Age differences in managing response to sadness elicitors using attentional deployment, positive reappraisal and suppression

Age invariance in rapid facial affective reactions to emotionally valenced stimuli

It has been suggested that an age-related positivity effect may only occur in the context of explicit information processing, but it is unclear whether this bias extends to the processing of rapid facial reactions. In addition, most studies that have looked for evidence of age-related implicit positivity have used attentional (as opposed to sensory) unawareness paradigms, or used broad-based indicators of attentional awareness that do not speak to the nature of the affective response. In the present study, younger and older adults were therefore asked to view non-facial images presented supraliminally (i.e., consciously) as well as outside of sensory awareness (i.e., subliminally) while their facial reactions were indexed using electromyography. The results indicated that both younger and older adults exhibited rapid facial reactions congruent with the emotional valence of non-facial images in both supraliminal and subliminal conditions. Relative to young, older adults did not respond with greater zygomaticus (cheek) activity to positive stimuli or reduced corrugator (brow) activity to negative stimuli in either condition. These data show that rapid facial reactions to emotional stimuli are intact in late adulthood, even in response to stimuli that activate more automatic and implicit forms of emotion processing. However, there is no evidence for any age-related positivity bias in these behavioral responses.

Reduced specificity and enhanced subjective experience of future thinking in ageing: the influence of avoidance and emotion-regulation strategies

Future thinking in older adults is characterised by a lack of specificity of imagined events and by an equal or even higher subjective experience, compared to younger adults. We considered whether this lack of specificity stemmed partly from the avoidance of a somewhat disturbing future and then examined the extent to which certain types of emotion-regulation strategies, namely positive reappraisal and positive refocusing, contributed to the subjective experience of future thinking. Middle-aged and older adults completed an adapted version of the AMT, in which temporal distance and cue word valence were manipulated, thus resulting in future conditions assumed to represent varying degrees of discomfort. Results indicate that distant future and negative cues restricted both the specificity and the subjective experience of future thinking. In addition, the use of avoidance strategies predicted the nature of future thoughts in the context of a supposed uncomfortable future (i.e., a distant future induced by negative cues), although it followed quite different age-related patterns. Together with the findings that positive reappraisal and positive refocusing (to a lesser extent) contributed to the subjective experience of future thinking, this study indicates that how individuals imagine their personal future also relies on affect- and emotion-regulation strategies.

When the "Golden Years" Turn Blue: Using the Healthy Aging Literature to Elucidate Anxious and Depressive Disorders in Older Adulthood

Current treatments for disorders of emotion, like pathological anxiety, are often less effective in older adults than in younger adults and have poorly understood mechanisms, pointing to the need for psychopathology models that better account for age-related changes in normative emotional functioning and the expression of disordered emotion. This article describes ways in which the healthy aging and emotion literature can enhance understanding and treatment of symptoms of anxiety and depression in later life. We offer recommendations for how to integrate the healthy aging literatures' theories and findings with psychopathology research and clinical practice, and highlight opportunities for future research.

Attentional deployment impacts neural response to regret

Regret results from comparing non-optimal outcomes containing both gain and loss parts to better alternatives during decision-making. The present fMRI study aimed to explore whether levels of regret could change when gain or loss part of a non-optimal outcome was focused during a sequential risk taking task, i.e. the effect of an important emotional regulation strategy named as attentional deployment on regret. Participants were asked to open a series of boxes consecutively and decided when to stop. Each box contained a reward, except for one containing a devil to zero one’s gain in the trial. After participants stopped, both collected gains and missed chances were revealed. Besides, participants were induced to focus on collected gains (GF) or missed chances (MF), by highlighting different parts of the outcome with red squares. Behaviorally, participants rated less regret to their decisions in GF than MF context. Moreover, participants tended to be less risk-taking after GF context relative to MF. At the neural level, bilateral straitum showed increased activations in both optimal outcome and GF context. However, right MFG and IPL only showed stronger activation in GF than MF context. Additionally, pgACC and mPFC activations were found only in optimal outcome.

Selectivity as an Emotion Regulation Strategy: Lessons from Older Adults

Findings based on studies of daily life consistently associate older ages with relatively positive emotional experience, suggesting that older adults may regulate emotions more effectively than younger adults. Findings from laboratory studies are equivocal, however, with mixed evidence for age-related improvements in use of emotion regulatory strategies. In the current paper, we propose that findings may reflect a failure of laboratory-based experiments to capture the regulatory strategies that older people use in their everyday lives. We argue that the advantages older people have are likely due to antecedent emotion regulation as opposed to response-focused strategies. Understanding the regulatory approaches that older people actually use may inform developmental models of emotion regulation throughout adulthood as well as interventions for improving emotional experience across the life span.

Fluid cognitive ability is a resource for successful emotion regulation in older and younger adults

The Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation (SOC-ER) framework suggests that (1) emotion regulation (ER) strategies require resources and that (2) higher levels of relevant resources may increase ER success. In the current experiment, we tested the specific hypothesis that individual differences in one internal class of resources, namely cognitive ability, would contribute to greater success using cognitive reappraisal (CR), a form of ER in which one reinterprets the meaning of emotion-eliciting situations. To test this hypothesis, 60 participants (30 younger and 30 older adults) completed standardized neuropsychological tests that assess fluid and crystallized cognitive ability, as well as a CR task in which participants reinterpreted the meaning of sad pictures in order to alter (increase or decrease) their emotions. In a control condition, they viewed the pictures without trying to change how they felt. Throughout the task, we indexed subjective emotional experience (self-reported ratings of emotional intensity), expressive behavior (corrugator muscle activity), and autonomic physiology (heart rate and electrodermal activity) as measures of emotional responding. Multilevel models were constructed to explain within-subjects variation in emotional responding as a function of ER contrasts comparing increase or decrease conditions with the view control condition and between-subjects variation as a function of cognitive ability and/or age group (older, younger). As predicted, higher fluid cognitive ability-indexed by perceptual reasoning, processing speed, and working memory-was associated with greater success using reappraisal to alter emotional responding. Reappraisal success did not vary as a function of crystallized cognitive ability or age group. Collectively, our results provide support for a key tenet of the SOC-ER framework that higher levels of relevant resources may confer greater success at emotion regulation.

Cut! that's a wrap: regulating negative emotion by ending emotion-eliciting situations

Little is known about the potentially powerful set of emotion regulation (ER) processes that target emotion-eliciting situations. We thus studied the decision to end emotion-eliciting situations in the laboratory. We hypothesized that people would try to end negative situations more frequently than neutral situations to regulate distress. In addition, motivated by the selection, optimization, and compensation with ER framework, we hypothesized that failed attempts to end the situation would prompt either (a) greater negative emotion or (b) compensatory use of a different ER process, attentional deployment (AD). Fifty-eight participants (18–26 years old, 67% women) viewed negative and neutral pictures and pressed a key whenever they wished to stop viewing them. After key press, the picture disappeared (“success”) or stayed (“failure”) on screen. To index emotion, we measured corrugator and electrodermal activity, heart rate, and self-reported arousal. To index overt AD, we measured eye gaze. As their reason for ending the situation, participants more frequently reported being upset by high- than low-arousal negative pictures; they more frequently reported being bored by low- than high-arousal neutral pictures. Nevertheless, participants’ negative emotional responding did not increase in the context of ER failure nor did they use overt AD as a compensatory ER strategy. We conclude that situation-targeted ER processes are used to regulate emotional responses to high-arousal negative and low-arousal neutral situations; ER processes other than overt AD may be used to compensate for ER failure in this context.