NIA Pilot Research Grant Program, Objective 12: Cognition in Context : This project aims to use a novel methodological approach to the investigation of a primary issue in the study of socioemotional development in adulthood and old age: namely, how it is possible that most older individuals report being happy and satisfied with their lives, despite the changes they face as they age. One theory that has been offered to account for this phenomenon is socioemotional selectivity theory, which posits that emotions become more salient to individuals with age; this increased focus on emotion in cognitive processing allows older individuals to proactively regulate their emotions. If emotional material is indeed more salient to older individuals, how does this happen? It is unlikely that emotions are more salient to older individuals simply because they appraise or interpret information in a more emotion-focused way than do younger adults, suggesting that the way in which emotion is more salient to them takes place earlier in information processing than the final steps of interpretation and reframing. Emotional material may thus receive preferential treatment in the attentional processes of older adults, and this preference or bias relatively early in information processing may underlie the increased salience of emotion across many domains of their functioning. It may be the case that emotional material is simply more salient overall than is nonemotional material to older adults, or rather that older individuals show an attentional preference for positive over negative emotional stimuli. Either could help promote successful emotion regulation. This proposal aims to directly study whether there are attentional mechanisms underlying the increased salience of emotion to older individuals by using an eye tracker to measure attention to emotional and nonemotional stimuli in real time in adults of different ages. The project has two primary goals: 1. To examine whether emotion is more salient to the cognitive processing of older as compared with younger individuals, by evaluating attentional preferences to emotional vs. nonemotional and to positive vs. negative emotional stimuli; and 2. To develop and test different methods for assessing these preferences in adults of different ages. The primary hypotheses of the project are that older individuals will demonstrate greater attentional preferences for emotional over non-emotional, as well as for positive over negative, visual stimuli as compared to young adults. Two studies will be conducted to test these hypotheses, as well as to refine methods for conducting this type of research in the future. To the extent that these hypotheses are supported, it would suggest that the successful emotion regulation shown by many older individuals arises from biases and preferences in the early, attentional stages of their information processing. The results would also have implications for the etiology and treatment of depression.
| Wadlinger, Heather A; Isaacowitz, Derek M (2008) Looking happy: the experimental manipulation of a positive visual attention bias. Emotion 8:121-6 |
| Isaacowitz, Derek M; Wadlinger, Heather A; Goren, Deborah et al. (2006) Is there an age-related positivity effect in visual attention? A comparison of two methodologies. Emotion 6:511-6 |
| Isaacowitz, Derek M; Wadlinger, Heather A; Goren, Deborah et al. (2006) Selective preference in visual fixation away from negative images in old age? An eye-tracking study. Psychol Aging 21:40-8 |
| Isaacowitz, Derek M (2005) The gaze of the optimist. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 31:407-15 |
