Håkan Fischer, Karolinska institutet

2010-2015

PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT AND ANY CHANGES IN THE PURPOSE DURING THE PROJECT PERIOD: The project's aim has been to examine how normal adult aging affects processing of emotional information. This aim has not changed during the project period. Two of the originally planned three studies (Studies 1 and 2) have been conducted and the results published in an international journal (Svärd et al., 2014). In Study 1, we used a so-called "Visual Search" paradigm to study of age differences in more "bottom-up" related emotional impact on attentional processes. In Study 2, we used a custom designed and validated facial memory paradigm to specifically study the effects of aging on memory of different emotional facial expressions.

NEW RESEARCH ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN GENERATED THROUGH THE PROJECT: In addition to those originally planned studies above, five new research questions were generated and investigated in the project: (1) A "masking study" was conducted in which we examined age differences in detection thresholds for different emotional facial expressions (Svärd et al., 2012). (2) A memory study was conducted that investigated how different retention intervalls affected emotional memory performance and their neurobiological basis in younger and older adults (Kalpouzos et al., 2012). (3) A categorical perception study was conducted and published together with study 1 and 2 (Svärd et al., 2014). (4) A study was also conducted that examined differences in how younger and older adults look at faces (how they visually scans these faces). This article is now submitted for publication (Svärd et al., 2015a). (5) Finally, a study was carried out in which we investigate the effect of how the linguistic context in which the facial emotion pictures were presented affected how younger and older adults classified these emotional facial expressions (Svärd et al., 2015b).

THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS FROM THE PROJECT AND A DISCUSSION OF THESE RESULTS: In Svärd et al., (2014), we discovered that the subjective perception of emotional faces differed between younger and older adults. More specifically, it turned out that even though it did not differ for happy faces, older people perceived angry faces as less negative (valence), less vivid (arousal), and less powerful (potency) than younger adults. This subdued view of angry faces in older adults was reflected in larger age differences in attention and memory for angry than happy faces. This demonstrates the importance of taking into account also the subjective perception of faces in face memory and attention studies. Today most studies assume that emotional faces are experienced equally emotional regardless of group assignment (eg age). In other words that maximum angry faces are perceived as 100% angry. If they instead are perceived as less angry, our results show that this has significant impact on memory and attention functions. If the two groups differ significantly in subjective experience, we risk comparing apples and oranges if we do not take into account this subjective assessment in the emotional domains we are investigating.

In Svärd et al. (2015a), we found that while younger persons were looking at the eyes to determine facial expressions, older people focused on the mouth. Hence, older persons miss important facial expressions related information contained in the eyes, especially in negative facial expressions. This, in turn, could at least partly explain why elderly are less able to recognize negative but not positive facial expressions, because central information in angry faces is located in the eye region and in happy faces in the mouth region. We also discovered a link between older persons focus on the mouth and the ability to recognize happy as well as disgusted faces: The more time they spent looking at the mouth, the faster they recognized these facial expressions. Thus, elderly subjects focus on the mouth could be the reason both for their inability to recognize negative faces and their preserved ability to recognize positive faces.

In Svärd et al., (2015b), we discovered that both younger and older subjects ability to recognize facial expression was drastically reduced when the faces were presented without any written response options than if written response options (happy, angry, neutral) were available. This effect was strongest for older people's recognition of neutral faces. We also found that with an increasing number of facial expressions (3-6) the ability to recognize angry and neutral faces decreased relatively more than for happy faces, suggesting a mix-up of negative (and neutral) faces, a confusion which does not concern the positive (happy) face to the same extent. In conclusion, our results showed that older people are more dependent on the linguistic context (written answers) than younger are and that negative, but not positive faces, are more likely to be confused with each other.

INTERNATIONAL ANCHORING OF THE PROJECT: Several of the studies in the project has, as previously noted above, already been published in international scientific journals (Kalpouzos et al., 2012; Svärd et al., 2012, 2014).

