情緒向度處理之年齡差異：景觀圖片與臉部表情

Abstract

Studies have demonstrated that aging alters the processing of emotions. However, whether age-related effects on valence and arousal dimensions of emotion are uniform or distinct is unknown. In addition, whether age-related effects on affective processing similarly apply to all types of emotional stimuli modalities is unclear. In this study, 40 young adults and 39 older Taiwanese adults were recruited and asked to rate emotional scene and face stimuli generated from a local emotional stimuli database created for this purpose. Our results showed inconsistent effects of age on valence and arousal processing for these scenes and faces. For scenes, participants had higher arousal when watching stimuli with extreme valence, but this relationship was attenuated in older adults. Also, older adults generally felt more aroused when watching scenes. For faces, participants gave higher intensity rating to faces with excessive expressions, but no age-related interaction was found. These findings suggest that older adults have different emotion dimensional processing compared with young adults for scenes, but the perception of face emotion may be conserved. Whereas age may alter affective processing in older adults, the locus of effects may be more specific to modality rather than a systemic decline of the emotion system.