The effects of age and gender on the perception of lexical emotion

Effects of age, gender, and education on task performance and prefrontal cortex processing during emotional and non-emotional verbal fluency tests

The emotional semantic fluency test (SFT) is an emerging verbal fluency test that requires controlled access to emotional lexical information. Currently, how demographic variables influence neurocognitive processing during this test remains elusive. The present study compared the effects of age, gender, and education on task performance and prefrontal cortex (PFC) processing during the non-emotional and emotional SFTs. One-hundred and thirty-three Cantonese-speaking adults aged 18-79 performed the non-emotional and emotional SFTs while their PFC activation was measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results showed that more education predicted better non-emotional SFT performance, whereas younger age, being female, and more education predicted better emotional SFT performance. Only age significantly affected PFC activation during the SFTs, and the effect was comparable between the two SFTs. Thus, compared with its non-emotional analog, the emotional SFT is influenced by overlapping yet distinct demographic variables. There is a similar age-related reorganization of PFC function across SFT performances.

Age-Related Changes in the Perception of Emotions in Speech: Assessing Thresholds of Prosody and Semantics Recognition in Noise for Young and Older Adults

Older adults process emotions in speech differently than do young adults. However, it is unclear whether these age-related changes impact all speech channels to the same extent, and whether they originate from a sensory or a cognitive source. The current study adopted a psychophysical approach to directly compare young and older adults’ sensory thresholds for emotion recognition in two channels of spoken-emotions: prosody (tone) and semantics (words). A total of 29 young adults and 26 older adults listened to 50 spoken sentences presenting different combinations of emotions across prosody and semantics. They were asked to recognize the prosodic or semantic emotion, in separate tasks. Sentences were presented on the background of speech-spectrum noise ranging from SNR of −15 dB (difficult) to +5 dB (easy). Individual recognition thresholds were calculated (by fitting psychometric functions) separately for prosodic and semantic recognition. Results indicated that: (1). recognition thresholds were better for young over older adults, suggesting an age-related general decrease across channels; (2). recognition thresholds were better for prosody over semantics, suggesting a prosodic advantage; (3). importantly, the prosodic advantage in thresholds did not differ between age groups (thus a sensory source for age-related differences in spoken-emotions processing was not supported); and (4). larger failures of selective attention were found for older adults than for young adults, indicating that older adults experienced larger difficulties in inhibiting irrelevant information. Taken together, results do not support a sole sensory source, but rather an interplay of cognitive and sensory sources for age-related differences in spoken-emotions processing.

Gender Differences in Emotional Connotative Meaning of Words Measured by Osgood's Semantic Differential Techniques in Young Adults

Semantic differential techniques are a useful, well-validated tool to assess affective processing of stimuli and determine how that processing is impacted by various demographic factors, such as gender. In this paper, we explore differences in connotative word processing between men and women as measured by Osgood's semantic differential and what those differences imply about affective processing in the two genders. We recruited 94 young participants (47 men, 47 women, ages 18-39) using an online survey and collected their affective ratings of 120 words on three rating tasks: Evaluation (E), Potency (P), and Activity (A). With these data, we explored the theoretical and mathematical overlap between Osgood's affective meaning factor structure and other models of emotional processing commonly used in gender analyses. We then used Osgood's three-dimensional structure to assess gender-related differences in three affective classes of words (words with connotation that is Positive, Neutral, or Negative for each task) and found that there was no significant difference between the genders when rating Positive words and Neutral words on each of the three rating tasks. However, young women consistently rated Negative words more negatively than young men did on all three of the independent dimensions. This confirms the importance of taking gender effects into account when measuring emotional processing. Our results further indicate there may be differences between Osgood's structure and other models of affective processing that should be further explored.

Older and younger adult definitions of emotion terms: a mixed-method content analysis

OBJECTIVES

Conceptualizations of emotions might evolve over the course of adult development as motivations shift, but there are gaps in knowledge regarding these changes. This mixed-methods study tested theoretical predictions pertaining to age group differences in conceptualizations of emotions.

