Emotional Aging: Preservation of Function in the Elderly and Alzheimer's Patients

情绪老化：老年人和阿尔茨海默病患者的功能保存

• 批准号: 7797554
• 负责人: Randall S. Larsen
• 金额: $ 18.14万
• 依托单位: WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-05-15 至 2012-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7797554
• 关键词: Accounting; Affect; Affective; Age; Aging; Aging-Related Process; Alzheimer' s Disease; Area; Attention; Biological Preservation; Cognition; Cognitive; Cognitive aging; Data; Decision Making; Disease; Disease Progression; Dissociation; Elderly; Emotional; Emotions; Evaluation; Event; Exhibits; Face; Fright; Grant; Health; Impaired cognition; Impairment; Informal Social Control; Investigation; Laboratories; Lead; Learning; Light; Literature; Longevity; Longitudinal Studies; Measures; Medical; Memory; Methods; Modeling; Moods; NIH Program Announcements; Network-based; Neurologic; Patients; Perception; Performance; Persons; Population; Procedures; Process; Reaction Time; Reading; Reflex action; Regulation; Research; Research Personnel; Resistance; Review Literature; Risk; Sampling; Series; Short-Term Memory; Speed; Staging; Stimulus; System; Testing; Time Study; Translational Research; age difference; age effect; age related; classical conditioning; cognitive control; cognitive function; conditioning; emotional stimulus; executive function; follow-up; frontal lobe function; improved; news; normal aging; programs; response; theories; vigilance; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emotional processes appear to generally decline with age, particularly responsiveness to negative events and stimuli. Carstensen's (e.g., 1992) socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) is an account of this effect that enjoys wide empirical support. However, some studies find that older adults do not differ from the young on measures of perceptual speed (Mather & Knight, in press) or attentional capture (Larsen & Beaudreau, 2005) when the target objects are affective (particularly threat or fear) stimuli. How can older adults differ from younger in their responsiveness to emotional stimuli, yet not differ in their perceptual processing of, or attention to, those stimuli? In this application we propose the answer lies in applying a dual-process model of emotion to life-span questions about emotional change. According to this model, one emotion process involves relatively fast, early-stage, pre-attentive and automatic processing of the emotional significance of a stimulus. A second process involves a more controlled, effortful or executive function later-stage evaluation of personal meaning of that stimulus. We hypothesize that the early stage process - the automatic component - remains intact with age and is preserved well into later life and may even be resistant to the onslaught of Alzheimer's disease. The more controlled late-stage process, however, is where age differences are most likely to be found. Indeed, Carstensen's SST may apply mainly to the more controlled, later-stage aspects of emotional responding. In other words, older subjects register and initially process emotional information the same as younger, but then they differ in terms of how they regulate that initial responsiveness. Three lines of investigation are proposed to test these hypotheses. One series of studies will use laboratory tasks that assess early-stage processing of emotional stimuli (e.g., emotion priming tasks, affective Simon and Stroop tasks, pre-attentive dot probe tasks, incidental learning task, and classical conditioning to negative stimuli) to examine whether older adults demonstrate similar negative affect biases routinely found with younger adults. The second line of investigation will employ the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) to separate automatic and controlled processes in emotional (evaluative responding) tasks. Here we propose that older adults will exhibit the same automatic bias component found with younger adults, but will differ in the controlled component of their evaluative responses. A 2-year longitudinal study is also proposed to exam the automatic component of emotion in patients suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's disease. We predict that, even in the face of cognitive decline, the automatic component of emotional responding will remain preserved in Alzheimer's patients. Taken together these studies can resolve a major inconsistency in the emotion and aging literature and lead to a deeper understanding of which emotional processes do and do not change with normal aging and with Alzheimer's disease.

描述（由申请人提供）：情绪过程似乎普遍随着年龄的增长而下降，尤其是对负面事件和刺激的反应能力。 Carstensen（例如，1992）的社会情绪选择理论（SST）是对这种效应的解释，得到了广泛的实证支持。然而，一些研究发现，当目标对象是情感（特别是威胁或恐惧）刺激时，老年人在感知速度（Mather＆Knight，印刷中）或注意力捕获（Larsen＆Beaudreau，2005）方面与年轻人没有差异。 。老年人对情绪刺激的反应与年轻人有何不同，但对这些刺激的感知处理或注意力却没有差异？在此应用中，我们提出答案在于将情绪的双过程模型应用于有关情绪变化的终生问题。根据这一模型，一种情绪过程涉及对刺激的情绪意义的相对快速、早期、预先注意和自动的处理。第二个过程涉及对刺激的个人意义进行更受控的、更努力的或执行功能的后期评估。我们假设，早期过程——自动成分——随着年龄的增长而保持完整，并在以后的生活中保存完好，甚至可能抵抗阿尔茨海默病的侵袭。然而，更受控制的后期过程是最有可能发现年龄差异的地方。事实上，卡斯滕森的 SST 可能主要适用于情绪反应的更受控制的后期方面。换句话说，年长的受试者与年轻人一样记录和最初处理情绪信息，但他们在如何调节最初的反应方面有所不同。提出了三方面的调查来检验这些假设。一系列研究将使用评估情绪刺激早期处理的实验室任务（例如情绪启动任务、情感西蒙和斯特鲁普任务、前注意点探针任务、附带学习任务和对负面刺激的经典条件反射）来检查老年人是否表现出与年轻人常见的类似的负面情感偏见。第二条研究路线将采用过程分离程序（Jacoby，1991）来分离情感（评价性响应）任务中的自动过程和受控过程。在这里，我们建议老年人将表现出与年轻人相同的自动偏见成分，但其​​评估反应的受控成分会有所不同。还提出了一项为期两年的纵向研究，以检查患有早期阿尔茨海默病的患者的情绪的自动成分。我们预测，即使面对认知能力下降，阿尔茨海默病患者的自动情绪反应部分仍将保留。总而言之，这些研究可以解决情绪和衰老文献中的一个主要不一致问题，并导致人们更深入地了解哪些情绪过程会随着正常衰老和阿尔茨海默病而改变，哪些不会改变。