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Spatial attention to arousing emotional stimuli in younger and older adults

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Abstract

Most work on emotional attention in aging has focused exclusively on stimulus valence, with very few studies systematically examining how younger and older adults may differ in their attention to emotional stimuli that varies by both valence and arousal. This could be potentially important when evaluating early attentional processes, as previous work has shown that attention to positive and negative content is similar when levels of arousal are equivalent. In the current study younger (n = 48) and older (n = 49) adult participants completed a spatial cueing task in which they responded to the location of a spatial target that was preceded by an emotional image cue. Results indicated that both younger and older adults took longer to disengage attention from highly arousing image cues regardless of valence. These results demonstrate a context in which typical age-related positivity effects do not emerge, highlighting the importance of evaluating different attentional processes when studying emotional attention and taking stimulus arousal into account.

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Notes

  1. A sensitivity analysis revealed 90% power to detect medium-large (d = .64) and 80% power to detect medium (d = .56) between-subjects (i.e., age) effects.

  2. Analyses were also conducted using the YA RT cutoffs for all participants and produced consistent results (see Appendix C).

  3. When a full arousal model was tested, no significant interactions between age and arousal on orientation trials γ = -6.81, SE = 4.80, t(14,734) = -1.42, p = .16 or disengagement trials γ = 3.54, SE = 8.91, t(14,734) = 0.40, p = .69, were found (see Appendix D for arousal model).

  4. We are interpreting bayes factors following Lee and Wagenmakers (2013) where a BF10 greater than 3 is considered moderate evidence for the alternative hypothesis over the null, and a BF10 less than 0.3 is considered moderate evidence for the null hypothesis over the alternative.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Tufts University, 490 Boston Ave, Medford, MA, 02155, USA

    Kathryn L. Ossenfort

  2. Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Derek M. Isaacowitz

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  1. Kathryn L. Ossenfort
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  2. Derek M. Isaacowitz
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Correspondence to Kathryn L. Ossenfort.

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Ossenfort, K.L., Isaacowitz, D.M. Spatial attention to arousing emotional stimuli in younger and older adults. Motiv Emot 45, 790–797 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-021-09899-x

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