TY - JOUR
T1 - Preserved emotional modulation of motor response time despite psychomotor slowing in young-old adults
AU - Hälbig, Thomas D.
AU - Creighton, Judy
AU - Assuras, Stephanie
AU - Borod, Joan C.
AU - Tse, Winona
AU - Gracies, Jean Michel
AU - Foldi, Nancy S.
AU - Kaufmann, Horacio
AU - Olanow, C. Warren
AU - Voustianiouk, Andrei
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper is based, in part, on a Master’s Thesis by Judy Creighton carried out at Queens College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). This work was supported, in part, by Professional Staff Congress—CUNY awards #69024-00-38 (Nancy S. Foldi) and #61301-00-39 (Joan C. Borod), by a grant from the Alzheimer’s Association #IIRG-05-13534 (Nancy S. Foldi), and by a fellowship award (Thomas D. Hälbig) from the Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation (New York, NY). Address correspondence to Thomas D. Hälbig, M.D., Department of Neuropsychiatry, Charité University Medical Center, Campus Charité Mitte S152B, Charitéplatz 1, D-10117 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]
PY - 2011/8
Y1 - 2011/8
N2 - Whereas aging affects cognitive and psychomotor processes negatively, the impact of aging on emotional processing is less clear. Using an "oldnew" binary decision task, we ascertained the modulation of response latencies after presentation of neutral and emotional pictures in "young" (M = 27.1 years) and "young-old" adults with a mean age below 60 (M = 57.7 years). Stimuli varied on valence (pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant) and arousal (high and low) dimensions. Young-old adults had significantly longer reaction times. However, young and young-old adults showed the exact same pattern of response time modulation by emotional stimuli: Response latencies were longer for high-arousal than for low-arousal pictures and longer for negative than for positive or neutral stimuli. This result suggests that the specific effects of implicitly processed emotional valence and arousal information on behavioral response time are preserved in young-old adults despite significant age-related psychomotor decline.
AB - Whereas aging affects cognitive and psychomotor processes negatively, the impact of aging on emotional processing is less clear. Using an "oldnew" binary decision task, we ascertained the modulation of response latencies after presentation of neutral and emotional pictures in "young" (M = 27.1 years) and "young-old" adults with a mean age below 60 (M = 57.7 years). Stimuli varied on valence (pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant) and arousal (high and low) dimensions. Young-old adults had significantly longer reaction times. However, young and young-old adults showed the exact same pattern of response time modulation by emotional stimuli: Response latencies were longer for high-arousal than for low-arousal pictures and longer for negative than for positive or neutral stimuli. This result suggests that the specific effects of implicitly processed emotional valence and arousal information on behavioral response time are preserved in young-old adults despite significant age-related psychomotor decline.
KW - Aging
KW - Emotional processing
KW - Reaction time
KW - Young-old adults
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/79960784322
U2 - 10.3109/00207454.2011.568656
DO - 10.3109/00207454.2011.568656
M3 - Article
C2 - 21574890
AN - SCOPUS:79960784322
SN - 0020-7454
VL - 121
SP - 430
EP - 436
JO - International Journal of Neuroscience
JF - International Journal of Neuroscience
IS - 8
ER -