Effects of Age and Emotional Intensity on the Recognition of Facial Emotion

Abstract

Older adults have a specific deficit in their ability to identify some negative facial emotions. The present study investigated the influence of intensity of expression on 40 young and 40 older adults' recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Older adults showed no impairment in the perception of low-intensity subtle expressions of happiness, surprise, and disgust. However, older adults were worse at recognizing all intensities of sadness, anger, and fear, with the greatest impairment at 50% intensity. Observed age differences were not influenced by covarying general facial processing skills, but were substantially reduced when a measure of general cognitive functioning was covaried. The current study suggests that age differences in identifying facial expressions of emotion are not caused by decreasing visual perceptual abilities, but may partially overlap with general cognitive changes.

Acknowledgments

This research is based on elements of a doctoral dissertation by Vasiliki Orgeta under the supervision of the second author and funded by the College of Life Sciences and Medicine of University of Aberdeen.

The authors would like to thank those who kindly volunteered to participate in the study.

Notes

Note. NART, National Adult Reading Test (Nelson, 1982). BFRT, Benton Facial Recognition Test (Benton et al., 1983). DSST, Digit Symbol Substitution Test (Wechsler, 1981).

¹Note that the likelihood of making ‘emotion’ versus ‘no emotion’ responses to each level of intensity for each emotion were also analyzed, but there were no significant age effects or interactions on this measure so these results are not further reported.

Note. BFRT, Benton Facial Recognition Test (Benton et al., 1983). DSST, Digit Symbol Substitution Test (Wechsler, 1981).