健康与遗传心理学研究室知识库

情感灵活性关注人加工情绪信息时根据反应规则转换任务设置的能力，是对情绪信息的认知控制加工(Genet，2012；Malooly，Genet，& Siemer，2013)。采用任务转换范式，研究情绪信息的灵活加工是否存在转换代价不对称的现象的结果不一致，且很少探讨老年人的情感灵活性。同时，关于情感灵活性和情绪调节关系需要进一步研究证明。因此，本研究实验一采用任务转换范式考察转换代价的表现模式及情感灵活性是否有显著的年龄差异。实验二以社会情绪选择理论和老年人情绪加工的积极效应为依据，考察老年人对不同效价情绪信息的转换加工，并探讨其表现模式与情绪调节策略使用的关系。研究结果如下：
（1）情感灵活性转换任务中，老年人的反应时长于年轻人，但转换代价无年龄差异。两组被试均表现出非对称的转换代价，情绪任务转换代价高于非情绪任务转换代价，但两种类型转换代价的年龄差异都不显著。
（2）不同效价情绪刺激下，老年人情绪任务转换代价均高于非情绪任务转换代价。积极情绪任务转换代价高于消极情绪任务转换代价，说明在积极情绪刺激下老年人因情绪任务设置占优导致的负启动效应更大，进入情绪任务更困难；积极非情绪任务转换代价高于消极非情绪任务转换代价，说明在积极情绪刺激下老年人对积极情绪属性的注意偏向，使其难以脱离积极情绪任务设置。
（3）不同类型的转换代价与表达抑制/认知重评得分、正性/负性得分无显著相关。老年男性的表达抑制得分与消极情绪任务转换代价负相关。正性得分与消极非情绪任务转换代价正相关。
结论：
（1）老年人的情感灵活性并未随增龄而减退，仍能较好地保持该能力。老年人和年轻人的情绪任务转换代价均高于非情绪转换代价，未能支持序列困难效应模型。
（2）老年人对不同效价情绪刺激的转换加工灵活性不同，情绪任务转换代价更高，且受积极情绪刺激的影响明显，表现出情绪信息加工的积极效应。
（3）不同情绪调节策略的使用频率与不同类型的转换代价存在相关。具体表现为，男性老年人表达抑制的使用频率与消极情绪任务转换代价负相关。

Attending to and disengaging from emotional material in a flexible manner is termed affective flexibility(Malooly, Genet, & Siemer, 2013), related to the switching process of emotional materials. When using task-switching paradigm to explore asymmetrical switch cost in affective flexibility,existing results are inconsistent. And we should pay more attention to the age difference of affective flexibility. Only few studies show that affective flexibility is associated with the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as rumination and reappraisal, so more research is needed.
Experiment 1 used task switching paradigm to explore the model of special switch costs and its age difference. The purposes of experiment 2 are to investigate whether the valence of emotional pictures impact older adults’s switching process, to calculate specific switch costs for different trial types and its relationship with emotion regulation strategies. The results of the study are as follows:
In affective-switching task, older adults’s reaction time was longer than young adults’s. When switching to affective task-sets, switch costs were even bigger. And we haven’t found an aging effect for different classes of switch costs. Regardless of the valence of emotional materials, when switching to affective tesk-sets, older adults spent more time to complete emotional judgment task. Furthermore, positive affective switch costs were significantly longer than negative affective switch costs. And positive non-affective switch costs were significantly longer than negative affective switch costs.
Correlation regression analysis showed that different classes of switch costs weren’t related with expression suppression, cognitive reappraisal, positive score and negative score. There was a very significant negative correlation between expression suppression and negative affective switch costs, a significant positive correlation between positive score and negative nonaffective switch costs for male.
Conclusions:
(1) Older Adults’ affective Flexibility does not decline with age, and it is still able to maintain.When switching to affective task-sets, switch costs were even bigger for the elderly and young people. This is not support sequential difficulty effect model.
(2) With the different valence emotional stimuli, the elderly have different flexibility when finishing task-switching task. Affective switch costs is higher, and obviously affected by positive valence. There exists positive effect in the process of emotion stimulus for the elderly.
(3) It is found that the frequency of different emotion regulation strategies is related to different types of switch costs. It is shown that the frequency of expression inhibition is negatively correlated with the negative affective switch costs for male.