The Eye Tracking Study About Positive Effect In Chinese Older And Younger Adults

Social emotional selectivity theory postulates that the perception of future life time is a part of motivation, which affect the choice of social goals. When the old people feel their time left is limited, they prefer to select the positive affective information, and avoidance or dismissal of negative affective information in the social environment. This phenomenon is regarded as "Positive Effect". In western societies, The "Positive Effect" is found for older people compared with younger people and is believed to reflect a preference for positive emotional regulation in older adults. In East Asian cultures, there is a highly controversial debate concerning this question. In the current experiment we explored whether Chinese older participants showed a "Positive Effect".A mixed measures design was employed with a 3 (emotion value:Pleasant; Neutral; Unpleasant) as within participants measures and 2 (Group:Older versus Younger) as a between participant measure. Before the experiment, we chose two hundred and thirty six scene pictures. These pictures were then rated for valence and arousal and we selected 36 positive,36 negative, and 36 neutral pictures as experimental stimuli from those re-rated pictures. We adopt the eye movement tracking technique and participants were instructed to watch the pictures appeared on the screen.The results show, in the probability of first fixation, the main effect of the emotion value is significant, Post hoc tests show that older participants and younger participants prefer to put their first fixation on the emotion pictures compared to the neutral pictures. And the main effect of group and the interaction between the emotion value and group are not significant. In the gaze duration and total time, the main effect of the emotion value is significant, Post hoc tests show that older participants and younger participants took much longer time on the positive pictures than the other pictures; the main effect of group is group, Post hoc tests show that younger participants took much longer time on the pictures than the older participants; there is no interaction. Similar to the findings for GD and the total time both group had a greater number of fixations to the pleasant pictures.Following the eye movement experiment, both younger and older participants were given a recognition memory task for the pictures that were used in the experiment. The results show that the main effect of emotion value is significant:participants remembered more pleasant pictures than unpleasant and neutral and the main effect of group and the interaction between the emotion value and group are not significant.The result shows that:(1) In the early stage of processing, Chinese older subjects and young subjects show the emotional bias;(2) In the later stages of processing, Chinese older subjects and young subjects show the "positive effect";(3) In the recognition memory task, Chinese older subjects and young subjects show the "positive effect";...