METHOD

University students (N = 210, M age = 20.1 years) and community-dwelling older adults (N = 90, M age = 72.5 years) participated in three survey studies (2016-2018) conducted in person, online, or via mail and provided written narrative definitions for 11 emotion words. Responses were coded for valence, arousal, time frame, reference to self, reference to social contacts, and nature of response (i.e. example or definition). Code frequencies were compared for younger and older adults via odds ratio and logistic regression analyses.

RESULTS

Younger and older adults used many of the same words in definitions of emotion terms. Older participants more often referenced situational examples in their definitions than younger participants. As expected, older adults used more low arousal language, referenced the 'self,' and included other persons more in their emotion descriptions than younger persons. Unexpectedly, younger participants used more positive language in descriptions of some positive emotions.

CONCLUSIONS

Descriptions of emotion terms might serve a self-regulatory function, such as to facilitate low arousal emotion experiences for older adults or to illustrate important values, such as the greater importance of other persons to emotion experiences for older than younger adults.

Investigating the roles of age, sex, depression, and anxiety for valence and arousal ratings of words: a population-based study

BACKGROUND

The perception of the affective quality of stimuli with regard to valence and arousal has mostly been studied in laboratory experiments. Population-based research may complement such studies by accessing larger, older, better balanced, and more heterogeneous samples. Several characteristics, among them age, sex, depression, or anxiety, were found to be associated with affective quality perception. Here, we intended to transfer valence and arousal rating methods from experimental to population-based research. Our aim was to assess the feasibility of obtaining and determining the structure of valence and arousal ratings in the setting of the large observational BiDirect Study. Moreover, we explored the roles of age, sex, depression, and anxiety for valence and arousal ratings of words.

METHODS

704 participants provided valence and arousal ratings for 12 written nouns pre-categorized as unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant. Predictors of valence and arousal ratings (i.e. age, sex, depression, and anxiety) were analyzed for six outcomes that emerge by combining two affective dimensions with three words categories. Data were modeled with multiple linear regression. Relative predictor importance was quantified by model-explained variance decomposition.

RESULTS

Overall, average population-based ratings replicated those found in laboratory settings. The model did not reach statistical significance in the valence dimension. In the arousal dimension, the model explained 5.4% (unpleasant), 4.6% (neutral), and 3.5% (pleasant) of the variance. (Trend) effects of sex on arousal ratings were found in all word categories (unpleasant: increased arousal in women; neutral, pleasant: decreased arousal in women). Effects of age and anxiety (increased arousal) were restricted to the neutral words.

CONCLUSIONS

We report results of valence and arousal ratings of words in the setting of a large, observational, population-based study. Method transfer yielded acceptable data quality. The analyses demonstrated small effects of the selected predictors in the arousal dimension.

Age-Related Differences in the Perception of Emotion in Spoken Language: The Relative Roles of Prosody and Semantics

Purpose We aim to identify the possible sources for age-related differences in the perception of emotion in speech, focusing on the distinct roles of semantics (words) and prosody (tone of speech) and their interaction. Method We implement the Test for Rating of Emotions in Speech ( Ben-David, Multani, Shakuf, Rudzicz, & van Lieshout, 2016 ). Forty older and 40 younger adults were presented with spoken sentences made of different combinations of 5 emotional categories (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral) presented in the prosody and semantics. In separate tasks, listeners were asked to attend to the sentence as a whole, integrating both speech channels, or to focus on 1 channel only (prosody/semantics). Their task was to rate how much they agree the sentence is conveying a predefined emotion. Results (a) Identification of emotions: both age groups identified presented emotions. (b) Failure of selective attention: both age groups were unable to selectively attend to 1 channel when instructed, with slightly larger failures for older adults. (c) Integration of channels: younger adults showed a bias toward prosody, whereas older adults showed a slight bias toward semantics. Conclusions Three possible sources are suggested for age-related differences: (a) underestimation of the emotional content of speech, (b) slightly larger failures to selectively attend to 1 channel, and (c) different weights assigned to the 2 speech channels.

