The role of age and cognition in recognizing emotional facial expressions (original) (raw)
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Age Effects on Emotion Recognition in Facial Displays: From 20 to 89 Years of Age
Experimental Aging Research, 2012
Background=Study Context: An emotion recognition task that morphs emotional facial expressions from an initial neutral expression to distinct increments of the full emotional expression was administered to 482 individuals, 20 to 89 years of age. Methods: Participants assessed six basic emotions at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the full facial expression. Results: Participants in the three oldest age groups (60s, 70s, and 80s) demonstrated decreased performance for the recognition of the fear, anger, and sad emotions. Increased age was associated with increased recognition rates for the disgust expression, whereas no age effect was detected for the happy and surprise expressions. Covariate analyses revealed age effects were reduced by processing speed, but were unaffected by decision-making ability. The effects of age on individual emotions and levels of presentation are discussed. Conclusion: These findings suggest that age has the greatest impact on the recognition of the sad emotion and the greatest age effect at the 50% level of presentation across the adult life span. Age Effects on Emotion Recognition 3 empirical advances (pp. 101-118).
Age-related differences in emotion recognition ability: A cross-sectional study
Emotion, 2009
Experimental studies indicate that recognition of emotions, particularly negative emotions, decreases with age. However, there is no consensus at which age the decrease in emotion recognition begins, how selective this is to negative emotions, and whether this applies to both facial and vocal expression. In the current cross-sectional study, 607 participants ranging in age from 18 to 84 years (mean age ϭ 32.6 Ϯ 14.9 years) were asked to recognize emotions expressed either facially or vocally. In general, older participants were found to be less accurate at recognizing emotions, with the most distinctive age difference pertaining to a certain group of negative emotions. Both modalities revealed an age-related decline in the recognition of sadness and-to a lesser degree-anger, starting at about 30 years of age. Although age-related differences in the recognition of expression of emotion were not mediated by personality traits, 2 of the Big 5 traits, openness and conscientiousness, made an independent contribution to emotion-recognition performance. Implications of age-related differences in facial and vocal emotion expression and early onset of the selective decrease in emotion recognition are discussed in terms of previous findings and relevant theoretical models.
Age differences in emotion recognition skills and the visual scanning of emotion faces
2007
Research suggests that a person's emotion recognition declines with advancing years. We examined whether or not this age-related decline was attributable to a tendency to overlook emotion information in the eyes. In Experiment 1, younger adults were significantly better than older adults at inferring emotions from full faces and eyes, though not from mouths. Using an eye tracker in Experiment 2, we found young adults, in comparison with older adults, to have superior emotion recognition performance and to look proportionately more to eyes than mouths. However, although better emotion recognition performance was significantly correlated with more eye looking in younger adults, the same was not true in older adults. We discuss these results in terms of brain changes with age.
Age Differences in Emotion Recognition: The Task Matters
The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 2010
Objectives. This study examined the impact of context information on emotion recognition from a lifespan 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.
Open Journal of Psychiatry, 2014
Objective: To examine and measure the decision-making processes involved in Visual Recognition of Facial Emotional Expressions (VRFEE) and to study the effects of demographic factors on this process. Method: We evaluated a newly designed software application (M.A.R.I.E.) that permits computerized metric measurement of VRFEE. We administered it to 204 cognitively normal participants ranging in age from 20 to 70 years. Results: We established normative values for the recognition of anger, disgust, joy, fear, surprise and sadness expressed on the faces of three individuals. There was a significant difference in the: 1) measurement (F (8.189) = 3896, p = 0.0001); 2) education level (χ 2 (12) = 28.4, p = 0.005); 3) face (F(2.195) = 10, p = 0.0001); 4)series (F (8.189)=28, p = 0.0001); 5) interaction between the identity and recognition of emotions (F (16, 181 =11, p = 0.0001). However, performance did not differ according to: 1) age (F (6.19669) = 1.35, p = 0.2) or 2) level of education (F (1, 1587) = 0.6, p = 0.4). Conclusions: In healthy participants, the VRFEE remains stable throughout the lifespan when cognitive functions remain optimal. Disgust, * Corresponding author. # Unfortunately, JPVG died in May 2006. P. Granato et al. 252 sadness, fear, and joy seem to be the four most easily recognized facial emotions, while anger and surprise are not easily recognized. Visual recognition of disgust and fear is independent of aging. The characteristics of a face have a significant influence on the ease with which people recognize expressed emotions (idiosyncrasy). Perception and recognition of emotions is categorical, even when the facial images are integrated in a spectrum of morphs reflecting two different emotions on either side.
Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions
Psychology and Aging, 2007
Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N ϭ 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed.
