Emotional Response Inhibition Is Greater in Older Than Younger Adults

Abstract

Emotional information rapidly captures our attention and also often invokes automatic response tendencies, whereby positive information motivates approach, while negative information encourages avoidance. However, many circumstances require the need to override or inhibit these automatic responses. Control over responses to emotional information remains largely intact in late life, in spite of age-related declines in cognitive control and inhibition of responses to non-emotional information. The goal of this behavioral study was to understand how the aging process influences emotional response inhibition for positive and negative information in older adults. We examined emotional response inhibition in 36 healthy older adults (ages 60–89) and 44 younger adults (ages 18–22) using an emotional Go/No-Go task presenting happy (positive), fearful (negative), and neutral faces. In both younger and older adults, happy faces produced more approach-related behavior (i.e., fewer misses), while fearful faces produced more avoidance-related behavior, in keeping with theories of approach/avoidance-motivated responses. Calculation of speed/accuracy trade-offs between response times and false alarm rates revealed that younger and older adults both favored speed at the expense of accuracy, most robustly within blocks with fearful faces. However, there was no indication that the strength of the speed/accuracy trade-off differed between younger and older adults. The key finding was that although younger adults were faster to respond to all types of faces, older adults had greater emotional response inhibition (i.e., fewer false alarms). Moreover, younger adults were particularly prone to false alarms for happy faces. This is the first study to directly test effects of aging on emotional response inhibition. Complementing previous literature in the domains of attention and memory, these results provide new evidence that in the domain of response inhibition older adults may more effectively employ emotion regulatory ability, albeit on a slower time course, compared to younger adults. Older adults’ enhanced adaptive emotion regulation strategies may facilitate resistance to emotional distraction. The present study extends the literature of emotional response inhibition in younger adulthood into late life, and in doing so further elucidates how cognitive aging interacts with affective control processes.

Positive information facilitates response inhibition in older adults only when emotion is task-relevant

“…Negative information impaired response inhibition in younger adults, while positive information facilitated response inhibition in older adults. We expected response inhibition to positive (versus negative) stimuli would be more impaired in younger than older adults, as we reported recently (Waring et al, 2019), but instead discovered negative information impaired response inhibition in younger adults (and only in Study 3). One plausible explanation for inconsistent results is the distinction between implementing proactive versus reactive inhibition (Braver, 2012;Swick et al, 2011).…”

“…Thus, increased control over responses to positive stimuli may lead to improved performance on cognitive tasks using emotional stimuli. In one of the only published investigations directly contrasting emotional response inhibition in younger versus older adults, we reported older adults had fewer false alarms to emotional faces than younger adults in a Go/No-Go task (Waring et al, 2019). Younger (but not older) adults had elevated false alarm rates to positive (versus negative) faces, indicating older adults had more accurate response inhibition for positive stimuli compared to younger adults.…”

“…fear and happy) faces would facilitate more efficient stopping than neutral faces in both age groups, and the faciliatory effect of happy faces would be more pronounced for older adults. Fear and happy faces were used as negative and positive stimuli, respectively, to extend previous younger adult literature (Pessoa et al, 2012;Sagaspe et al, 2011;Schel & Crone, 2013;Waring et al, 2019), and because literature suggests a more robust distinction between fear and neutral facial expressions, and between happy and neutral facial expressions than between more ambiguous expressions like angry and sad faces (Tottenham et al, 2011). Reactive emotional response inhibition was measured using an emotional stop-signal task.…”

“…when focus on emotion was task-irrelevant), in Study 3 we predicted overt focus on emotional attributes would facilitate response inhibition for emotional faces compared to neutral faces. Additionally, considering the extensive literature reporting differing effects of emotion on cognition between younger and older adults (Mather, 2012), including when focus on emotion is task-relevant to response inhibition (Waring et al, 2019), we hypothesised an interaction between age and stop condition. We expected that although older adults would be slower overall compared to younger adults, the faciliatory effect of positive stimuli on response inhibition would be stronger in older adults compared to younger adults.…”

“…the ability to stop a motor response to emotional information) has focused almost exclusively on younger adults, effects of aging are especially relevant because emotion regulation improves with aging (Carstensen, 2006) despite declining inhibitory control over neutral information (Bloemendaal et al, 2016;Gazzaley & D'Esposito, 2007;Smittenaar et al, 2015). Although older adults respond more slowly and are less likely than younger adults to inhibit responses to neutral information (Bloemendaal et al, 2016;Smittenaar et al, 2015), older adults respond more accurately than younger adults on executive functioning and memory tasks employing positive stimuli (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005;Waring et al, 2019;Zinchenko et al, 2017Zinchenko et al, , 2018. Older adults may have chronically active emotion regulation processes engaged, permitting greater control over responses to emotional information, and consequently better task performance.…”