POSITIVITY EFFECT IN CHINESE OLDER ADULTS: AROUSAL ALSO MATTERS

摘要

Objectives: Age-related positivity effect – a tendency in older adults to remember relatively more positive than negative information – has been extensively studied among Westerners. However, there is still inconsistency whether or not Chinese older adults also exhibit positivity effect. In the present work, two experiments were conducted, aiming at testing whether older Chinese adults exhibited positivity effect in memory with a variety of stimuli (e.g., facial expressions in Study 1 and standardized pictures from IAPS in Study 2). Moreover, the present work also tested whether arousal could moderate the manifestation of positivity effect in Chinese older adults, given their preference for low-arousal positive emotions. Method: Participants were instructed to view 5 different types of stimulus (namely, neutral pictures, high arousal positive pictures, low arousal positive pictures, high arousal negative pictures, and low arousal negative pictures), and their recognition memories for these pictures were later tested in both experiments. Results: Significant age × picture type interaction was found in both experiments, such that older Chinese adults underperformed their younger counterparts in recognizing high arousal positive pictures, as well as negative pictures regardless of arousal, but performed equally well (if not better) in recognizing low arousal positive pictures, which confirmed our original hypothesis. Conclusion: The present work highlights the importance of arousal in modulating emotional memory in Chinese older adults.