No effect of age on emotion recognition after accounting for cognitive factors and depression
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
A decline in emotion recognition ability across the lifespan has been well documented. However, whether age predicts emotion recognition difficulties after accounting for potentially confounding factors which covary with age remains unclear. While previous research suggested that age-related decline in emotion recognition ability may be partly a consequence of cognitive (fluid intelligence, processing speed) and affective (e.g., depression) factors, recent theories highlight a potential role for alexithymia (difficulty identifying and describing one’s emotions), and interoception (perception of the body’s internal state). The present study therefore aimed to examine the recognition of anger and disgust across the adult lifespan in a group of 140 20-90-year olds to see whether an effect of age would remain after controlling for a number of cognitive and affective factors potentially impacted by age. In addition, using an identity recognition control task, the study aimed to determine whether the factors accounting for effects of age on emotion discrimination also contribute towards generalised face processing difficulties. Results revealed that discrimination of disgust and anger across the lifespan was predicted by processing speed and fluid intelligence, and negatively by depression. No effect of age was found after these factors were accounted for. Importantly, these effects were specific to emotion discrimination; only crystallised intelligence accounted for unique variance in identity discrimination. Contrary to expectations, although interoception and alexithymia were correlated with emotion discrimination abilities, these factors did not explain unique variance after accounting for other variables.
EMOTION RECOGNITION DEFICITS IN THE ELDERLY
International Journal of Neuroscience, 2004
In two studies, healthy elderly adults were poor at recognizing certain emotions. In study one, an emotion face morphed to express a new emotion. The elderly were impaired when recognizing anger and sadness, whereas no differences were found between the two age groups in recognizing fear or happiness, or in a task requiring reasoning about non-emotion stimuli. In study two, the elderly were impaired when judging which of two faces was more angry, sad, or fearful, but they were not impaired when judging other emotions or when judging which of two beakers was more full. The elderly were also impaired when matching emotion sounds to angry, sad, and disgusted faces, but not to other emotions and not when matching non-emotion (e.g., machine) sounds to machines. Elderly deficits were independent of performance on a task requiring basic face processing (gender recognition). Overall, the results provide support for an age-related decline in the recognition of 404 S. Sullivan and T. Ruffman some emotions that is independent of changes in perceptual abilities, processing speed, fluid IQ, basic face processing abilities, and reasoning about nonface stimuli. Recognition of emotion stimuli might be mediated by regions of the brain that are independent from those associated with a more general cognitive decline.
Age and Gender Differences in Emotion Recognition
Frontiers in Psychology
Background: Existing literature suggests that age affects recognition of affective facial expressions. Eye-tracking studies highlighted that age-related differences in recognition of emotions could be explained by different face exploration patterns due to attentional impairment. Gender also seems to play a role in recognition of emotions. Unfortunately, little is known about the differences in emotion perception abilities across lifespans for men and women, even if females show more ability from infancy. Objective: The present study aimed to examine the role of age and gender on facial emotion recognition in relation to neuropsychological functions and face exploration strategies. We also aimed to explore the associations between emotion recognition and quality of life. Methods: 60 healthy people were consecutively enrolled in the study and divided into two groups: Younger Adults and Older Adults. Participants were assessed for: emotion recognition, attention abilities, frontal functioning, memory functioning and quality of life satisfaction. During the execution of the emotion recognition test using the Pictures of Facial Affects (PoFA) and a modified version of PoFA (M-PoFA), subject's eye movements were recorded with an Eye Tracker. Results: Significant differences between younger and older adults were detected for fear recognition when adjusted for cognitive functioning and eye-gaze fixations characteristics. Adjusted means of fear recognition were significantly higher in the younger group than in the older group. With regard to gender's effects, old females recognized identical pairs of emotions better than old males. Considering the Satisfaction Profile (SAT-P) we detected negative correlations between some dimensions (Physical functioning, Sleep/feeding/free time) and emotion recognition (i.e., sadness, and disgust). Conclusion: The current study provided novel insights into the specific mechanisms that may explain differences in emotion recognition, examining how age and gender differences can be outlined by cognitive functioning and face exploration strategies.
Effects of age on the identification of emotions in facial expressions: a meta-analysis
PeerJ, 2018
Emotion identification is a fundamental component of social cognition. Although it is well established that a general cognitive decline occurs with advancing age, the effects of age on emotion identification is still unclear. A meta-analysis by Ruffman and colleagues (2008) explored this issue, but much research has been published since then, reporting inconsistent findings. To examine age differences in the identification of facial expressions of emotion, we conducted a meta-analysis of 24 empirical studies ( = 1,033 older adults, = 1,135 younger adults) published after 2008. Additionally, a meta-regression analysis was conducted to identify potential moderators. Results show that older adults less accurately identify facial expressions of anger, sadness, fear, surprise, and happiness compared to younger adults, strengthening the results obtained by Ruffman et al. (2008). However, meta-regression analyses indicate that effect sizes are moderated by sample characteristics and stimu...