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Selective Attention for Emotional Faces in Older Adults

Abstract

Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that people are motivated to derive emotional meaning from life with age, leading them to pay more attention to positive rather than negative/neutral stimuli. The purpose of this study was to examine age differences in selective attention to faces expressing anger and happiness. A total of 58 subjects(28 older adults and 30 younger adults) participated. Participants saw a pair of faces, one emotional and one neutral, and then a dot probe that appeared in the location of one of the faces. Older adult's responded faster to the dot if it was presented on the same side as a neutral face than if it was presented on the same side as a positive face. There were no significant attentional biases in younger adults. In contrast to previous Western findings, older adults, but not younger Korean adults, looked away from happy facial expressions. This suggests that Korean older adults do not show attentional preferences for positive stimuli. Finally, the limitations of this study and suggestions for further research were discussed.

keywords
older adults, selective attention, positive bias, dot-probe task, 노인, 선택적 주의, 긍정 편향, 탐침 탐사과제., older adults, selective attention, positive bias, dot-probe task

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