Aging and distractor resistance in working memory: Does emotional valence matter?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• Aging impacts working memory (WM) performance, often showing reduced negativity bias (positivity effect).
• Research on emotional distractors' effect on WM across age groups is limited.
• The neural mechanisms underlying age differences in resisting emotional distractors are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate age-related differences in behavioral and neurophysiological responses to emotional distractors in WM.
• To examine if the positivity effect observed with emotional targets extends to emotional distractors.
• To explore the neural basis of age differences in controlling emotional distractors within WM.

Main Methods:

• Participants: Young adults (19-26) and older adults (60-74).
• Task: A 2-back task with digit targets and emotional face distractors (happy, angry, neutral).
• Measures: Behavioral accuracy/reaction time and event-related potentials (ERPs: P2, N2, LPP amplitudes).

Main Results:

• Older adults performed worse on the WM task than young adults.
• Young adults' accuracy decreased with neutral/positive distractors but not negative ones.
• Older adults' accuracy was unaffected by distractor emotional valence, indicating a behavioral positivity effect.
• ERP results showed greater P2 amplitude in older adults, but no age differences in N2 or LPP amplitudes.
• Negative distractors elicited greater N2 than positive distractors in both age groups.

Conclusions:

• Behavioral data suggest age-related reductions in negativity bias (positivity effect) for emotional distractors in WM.
• Event-related potential (ERP) findings did not fully align with behavioral results, showing no age-related interaction for N2 or LPP.
• Discrepancies question the extent to which age differences in controlling emotional distractors are reflected in neural activity.