related alterations of brain network underlying the retrieval of emotional autobiographical memories: an fMRI study using independent component analysis.

Normal aging has been shown to modulate the neural underpinnings of autobiographical memory and emotion processing. Moreover, previous researches have suggested that aging produces a “positivity effect” in autobiographical memory. Although a few imaging studies have investigated the neural mechanism of the positivity effect, the neural substrates underlying the positivity effect in emotional autobiographical memory is unclear. To understand the age-related neural changes in emotional autobiographical memory that underlie the positivity effect, the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study used the independent component analysis (ICA) method to compare brain networks in younger and older adults as they retrieved positive and negative autobiographical events. Compared to their younger counterparts, older adults reported relatively higher positive feelings when retrieving emotional autobiographical events. Imaging data indicated an age-related reversal within the ventromedial prefrontal/anterior cingulate cortex (VMPFC/ACC) and the left amygdala of the brain networks that were engaged in the retrieval of autobiographical events with different valence. The retrieval of negative events compared to positive events induced stronger activity in the VMPFC/ACC and weaker activity in the amygdala for the older adults, whereas the younger adults showed a reversed pattern. Moreover, activity in the VMPFC/ACC within the task-related networks showed a negative correlation with the emotional valence intensity. These results may suggest that the positivity effect in older adults' autobiographical memories is potentially due to age-related changes in controlled emotional processing implemented by the VMPFC/ACC-amygdala circuit.

Selective control of attention supports the positivity effect in aging.

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.

In the ear of the beholder: How age shapes emotion processing in nonverbal vocalizations.

It is well established that emotion recognition of facial expressions declines with age, but evidence for age-related differences in vocal emotions is more limited. This is especially true for nonverbal vocalizations such as laughter, sobs, or sighs. In this study, 43 younger adults (M = 22 years) and 43 older ones (M = 61.4 years) provided multiple emotion ratings of nonverbal emotional vocalizations. Contrasting with previous research, which often includes only one positive emotion (happiness) versus several negative ones, we examined 4 positive and 4 negative emotions: achievement/triumph, amusement, pleasure, relief, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness. We controlled for hearing loss and assessed general cognitive decline, cognitive control, verbal intelligence, working memory, current affect, emotion regulation, and personality. Older adults were less sensitive than younger ones to the intended vocal emotions, as indicated by decrements in ratings on the intended emotion scales and accuracy. These effects were similar for positive and negative emotions, and they were independent of age-related differences in cognitive, affective, and personality measures. Regression analyses revealed that younger and older participants' responses could be predicted from the acoustic properties of the temporal, intensity, fundamental frequency, and spectral profile of the vocalizations. The two groups were similarly efficient in using the acoustic cues, but there were differences in the patterns of emotion-specific predictors. This study suggests that ageing produces specific changes on the processing of nonverbal vocalizations. That decrements were not attenuated for positive emotions indicates that they cannot be explained by a positivity effect in older adults.

Perceived Duration of Emotional Events: Evidence for a Positivity Effect in Older Adults

Background/Study Context: Arousal and negative affect modulate the effect of emotion on the subjective experience of the passage of time. Given that older adults are less aroused by negative emotional stimuli, and report lower levels of negative affect, compared with younger adults, the present study examined whether the effect of emotion on time perception differed in older and younger adults. Methods: Participants performed a temporal bisection task for emotional (i.e., angry, sad, happy) and neutral facial expressions presented at varying temporal intervals. Results: Older adults perceived the duration of both positive and threatening events longer than neutral events, whereas younger adults only perceived threatening events longer than neutral events. Conclusion: The results, which are partially consistent with the positivity effect of aging postulated by the socioemotional selectivity theory, are the first to show how the effect of emotion on perceived duration affects older adults, and support previous research indicating that only threatening events prolong perceived duration in younger adults.

Effects of Speaker Emotional Facial Expression and Listener Age on Incremental Sentence Processing

We report two visual-world eye-tracking experiments that investigated how and with which time course emotional information from a speaker's face affects younger (N = 32, Mean age = 23) and older (N = 32, Mean age = 64) listeners’ visual attention and language comprehension as they processed emotional sentences in a visual context. The age manipulation tested predictions by socio-emotional selectivity theory of a positivity effect in older adults. After viewing the emotional face of a speaker (happy or sad) on a computer display, participants were presented simultaneously with two pictures depicting opposite-valence events (positive and negative; IAPS database) while they listened to a sentence referring to one of the events. Participants' eye fixations on the pictures while processing the sentence were increased when the speaker's face was (vs. wasn't) emotionally congruent with the sentence. The enhancement occurred from the early stages of referential disambiguation and was modulated by age. For the older adults it was more pronounced with positive faces, and for the younger ones with negative faces. These findings demonstrate for the first time that emotional facial expressions, similarly to previously-studied speaker cues such as eye gaze and gestures, are rapidly integrated into sentence processing. They also provide new evidence for positivity effects in older adults during situated sentence processing.