Judgment and classification of emotion terms by older and younger adults

OBJECTIVES

Theoretical models of adult development suggest changes in emotion systems with age. This study determined how younger and older adults judged and classified 70 emotion terms that varied in valence and arousal, and that have been used in previous studies of adult aging and emotion. The terms were from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - Expanded (PANAS-X) and the (KS) affect scales.

METHOD

Older (n = 32) and younger adults (n = 111) engaged in a card sort task which determined how the 70 emotion terms were classified (i.e. grouped) in relation to one another. Activation and valence ratings of emotion terms were collected.

RESULTS

There were 17 age group differences in item ratings for activation and 19 for valence. Older adults tended to rate emotion terms and scales as more positive and activating than younger persons. Card sort data indicated similarity in conceptualizations of emotion terms across groups with exceptions for serene, sad, and lonely.

CONCLUSIONS

Research that utilizes self-report emotion data from older and younger persons should consider how perceptions of emotion terms may vary systematically with age. The constructs of sadness, loneliness, and serene may be age-variant and necessitate age-based adjustments in assessment and intervention. Further, older adults may perceive some emotion terms to be more activating and positive than younger persons.

Negative Word Production in Adults With Right Hemisphere Brain Damage: Effects of Implicit Assessment and Contextual Bias

PURPOSE

Both theory and evidence suggest that unilateral right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) should impair the processing of negative emotions. Typical metalinguistic assessments, however, may obscure processing strengths. This study investigated whether adults with RHD would produce proportionately fewer negative emotion words than control participants in an implicit assessment task and whether a negatively toned contextual bias would enhance performance.

METHODS

Eleven participants with RHD and 10 control participants without brain damage watched a video in 2 parts and described each segment. Between segments, participants evaluated the emotion conveyed by sentences designed to induce the negative bias.

RESULTS

The primary outcome measure, percentage of negative emotion words in video descriptions, did not differ between groups. After the contextual bias, this measure significantly increased for both groups, whereas production of motion words, a control variable, remained constant.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings are consistent with a view that attributes some deficient RHD performances to the nature and/or demands of explicit metalinguistic assessment tasks. These results call for modulation of prevailing hypotheses that attribute negative emotion processing as an undifferentiated whole solely to the right cerebral hemisphere. The results also further substantiate the rationale of an experimental treatment that exploits contextual bias and priming for individuals with RHD.

Valence and arousal ratings for 420 Finnish nouns by age and gender

Language-and culture-specific norms are needed for research on emotion-laden stimuli. We present valence and arousal ratings for 420 Finnish nouns for a sample of 996 Finnish speakers. Ratings are provided both for the whole sample and for subgroups divided by age and gender in light of previous research suggesting age- and gender-specific reactivity to the emotional content in stimuli. Moreover, corpus-based frequency values and word length are provided as objective psycholinguistic measures of the nouns. The relationship between valence and arousal mainly showed the curvilinear relationship reported in previous studies. Age and gender effects on valence and arousal ratings were statistically significant but weak. The inherent affective properties of the words in terms of mean valence and arousal ratings explained more of the variance in the ratings. In all, the findings suggest that language- and culture-related factors influence the way affective properties of words are rated to a greater degree than demographic factors. This database will provide researchers with normative data for Finnish emotion-laden and emotionally neutral words. The normative database is available in Database S1.

