David Richter1, Cathrin Dietzel, Ute Kunzmann. 1. Institute of Psychology 1, Life-Span Development Lab, University of Leipzig, Germany. david.richter@uni-bamberg.de
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This study examined the impact of context information on emotion recognition from a life-span developmental perspective. The main prediction was that age-related deficits in emotion recognition will only be evident in context-poor tasks. METHODS: A sample of 48 younger (M(age) = 23 years) and 35 older women (M(age) = 70 years) watched 48 film clips, each depicting a female target who talked about an emotional biographical episode and expressed one of three target emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, or anger). Half of the films were presented without sound (context-poor condition) and the other half was presented with sound (context-rich condition). RESULTS: Independent of the condition, younger women were better at recognizing sadness and anger than older women. However, the condition had an effect on age differences in happiness recognition: Age-related deficits were only evident in the context-poor condition. In addition, we found that logical reasoning predicted individual differences and age-related differences in sadness and anger recognition but not in happiness recognition. DISCUSSION: The present findings suggest that age differences in emotion recognition are context and emotion specific. Together, the evidence speaks for substantial plasticity in emotion recognition (i.e., within-person variability) well into old age.
OBJECTIVES: This study examined the impact of context information on emotion recognition from a life-span developmental perspective. The main prediction was that age-related deficits in emotion recognition will only be evident in context-poor tasks. METHODS: A sample of 48 younger (M(age) = 23 years) and 35 older women (M(age) = 70 years) watched 48 film clips, each depicting a female target who talked about an emotional biographical episode and expressed one of three target emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, or anger). Half of the films were presented without sound (context-poor condition) and the other half was presented with sound (context-rich condition). RESULTS: Independent of the condition, younger women were better at recognizing sadness and anger than older women. However, the condition had an effect on age differences in happiness recognition: Age-related deficits were only evident in the context-poor condition. In addition, we found that logical reasoning predicted individual differences and age-related differences in sadness and anger recognition but not in happiness recognition. DISCUSSION: The present findings suggest that age differences in emotion recognition are context and emotion specific. Together, the evidence speaks for substantial plasticity in emotion recognition (i.e., within-person variability) well into old age.
Authors: Julia A Romano; Laura Vosper; Jonathan A Kingslake; Colin T Dourish; Suzanne Higgs; Jason M Thomas; Andreea Raslescu; Gerard R Dawson Journal: Front Psychiatry Date: 2022-02-11 Impact factor: 4.157