Amygdala Functional Connectivity with Medial Prefrontal Cortex at Rest Predicts the Positivity Effect in Older Adults' Memory

As people get older, they tend to remember more positive than negative information. This age-by-valence interaction has been called "positivity effect." The current study addressed the hypotheses that baseline functional connectivity at rest is predictive of older adults' brain activity when learning emotional information and their positivity effect in memory. Using fMRI, we examined the relationship among resting-state functional connectivity, subsequent brain activity when learning emotional faces, and individual differences in the positivity effect (the relative tendency to remember faces expressing positive vs. negative emotions). Consistent with our hypothesis, older adults with a stronger positivity effect had increased functional coupling between amygdala and medial PFC (MPFC) during rest. In contrast, younger adults did not show the association between resting connectivity and memory positivity. A similar age-by-memory positivity interaction was also found when learning emotional faces. That is, memory positivity in older adults was associated with (a) enhanced MPFC activity when learning emotional faces and (b) increased negative functional coupling between amygdala and MPFC when learning negative faces. In contrast, memory positivity in younger adults was related to neither enhanced MPFC activity to emotional faces, nor MPFC-amygdala connectivity to negative faces. Furthermore, stronger MPFC-amygdala connectivity during rest was predictive of subsequent greater MPFC activity when learning emotional faces. Thus, emotion-memory interaction in older adults depends not only on the task-related brain activity but also on the baseline functional connectivity.

A Positivity Effect in Older Adults’ Memorability Judgments of Pictures

Background/Study Context: A growing literature suggests that older adults are biased to preferentially cognitively process positively valenced information. The authors investigated whether this bias extended to preferential selection of information to remember, and also examined whether the arousal invoked by stimuli biased item selection and memory. Methods: Thirty older (63–88 years of age) and 30 younger (18–25 years of age) adults viewed emotional (positive, negative) and neutral pictures that varied in arousal (low, high), and were asked to select a subset they deemed memorable (memorability judgments), before recalling pictures. Repeated-measures analyses of variance were conducted to examine aging-related differences in selection and recall of positive, negative, and neutral pictures, and of low- and high-arousal pictures. Results: Older adults selected more positive pictures as memorable, whereas in younger adults selection did not differ by valence. In both age groups, recall of positive pictures was highest. Older adults selected more low- than high-arousal pictures as memorable, although recall was greater for high- than low-arousal pictures in both age groups. Conclusion: Findings are consistent with the view that the aging-related positivity bias is under cognitive control, and suggest an awareness of this in older adults. Future investigations should seek to disentangle the influence of positive valence from other factors (e.g., perceptual, semantic, arousal level) on older adults’ memorability judgments.

Emotional Stroop Performance in Older Adults: Effects of Habitual Worry

In clinically anxious individuals, selective attention to negative cues in the environment may perpetuate a vicious cycle of emotional dysfunction. However, very little is known regarding the role of negative attentional bias in anxious older adults. There is evidence that in older adults without clinical anxiety, the opposite bias (toward positive, and away from negative, emotional material) is present. We explored how these age-related changes in emotional processing interact with anxiety. Sixty older adults (age 60+) completed the emotional Stroop (eStroop) task, a widely used measure of attentional bias, which requires rapid identification of the color in which neutral and emotional words are printed. Participants were stratified into high-, mid-, and low-worry groups on the basis of a self-report measure, the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. The high-worry group exhibited a bias toward threat-related words whereas the low- and mid-worry groups showed a bias away from threat-related words. By contrast, the low- and mid-worry groups showed a bias toward positive words, potentially consistent with an established positivity effect in older adults whereas the high-worry group showed a bias away from positive items. Older adults who worry frequently exhibit a pattern of eStroop performance that is broadly consistent with the younger adult literature, suggesting that selective attention toward threat-related information may be seen as a relevant factor in older, as in younger, anxiety.

Executive function and emotional focus in autobiographical memory specificity in older adults

The current study examined the role of executive function in retrieval of specific autobiographical memories in older adults with regard to control of emotion during retrieval. Older and younger adults retrieved memories of specific events in response to emotionally positive, negative and neutral word cues. Contributions of inhibitory and updating elements of executive function to variance in autobiographical specificity were assessed to determine processes involved in the commonly found age-related reduction in specificity. A negative relationship between age and specificity was only found in retrieval to neutral cues. Alternative explanations of this age preservation of specificity of emotional recall are explored, within the context of control of emotion in the self-memory system and preserved emotional processing and positivity effect in older adults. The pattern of relationships suggests updating, rather than inhibition, as the source of age-related reduction in specificity, but that emotional processing (particularly of positively valenced memories) is not influenced by age-related variance in executive control. The tendency of older adults to focus on positive material may thus act as a buffer against detrimental effects of reduced executive function capacity on autobiographical retrieval, representing a possible target for interventions to improve specificity of autobiographical memory retrieval in older adults.