Bringing an Ecological Perspective to the Study of Aging and Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions: Past, Current, and Future Methods

Older adults perform worse on traditional tests of emotion recognition accuracy than do young adults. In this paper, we review descriptive research to date on age differences in emotion recognition from facial expressions, as well as the primary theoretical frameworks that have been offered to explain these patterns. We propose that this is an area of inquiry that would benefit from an ecological approach in which contextual elements are more explicitly considered and reflected in experimental methods. Use of dynamic displays and examination of specific cues to accuracy, for example, may reveal more nuanced age-related patterns and may suggest heretofore unexplored underlying mechanisms.

Hemispheric processing of differently valenced and self-relevant attachment words in middle-aged married and separated individuals

The reliance in experimental psychology on testing undergraduate populations with relatively little life experience, and/or ambiguously valenced stimuli with varying degrees of self-relevance, may have contributed to inconsistent findings in the literature on the valence hypothesis. To control for these potential limitations, the current study assessed lateralised lexical decisions for positive and negative attachment words in 40 middle-aged male and female participants. Self-relevance was manipulated in two ways: by testing currently married compared with previously married individuals and by assessing self-relevance ratings individually for each word. Results replicated a left hemisphere advantage for lexical decisions and a processing advantage of emotional over neutral words but did not support the valence hypothesis. Positive attachment words yielded a processing advantage over neutral words in the right hemisphere, while emotional words (irrespective of valence) yielded a processing advantage over neutral words in the left hemisphere. Both self-relevance manipulations were unrelated to lateralised performance. The role of participant sex and age in emotion processing are discussed as potential modulators of the present findings.

Selective attention to emotion in the aging brain

A growing body of research suggests that the ability to regulate emotion remains stable or improves across the adult life span. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that this pattern of findings reflects the prioritization of emotional goals. Given that goal-directed behavior requires attentional control, the present study was designed to investigate age differences in selective attention to emotional lexical stimuli under conditions of emotional interference. Both neural and behavioral measures were obtained during an experiment in which participants completed a flanker task that required them to make categorical judgments about emotional and nonemotional stimuli. Older adults showed interference in both the behavioral and neural measures on control trials but not on emotion trials. Although older adults typically show relatively high levels of interference and reduced cognitive control during nonemotional tasks, they appear to be able to successfully reduce interference during emotional tasks.

EMOTION RECOGNITION DEFICITS IN THE ELDERLY

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 some emotions that is independent of changes in perceptual abilities, processing speed, fluid IQ, basic face processing abilities, and reasoning about non face 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.

How aging affects the recognition of emotional speech

To successfully infer a speaker's emotional state, diverse sources of emotional information need to be decoded. The present study explored to what extent emotional speech recognition of 'basic' emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, pleasant surprise, sadness) differs between different sex (male/female) and age (young/middle-aged) groups in a behavioural experiment. Participants were asked to identify the emotional prosody of a sentence as accurately as possible. As a secondary goal, the perceptual findings were examined in relation to acoustic properties of the sentences presented. Findings indicate that emotion recognition rates differ between the different categories tested and that these patterns varied significantly as a function of age, but not of sex.

Decline or improvement?

We examined age-related differences in facial expression recognition in association with potentially interfering variables such as general cognitive ability (verbal and visuospatial abilities), face recognition ability, and the experiences of positive and negative emotions. Participants comprised 34 older (aged 62-81 years) and 34 younger (aged 18-25 years) healthy Japanese adults. The results showed not only age-related decline in sadness recognition but also age-related improvement in disgust recognition. Among other variables, visuospatial ability was moderately related to facial expression recognition in general, and the experience of negative emotions was related to sadness recognition. Consequently, age-related decline in sadness recognition was statistically explained by age-related decrease in the experience of negative emotions. On the other hand, age-related improvement in disgust recognition was not explained by the interfering variables, and it reflected a higher tendency in the younger participants to mistake disgust for anger. Possible mechanisms are discussed in terms of neurobiological and socio-environmental factors.

