Record Details
Age- related memory change for emotional faces: are older adults more prone to forget angry faces?
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Age- related memory change for emotional faces: are older adults more prone to forget angry faces? |
| Names |
Hwee, Jennifer
(creator) Burros, Alison (creator) MacKay, Kallie (creator) Lien, Mei-Ching (creator) Lien, Mei-Ching (advisor) |
| Date Issued | 2014-05-29 (iso8601) |
| Note | Bachelor of Science (BS) |
| Abstract | Previous studies have suggested that negatively valenced faces (e.g., angry faces) automatically capture attention away from faces with other emotional valences (e.g., happy faces and neutral faces). The present study evaluated two experiments with age-related differences: the first assessed recognition memory for pictures of faces and how it is modulated by emotional expression. The significance of the second study was to find whether memory facilitation by negative emotions improved general memory of a person’s identity, or only memory for the specific features of that specific image. In the first experiment, participants first performed a gender discrimination task on a face expressing either an angry emotion or a happy emotion (study phase), unaware that they would later be tested on their recognition of those faces. They were then given a 20-minute distraction task, in which they played object-matching games. Finally, they were given the recognition task, judging whether the faces shown were previously shown in the gender identification task (old identity vs. new identity). In support of results from previous studies, we found that face recognition was higher overall, and was significantly higher in young adults. In the second experiment, participants performed the same procedures as in the first experiment, except for in the recognition phase they were shown neutral faces of new and old faces instead of the emotionally valenced faces from the study phase. The findings suggested that negative emotional expressions improve memory for the specific features of those specific images, without improving general memory of the person’s identity. For older adults, however, no memory facilitation was found by angry faces in either experiment. Implications for false memory and eyewitness testimony will be discussed. |
| Genre | Poster |
| Access Condition | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ |
| Topic | Memory |
| Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/1957/48599 |
