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Eye movements reveal a similar Positivity Effect in Chinese and UK older adults.

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posted on 2020-07-22, 14:25 authored by Jingxin Wang, Fang Xie, Liyuan He, Katie Meadmore, Kevin Paterson, Valerie Benson
The "positivity effect" (PE) reflects an age-related increase in the preference for positive over negative information in attention and memory. The present experiment investigated whether Chinese and UK participants produce a similar PE. In one experiment, we presented pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures simultaneously and participants decided which picture they liked or disliked on a third of trials, respectively. We recorded participants' eye movements during this task and compared time looking at, and memory for, pictures. The results suggest that older but not younger adults from both China and UK participant groups showed a preference to focus on and remember pleasant pictures, providing evidence of a PE in both cultures. Bayes Factor analysis supported these observations. These findings are consistent with the view that older people preferentially focus on positive emotional information, and that this effect is observed cross-culturally.

History

Citation

Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820935861

Author affiliation

Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, College of Life Sciences

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Published in

Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)

Publisher

SAGE Publications

issn

1747-0218

eissn

1747-0226

Acceptance date

2020-04-27

Copyright date

2020

Available date

2020-04-27

Spatial coverage

England

Language

eng

Publisher version

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747021820935861

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