Age Differences in Emotion Recognition of Briefly Presented FacesLisa Emery, Kory Morgan, Kaitlyn Pechanek & Caitlin Williams

Reprints may be obtained at agelabs.appstate.edu

EXPERIMENT 1: METHOD

INTRODUCTION

EXPERIMENT 1: CONCLUSIONS

• 51 younger adults (Ages 18-22; M = 19.0, SD = 1.07; 29 Women)• 31 older adults (Ages 61-81; M = 69.3, SD = 5.80; 20 Women)

Participants

Procedure

EXPERIMENT 1: RESULTS

• There was a significant effect of Emotion Type, F(5,390) = 80.56, p < .001, Age Group, F(1,78) = 9.17, p = .003, and an Age Group x Emotion Type interaction, F(5,390) = 5.78, p < .001).

• Young adults found Happiness and Surprise easier to recognize than the four negative emotions, and Happiness easier to recognize than surprise (all p’s < .001).

• Older adults found Disgust, Happiness, and Surprise easier to recognize than Fear, Sadness, and Anger (all p’s < .001); Disgust, Happiness, and Surprise were all equally easy to recognize (all p’s > .20).

• Overall, the performance in Experiment 2 was similar to the young adult’s performance in Experiment 1.

• The Effect of Emotion Type was significant, F(5,225) = 43.15, p < .001 and showed the same pattern as in Experiment 1.

• Neither the Condition Effect, F(1,45) = 0.38, p = .56, nor the Condition x Emotion Type interaction, F(5,225) = 0.11, p = .990, was significant.

In Experiment 2, we tested an exploratory hypothesis that age-impairments in vision may partially account for this finding. Fifty young adults were randomly assigned to perform the same test with either typical pictures, or pictures “blurred” to mimic age-related visual declines.

Previous research has found that, when identifying emotional expressions from static faces, older adults show impaired recognition for some emotions (e.g., sadness, fear, anger), but spared or even improved recognition on others (e.g., happiness, surprise, disgust). There are several limitations to previous research, however, including possible ceiling effects in young adults and a lack of ecological validity. In Experiment 1 we used a modified emotion recognition test in which posed emotion expressions were briefly presented in-between neutral expressions, in order to mimic fleeting emotional expressions and increase difficulty. In a second experiment, we tested the potential role of age-related perceptual decline in emotion recognition by mimicking these declines in younger adults.

M SD M SDYears Education* 12.8 1.0 15.4 2.0Operation Span* 27.7 8.2 21.7 9.2

WAIS-III Vocabulary (Raw) 48.4 7.2 51.3 6.2ERQ-Suppression 14.3 5.0 12.9 4.3Self Monitoring* 11.0 3.9 7.3 4.3

Young Old

* Age Difference Significant at p < .05; None of these variables were associated with emotion recognition performance

EXPERIMENT 2: METHOD

EXPERIMENT 2: RESULTS

• Overall, the age differences in speeded emotion recognition mimic those found with static faces.

• We did not correct for possible response bias, which could, in part, explain older adults’ performance on this emotion.

ANGER DISGUST FEAR SAD HAPPY SURPRISEYOUNG 0.33 0.20 0.18 0.07 0.06 0.17OLD 0.23 0.27 0.14 0.07 0.07 0.23

Participant Responses for Incorrect Answers

• When participants responded incorrectly, younger adults were more likely to respond “ANGER” than older adults were, and older adults were slightly more likely to respond “DISGUST” or “SURPRISE” than younger adults were.• 36 Trials Total,

6 each of Anger, Disgust, Fear, Sadness, Happiness, Surprise

• Verbal response, recorded by Experimenter