Dr. Lisa Emery recently presented a study with undergraduate students Kaity Pechanek (right) and Caitlin Williams (left) at the Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society, Washington, DC. The study examined age differences in emotion recognition of briefly presented faces. Read more in the abstract below and check out the full study. Congratulations Dr. Emery!
Previous research has found that, when identifying emotional expressions from static faces, older adults show impaired recognition for some emotions (e.g., sadness, fear, anger), but spared or even improved recognition on others (e.g., happiness, surprise, disgust). There are several limitations to previous research, however, including possible ceiling effects in young adults and a lack of ecological validity. In Experiment 1 we used a modified emotion recognition test in which posed emotion expressions were briefly presented in-between neutral expressions, in order to mimic fleeting emotional expressions and increase difficulty. In a second experiment, we tested the potential role of age-related perceptual decline in emotion recognition by mimicking these declines in younger adults.
Emery, L., Morgan, K., Pechanek, K., Williams, C. (November, 2014). Age Differences in Emotion Recognition of Briefly Presented Faces. Poster Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society, Washington, DC.
Caitlin Williams and Kaity Pechanek
