Criterio general, infracciones y compensaciones económicas

older age participants. There appears to be a divergent development pathway for

recognition ability for negative emotions, with the exception perhaps of disgust, and positive emotions. Whilst negative emotion recognition ability tends to decline with age, recognition of happiness is often reported as being stable in adulthood (e.g., Calder et al., 2003). Again there are variations across studies with some suggesting that

recognition of happy facial expressions is impaired in OAs compared to YAs (Isaacowitz et al., 2007; Krendl, Rule, & Ambady, 2014: Sasson et al., 2010). However, the size of the age-related decline for recognising happiness in facial

expressions is often smaller than the size of decline for negative emotions (Sasson et al., 2010). The apparent robustness of the general development trend for positive and negative emotion recognition is emphasised in a summary of the research in the field (Isaacowitz et al., 2007). Of the 13 emotion recognition studies included in the review (all studies measured facial expressions except for one study that measured affective vocalisations) only one demonstrated an age-related decline in OAs for recognising positive emotions. There seems to be evidence, therefore, that recognition ability for positive emotions is maintained in older age at least from faces.

However,elsewhereage-related impairments in OAs for recognising positive emotions have been reported for happy facial expressions (e.g., Krendl & Ambady, 2010; Isaacowitz et al., 2007); happy morphed facial expressions (Horning, Cornwall, &

Davis, 2012); happiness in dynamic stimuli across different intensity levels with the exception of 100% intensity (Monatgne, Kessels, De Haan, & Perrett, 2007) and cross- modal, vocal, and visual presentations (Lambrecht, Kriefelts, & Wildgruber, 2012). In light of these findings it is possible that OAs do not have a maintained ability to recognise positive emotions. Taken together the evidence regarding OAs’ ability to recognise happiness remains unclear but any reduction in this ability does not appear to be as severe as the age-related impairments for specific negative emotions.

It is possible that the disparity between OAs’ ability to recognise negative and positive emotions reflects a positivity effect as discussed in Section 1. 4. This may manifest from a shift of attention away from negative emotion stimuli and selective attention towards positive emotion stimuli (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005). If this were the case then the processing shift in OAs would enhance processing of positive emotion cues alongside reduced processing of negative emotion cues to a greater extent than YAs. Alternatively, an apparent maintenance in emotion recognition ability for positive emotions with advancing age may not reflect a positivity effect in emotion recognition ability in OAs but could be a consequence of the experimental design of the studies reporting such an effect. For instance, traditional forced-choice tasks generally include only one positive emotion amongst an array of negative emotions. It is arguably easier to distinguish a positive emotion than a specific negative emotion from several negative emotions (Isaacowitz & Stanley, 2011). Thus, the simplicity of selecting a positive emotion may mask any age-related recognition differences (Isaacowitz 2007; Murphy, Lehrfeld, & Isaacowitz, 2010). Therefore, preserved recognition accuracy for positive emotions in older age may not reflect a positivity effect but rather the ease of selecting a positive emotion within the typical forced-choice design. Further research is required to tease apart these two possible accounts of maintained recognition ability for positive emotion in OAs.

Given the lack of clarity regarding why positive emotion recognition ability is often maintained in OAs, experiments should be designed to tap into YAs’ and OAs’ ability to discern between various types of positive emotions (Hunter, Phillips, & MacPherson, 2010; Murphy, Lehrfeld, & Isaacowitz, 2010). In this manner task difficulty will be increased and may avoid the possible ceiling effects that might serve to mask age-related differences in previous research. To this end the existence of the positivity effect in emotion recognition ability in OAs can be more robustly tested.

1.7.1.3.1 The current study. In Phase 1 of the current research the extent of a possible positivity effect will be measured across three presentation types. It is logical to assume that a processing shift with age towards positive emotions will also exist in communication channels other than faces. The current study will, therefore, extend the understanding regarding the prevalence of a positivity effect in emotion recognition ability in OAs beyond facial expressions to non-verbal vocalisations and words. Furthermore, to clarify why OAs have maintained ability for recognising positive emotions, Phase 2 includes an innovative task that was designed to tease apart the possible positivity effect from the simplicity of the task. To achieve this one emotion recognition task in Phase 2 measured several positive emotions and one negative emotion. On this task a positivity effect would be demonstrated if the ratio for accurately recognising positive over negative emotion was greater in OAs than YAs. For example, OAs have higher recognition of positive emotions than negative emotions and this may be reflected in maintained recognition of positive emotions alongside age- related deficits for negative emotions. Alternatively, if findings demonstrate higher recognition of negative compared to positive emotions and this is similar for both YAs and OAs then the pattern of emotion recognition ability reported in the literature is likely to be a function of the task design. In this manner Phase 2 may help to explain

the general trend reported in the field of maintained positive emotion recognition in older age.

1.7.2 Theme 2 - Most studies of older adults use facial expressions as