Age Differences In The Effect Of Load On Attention Bias Toward Negative Emotional Informatio

Negative emotional information bias is reflected in psychological processing and behavioral responses.Negative emotional stimuli affect the allocation of attention resources and show priority processing,which is a kind of information processing preference related to biological evolution.Previous studies hold that the attention bias of negative emotional information varies with age in time course,and it also affects the attention bias of negative emotional information under different perceptual load.However,there is no clear result on whether there is age difference in the attention bias of negative emotional information under different load levels,and whether this difference is reflected in the time course.In order to explore the age difference of the influence of load on the attention bias of negative information,this study adopted the combination of random dot motion paradigm and distracted emotional images on background.And conducted two behavioral experiments to investigate whether there were age differences in the influence of perceptual load and cognitive load on negative emotional information,and whether there were differences in the time course of such age differences.Experiment 1 was a mixed experimental design of 2(perceptual load level:high and low)×2(emotional stimulus: negative and neutral)×2(age: young and old).The perceptual load level changes by changing the proportion of scatter consistency movement in the foreground detection task(high : 30%;low : 70%).The results of perceptual load experiment show that it has an effect on the time course of the negative bias of young people.When young people are under high perceptual load,the negative attention bias of young people occurs earlier and ends faster.At low perceived load,the negative attention bias of young people was longer until 500 ms.Perceptual load level had little effect on the old people negative bias,and the attention bias of negative emotional information appeared at 300 ms ~ 400 ms and 800 ms ~1000 ms of emotional images.Experiment 2 was a mixed experimental design of 2(cognitive load level: high and low)×2(emotional stimulus: negative and neutral)×2(age: young and old).By varying the number of digits memorized before the probe task(high: memorizing six numbers;Low: memorizing 1 number)to regulates cognitive load levels.The results of cognitive load experiment showed that there was no negative bias in young people with high and low cognitive load,while there was negative emotional bias in old people with low cognitive load in100~600 ms.Increasing cognitive load extended the effect of negative bias from 600 ms to 1000 ms.In conclusion,the results indicate that different load types make the attention bias of negative emotional information in different time course between the young and the old.This study provides further evidence for the age bias of negative attention.And gave suggestions to elderly’s driving behavior and product designing.