Judgment of Emotional Nonlinguistic Vocalizations: Age-Related Differences

Humans make extensive use of vocal information to attribute emotional states to other individuals. To date, most studies exploring perception of vocal emotions have done so in the context of speech prosody, although nonlinguistic emotional vocalizations represent an important, perhaps more universal, means to express emotions. Here, we explored the perception of emotional nonlinguistic vocalizations in healthy individuals, with an emphasis on potential age- and sex-related differences. Sixty participants rated 563 positive (e.g., laughs, sexual vocalizations), negative (e.g., cries, screams of fear), and neutral vocalizations (e.g., coughs), according to the valence, intensity, and authenticity of the emotion expressed. Ratings were consistent among individuals, suggesting that valence is an adequate measure of emotional categorization. An important effect of age emerged: (a) age by vocalization category interactions were observed for both valence and intensity ratings, and (b) younger participants rated stimuli as more emotional than older individuals (i.e., higher valence for positive, lower for negative, and more intense for both positive and negative). We also found a sex effect in the authenticity ratings: older women rated the vocalizations as less authentic than younger women whereas authenticity judgments did not differ between the two age groups in men. Taken together, these findings suggest that, as previously observed for facial expressions and prosody, the judgments of emotional vocalizations may vary with age.

Impaired comprehension of affective prosody in elderly subjects is not predicted by age-related hearing loss or age-related cognitive decline

Impairments in the ability of elderly people to comprehend affective prosody have been reported, but little is known about the relationship between affective prosodic comprehension and age-related changes in hearing and cognition. The Aprosodia Battery, which included an assessment of attitudinal comprehension, was used to compare affective-prosodic comprehension in young and elderly subjects and to investigate the relationship of results to selected hearing and neuropsychological measures. As a group, the healthy elderly subjects were impaired relative to young subjects on all tasks assessing comprehension of affective prosody. Variability within the elderly group was not predicted by mild to moderate peripheral hearing loss and was only marginally predicted by traditional cognitive measures. These findings along with those of other researchers suggest that loss of affective-prosodic comprehension in elderly persons is related to a specific aging effect that impairs right hemisphere function.

Changes in posed facial expression of emotion across the adult life span

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the facial expression of emotion across the adult life span. Two positive and two negative emotional expressions were posed by 30 young (21 to 39 years), 30 middle-aged (40 to 59 years), and 30 older (60 to 81 years) healthy, right-handed women. Photographs of the four emotional expressions were rated by independent judges for intensity, accuracy, and confidence. Special features of this study were the use of a neutral face as a nonemotional control, as well as careful cognitive and affective screening procedures for posers and judges. Overall, the expressions of older posers were rated as significantly less accurate and with significantly less confidence than those of younger posers. Although the neutral faces of older posers were rated as significantly more intense than those of younger posers, there were no significant age-related intensity differences for positive and negative emotions. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of aging.

Region-specific alterations of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) expression in the amygdala of the aged rats

Although many amygdalar functions are altered by aging, little is known about their mechanisms. As these functions are related with nitric oxide (NO), we examined neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) expression in the amygdala of the aged rats via immunohistochemical technique. We found that nNOS immunoreactive neurons are decreased in almost all amygdalar areas of the aged rats, while nNOS immunoreactivity of the neuropil is significantly increased in the amygdalar nuclei related with main and accessory olfactory system. These suggest altered levels of NO might provide region-specific mechanisms of many physiological and behavioral deficits of the amygdala developed by aging. However, exact effects of these changes require further elucidation.

fMRI of emotional responses to odors: influence of hedonic valence and judgment, handedness, and gender

