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ISSN : 1226-9654

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Vol.23 No.1

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Comparison of Korean Older and Younger Adults Concerning Positivity Effect in the Recall of Emotional Pictures

The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology / The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, (P)1226-9654; (E)2733-466X
2011, v.23 no.1, pp.171-194
https://doi.org/10.22172/cogbio.2011.23.1.007


& (2011). Comparison of Korean Older and Younger Adults Concerning Positivity Effect in the Recall of Emotional Pictures. The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, 23(1), 171-194, https://doi.org/10.22172/cogbio.2011.23.1.007

Abstract

In two experiments, this research examined the positivity effect in the emotional memory of Korean older and younger adults. To understand its mechanisms, this research examined age differences in the various encoding conditions and the retrieval condition. Experiment 1 manipulated three (control vs. emotion-focused vs. cognition-focused) encoding conditions during which a series of pictures with positive, negative, and neutral emotional content were presented. In the control condition and cognition-focused condition, older adults recalled a similar number of positive and negative images, whereas younger adults recalled more negative images than positive images. On the contrary, in the emotion-focused condition, older adults as well as younger adults recalled more positive images than negative images. These results suggest that a positivity effect was related to constrains of encoding tasks, particularly those that focus participants on emotional content. Experiment 2 investigated the impact of repeated retrieval on the positivity effect. After viewing a picture slide show, older and younger participants were asked to recall the pictures immediately and the recall test was given again 20 minutes later. The results of immediate recall test were almost the same to those of control condition of experiment 1. In the repeated recall test, older adults recalled marginally more positive images than negative images, whereas younger adults recalled more negative images than positive images. Thus, older adults seem to do more elaborative processing when retrieving positive information than when retrieving negative information. The pattern of this research's results, especially the absence of positivity effect in the control condition, was discussed in relation to the differences of socio-cultural contexts and emotion regulation patterns between Korean and Western cultures.

keywords
정서기억, 노화, 긍정성효과, 부호화과제, 반복인출, emotional memory, aging, positivity effect, encoding tasks, repeated retrieval

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