Emotion Recognition Ability and Mild Depressive Symptoms in Late Adulthood

Abstract

Background/Study Context: Current evidence suggests that dysphoric mood affects the ability to recognize facial emotion.

Methods: In the present study, older adults with and without mild depressive symptoms were asked to complete a task measuring their ability to identify facial affect representative of six different emotions (happiness, surprise, disgust, fear, anger, and sadness).

Results: Consistent with previous findings, results showed that older adults experiencing mild depressive symptoms were less accurate in their ability to recognize facial expressions of fear and anger. No group differences were observed in the recognition of happiness, surprise, disgust, and sadness.

Conclusion: The present study has contributed to previous research by demonstrating that mild depressive symptoms affect the ability to recognize facial emotion in a sample of older adults.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author thanks those who kindly volunteered to participate in the study.

Notes

Note. NART = National Adult Reading Test (Nelson, 1982); CFIT = Culture Fair Intelligence Test (Cattell & Cattell, 1959); BFRT = Benton Facial Recognition Test (Benton et al., 1983); PRCST = Pelli-Robson Contrast Sensitivity Test (Pelli, Robson, & Wilkins, 1988).

Note. NART = National Adult Reading Test (Nelson, 1982); CFIT = Culture Fair Intelligence Test (Cattell & Cattell, 1959); BFRT = Benton Facial Recognition Test (Benton et al., 1983); PRCST = Pelli-Robson Contrast Sensitivity Test (Pelli et al., 1988).

*p < .05; **p < .01.

Note. GDS = Geriatric Depression Scale (Yesavage et al., 1982); NART = National Adult Reading Test (Nelson, 1982); CFIT = Culture Fair Intelligence Test (Cattell & Cattell, 1959) β is the average increase in the dependent variable associated with an increase of 1 unit in the independent variable.

*p < .05; **p < .01.