Previous positron emission tomography studies of right-handed individuals show that the left orbitofrontal cortex is dominant during emotional processing of odors. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 28 subjects to study this network as a function of odor hedonic valence (pleasant vs. unpleasant), active hedonic judgments versus passive sensation of hedonically charged odors, handedness, and gender. Two functional runs were performed, with pleasant and unpleasant odors presented in different epochs. In the first run, subjects passively smelled odorants, whereas in the second run they rated degree of odor pleasantness or unpleasantness by using a "finger-span" technique that simulated a visual rating scale. Electrodermal and plethysmography responses were simultaneously recorded to control for covert, physiological manifestations of the emotional response. The piriform-amygdala area and ventral insula were activated more for unpleasant than pleasant odors. More extreme ratings were also associated with higher electrodermal amplitude, suggesting that activation stemmed more from emotional or hedonic intensity than valence, and that unpleasant odors induced more arousal than pleasant odors. Unpleasant odors activated the left ventral insula in right-handers and the right ventral insula in left-handers, suggesting lateralized processing of emotional odors as a function of handedness. Active decisions about odor pleasantness induced specific left orbitofrontal cortex activation, implicating the role of this area in the conscious assessment of the emotional quality of odors. Finally, left orbitofrontal cortex was more active in women than men, potentially in relation to women's well-documented advantage in odor identification.

Low alpha power (7.5-9.5 Hz) changes during positive and negative affective learning

There is evidence that the positive and the negative word lists of the Affective Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AAVL) are useful with regard to mood induction. To date, however, changes in brain activation, as indicated by quantitative electroencephalographic recording, have not been examined. Thus, changes in low alpha power (7.5-9.5 Hz) were examined during and after completion of the positive or the negative learning list of the AAVL among 37 undergraduate men and women. Three primary findings from the study include the following: (1) Previously reported recall patterns were replicated; (2) participants who completed the negative list reported a significant decline in mood state at the end of the session; and (3) participants who completed the negative word list evidenced a significant reduction in low alpha power (in comparison with baseline) within the parietal regions. The findings noted above are seemingly counter to contemporary theories of mood regulation (i.e., asymmetrical changes in anterior activity, rather than changes in parietal regions). Although the AAVL may have limited utility as a tool for mood induction, it may serve as a functional tool for examination of the cerebral processes associated with affective verbal memory.

Age-related impairments in comprehending affective prosody with comparison to brain-damaged subjects

This study evaluated the ability to produce and comprehend affective prosody across age groups and compared patterns of impaired performance to deficits observed after focal brain damage. Sixty-nine healthy subjects, ages 22 to 83 years, were given the Aprosodia Battery, a test that distinguishes between affective prosodic processing deficits following right- versus left-brain damage through the use of stimuli with progressively reduced verbal articulatory content. Production of affective prosody, measured by variation in fundamental frequency, was unimpaired in older subjects, whereas comprehension of affective prosody was impaired, particularly for tasks with reduced verbal articulatory content. The pattern of performance across affective comprehension tasks in the older subjects resembled the pattern found after right-brain damage. The results demonstrate age-related loss in comprehension of affective prosody that is most likely due to a processing deficit involving the right hemisphere.

Age-related differences in brain activation during emotional face processing

Advancing age is associated with significant declines on neurobehavioral tasks that demand substantial mental effort. Functional imaging studies of mental abilities indicate that older adults faced with cognitive challenges tend to activate more regions, particularly frontal, than their younger counterparts, and that this recruitment of additional regions may reflect an attempt to compensate for inefficiency in cortical networks. The neural basis of emotion processing in aging has received little attention, and the goal of the present study was to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the influence of age on facial emotion processing and activation in cortical and limbic regions. Participants (eight old and eight young adults) viewed facial displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutrality in alternating blocks of emotion and age discrimination. We predicted that in response to an emotion discrimination task, older adults would demonstrate increased use of frontal regions relative to younger adults, perhaps combined with diminished use of regions recruited by younger adults, such as temporo-limbic regions. During the emotion discrimination task, young participants activated, visual, frontal and limbic regions, whereas older participants activated parietal, temporal and frontal regions. A direct comparison between emotion and age discrimination revealed that while younger adults activated the amygdala and surrounding temporo-limbic regions, older adults activated left frontal regions. The results of this study suggest that older adults may rely on different cortical networks to perceive emotional facial expressions than do their younger counterparts.