Age differences in the automatic accessibility of emotional words from semantic memory

Abstract

Using a speeded word fragment completion task, we assessed age differences in the automatic accessibility of emotional versus neutral words from semantic memory. Participants were instructed to complete a series of single-solution word fragments as quickly as possible. The results demonstrate that older adults are biased against accessing both positive and negative words relative to neutral words, whereas young adults are biased against accessing positive words only. These findings suggest an arousal-based accessibility bias favouring neutral stimuli in older adults coupled with a valence-based bias accessing negative and neutral stimuli for young adults.

Keywords:

• Automatic accessibility
• Semantic memory
• Negativity effect
• Positivity effect
• Aging
• Word fragment completion

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US National Institute on Aging Grant R37 AGO4306 to LH and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant (371762–2009) to LY.    We thank Carol Wong, Rachelle Ta-Min, Ji-A Min, and Ursula Wiprzycka for their assistance in data collection.

Notes

¹An initial overall analysis using the two sets of fragments as a factor showed that the reported Critical Age×Valence interaction in fragment completion rate was the same for both sets. Therefore we collapsed across the two sets in the analyses reported in the text.