健康与遗传心理学研究室知识库

20世纪，许多心理学家从“厄运与苦难”的视角研究人晚年遭遇的身体、认知和情绪衰老，但是近年来的理论与实证研究从“老化悖论”一老年人在情绪加工中的积极效应一视角挑战了这一“定论”。社会情绪老化研究领域与情绪认知研究领域对此现象提出了诸如社会情绪选择理论、情绪调节的选择优化和补偿模型、强弱整合模型、动态整合理论、老化脑模型等一系列理论解释。这些理论无一例外地强调了认知控制在老年人积极情绪加工中的潜在作用，而自动化加工与控制性加工的区分则取决于注意资源的配置。因此，本研究拟从注意角度研究认知控制在老年人积极情绪加工中的作用。
然而，认知控制并非单一成分，涉及多种高级认知过程中的抑制控制。Diamond认为抑制控制包括行为和认知两个成分，前者涉及反应抑制，后者主要指冲突控制。目前，尚无理论和实证研究清晰阐述认知控制的各个子成分如何、何时影响积极效应。本研究拟采用Diamond的划分综合利用行为、ERP和眼动技术从反应抑制和冲突控制两方面考察认知控制在老年人情绪注意加工中积极效应的作用，共包括3个研究4个实验:
研究一为基线实验，采用ERP技术经典点探测范式比较不同面孔表情的注意偏向的年龄差异，以明确老年人情绪注意中积极效应出现的条件;研究二采用ERP技术点探测go/no-go变式探讨行为抑制对老年人情绪注意加工的影响;研究三采用眼动技术探讨冲突控制对老年人情绪注意的影响，包括实验三和实验四，实验三采用眼动技术空间线索范式探讨情绪背景下的冲突控制的作用，实验四采用眼动技术情绪stro叩范式探究直接“情绪”冲突的功能。
本文拟总结认知控制对老年人积极效应发生作用的注意阶段模型，结果如下。
(1)实验一表明，积极情绪图片在老年组引起的N2pc波波幅显著高于年轻组，说明老年人积极效应发生在控制加工阶段，需要倚赖于认知控制。
(2)实验二显示，老年人在恐惧条件下N170的波幅比高兴条件下大，且表现出年龄差异;说明当反应抑制任务占用认知资源时，老年人对威肋、性信息进行自动化加工，积极效应消失。此外，老年人脑电非对称性减弱。
(3)实验三，高注意条件下，老年人偏好注视高兴面孔，而年轻人则偏好注视恐惧面孔;说明认知资源充足时，老年人可以有效控制情绪与非情绪刺激之间的冲突，在对情绪面孔的注意定向和维持阶段表现出积极效应，在解离阶段因更难抑制恐惧面孔的干扰，故未表现出积极效应。
(4)实验四，在直接“情绪”冲突条件下，老年人动机性偏好注视高兴面孔甚于恐惧面孔，有积极效应。
综合上述结果，本文结论如下:中国老年人在情绪注意加工中的确存在积极效应，并且该效应发生在控制加工阶段。与Foster (2013)的双通道模型相反，当老年人的认知资源被占用时，他们会在注意加工早期偏向威肋、性信息。当认知资源充足时，老年人在情绪注意的定向和维持阶段表现出积极效应;在解离阶段，对消极信息的加工超过积极刺激。年轻人则未表现出特定的注意偏向模式。
本研究的结果不仅有助于完善现有的社会情绪老化理论，而且为相关部门制定促进老年人情绪健康的认知能力训练方案提供了理论依据。

In the 20th century, many psychologists from the perspective of "doom and suffering"studied the physical, cognitive and emotional losses of people in their later years.However, recent theoretical and empirical researches have challenged this generally acknowledged "truth" from the perspective of "aging paradox”一the positive effect of the elderly in emotional processing. In the fields of social emotional aging and emotion and cognition, researchers put forward a series of theoretical explanations such as socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), the selection, optimization, and compensation with emotion regulation model (SOC-ER), strength and vulnerability integration (SAVn, dynamic integration theory (DTT) and the aging brain model (ABM). These theories, without exception, emphasized the potential role of cognitive control in the positive emotional process of older adults. However, the distinction between automatic and controlled cognitive process depended on the allocation of attentional resources.Therefore, this study intended to explore the role of cognitive control in the positive emotion process of the elderly, in related with attention.
However, cognitive control is not a single agent, but rather involves a variety of inhibition controls in the advanced cognitive processes. Diamond believes that inhibition control includes both behavioral and cognitive components. The former involves response inhibition and the latter mainly refers to conflict control. At present,there is still a lack of theoretical and empirical research to clearly describe when and how the various sub-components of cognitive control impact positive effect. According to the structure of inhibition control put forward by Diamond，this study aimed to use techniques including behavioral, ERP and eye tracking methods to explore the effect of cognitive control on the positive effect of emotional attention processing among the elderly, with three studies, four experiments:
The first study is a baseline experiment, comparing the age difference of attention bias of different facial expression with ERP technology using classic dot probe paradigm in order to clarify the conditions of the positive effect in the emotional attention of the elderly. In the second one, we use go/no-go variants of dot probe by ERP technology to investigate the impact of behavioral inhibition on the emotional attention processing of the elderly. In the third one, the effect of conflict control on the emotional attention of the elderly was explored using eye movement technique,including experiment 3 and experiment 4. In the third experiment, we use the spatial cues paradigm by eye-movement technology to explore the role of conflict control in the emotional context. In the fourth experiment, we use the emotional stroop paradigm by eye-movement technology to explore the function of direct "emotional" conflicts.This article intends to summarize the attention phase model which clarify the role of cognitive control on the positive effects of the elderly. Results of experiments were as follows.
The experiment 1 showed that N2pc amplitude induced by positive emotions in the older group was significantly higher than that of younger group. This indicated that the positive effect of the elderly occurred in the controlled-process stage, which depended on cognitive control.
(1)The experiment 2 showed that the peak amplitude of N170 induced by fear was higher by happy among the elderly, and age-related difference was found. This suggested that when cognitive resources were occupied by the tasks which involved with executive inhibition, the elderly processed the threaten information automatically .Meanwhile, the positive effect disappeared. In addition, we found that hemispheric asymmetrily reducted in older adults.
(2) The experiment 3 revealed that in the face identification stage, under the high attention of emotional face conditions, the elderly can effectively control the conflict between the emotional and non-emotional stimulation. Thus, they showed attentional preferences toward happy faces, while younger adults toward fear faces. These results demonstated that when cognitive resources are sufficient, the elderly showed positive effect in attention orientation and maintenance stage of emotional face. In the disengagement stage, the elderly suppressed the interference of fear faces more difficultly. Thus, the positive effect did not shown in this experiment.
(3) The experiment 4 showed that the elderly are motivated to pay more attention to positive relative to negative stimuli, displaying a positive effect under the context of direct emotional conflict.
To sum up the above results, the current study concluded that the elderly in China did have positive effect in the processing of emotional attention, and this effect occurred in the control processing stage. Contrary to the two-route model of Foster (2013), when the cognitive resources of the elderly were occupied, they tended to pay attention to the threaten information in early process. When cognitive resources were sufficient, the older adults showed positive effect in the orientation and maintenance phase of attention,whereas, they processed the negative information over the positive in the dissociation phase. Meanwhile, the young adults did not show a specific pattern of attentional bias.
This study not only enriched the existing social emotion theory of aging, but also provided a theoretical basis for the relevant departments to design cognitive skills training programs aimed to promote emotional well-being of the elderly.