Emotion recognition ability and mild depressive symptoms in late adulthood

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Current evidence suggests that dysphoric mood affects the ability to recognize facial emotion.

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).

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.

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.