Many of the results have also been presented and discussed at international scientific conferences:
1. International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE) Conference 2011, Kyoto, Japan. Aging, neuroticism and Processing of masked emotional faces. Sword J, Vienna S, Fischer H. (Poster).
2. Cognitive Aging Conference (CAC) in 2012, Atlanta, USA. Parametric modulation of masked emotional face presentation: Effects of age and neuroticism. Sword J, Vienna S, Fischer H. (Poster).
3. International Congress of Psychology (ICP) 2012, Cape Town, South Africa. Brain correlates of the effect of negative emotion on false recognitions overtime in old adults. Kalpouzos, G., Fischer, H., & Bäckman, L. (Poster).
4. International Congress of Psychology (ICP) 2012, Cape Town, South Africa. Congruent Brain Activation During Encoding and retrieval of emotional scenes in younger and older adults. Fischer H, Kalpouzos G, Rieckmann A, Bäckman L (Talk).
5. European Congress of Psychology (ECP) in 2013, Stockholm. Age-related Differences in Perceived Valence and Arousal Influence Visual Search Performance with Emotional Facial Stimuli. Svärd, J., Lundqvist, D., & Fischer, H. (Poster).
6. Emotions across the lifespan Workshop, 2014, Reading, United Kingdom, Changes in socio-emotional function During The adult lifespan: Evidence from Brain and Behavior., Fischer H. (Talk)
7. Cognitive Aging Conference (CAC) 2014, Atlanta, USA. Recognition of angry and neutral facial expressions in older and younger adults is Affected by label availability. Svärd J, Fischer H (Poster)

The project has also resulted in a new international collaboration with Dr. Elina Birmingham's research team at Simon Fraser University in Canada (Svärd et al., 2015a).

RESEARCH COMMUNICATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OUTSIDE OF THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY: I have presented data from this project through various channels in the community:
1. TV 4 (TV) interview in morning television about aging and emotion. September 2012.
2. Äldre i Centrum (magazine-article), article in the special issue on Aging and the Brain. December 2012.
3. DN (magazine-article) "New study: Older worse at interpreting facial expressions" 2013.
4. The SU-web TV (lecture). "Changes in mental function When We Get Older: Evidence from Behavior and Brain" from the Nobel Breakfast seminar SU, 2014.
5. Forskning och Framsteg (magazine-interview) "Livets kurva är en smiley" 2015.

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS FROM THE PROJECT AND A DISCUSSION OF THESE PUBLICATIONS: It is difficult to predict which articles that will be the two most important publications from this project. Based on the attention the research findings has received so far from the scientific community, I would say that "Adult age differences in subjective impression of emotional faces are reflected in emotion-related attention and memory tasks" and "Aging and the attentional patterns of emotional faces: new evidence using the moving window technique" will be the two main publications. This because they use novel and innovative ways to explore key issues related to how older and younger subjects differ in terms of processing emotional information from faces.

THE PUBLICATION STRATEGY OF THE PROJECT WITH COMMENTS: The three articles published in this project have all been published in so-called open access journals: "Frontiers in Psychology" (2 articles) and "Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience" (one article). The two articles submitted for publication have also been sent to open access journals. Conference publications are published in conference journals freely available online.

Publications

Svärd, J., Wiens, S., & Fischer, H. (2012). Superior recognition performance for happy masked and unmasked faces in both younger and older adults. Front. Psychology, 3, 520. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00520

Kalpouzos, G., Fischer, H., Rieckmann, A., MacDonald, S.W., & Bäckman, L. (2012). Impact of negative emotion on the neural correlates of long-term recognition in younger and older adults. Front. Integr. Neurosci., 6, 74. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2012.00074

Svärd, J., Fischer, H., & Lundqvist, D. (2014). Adult age-differences in subjective impression of emotional faces are reflected in emotion-related attention and memory tasks. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 423. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00423

Svärd J, Birmingham, E, Kanan, C, Fischer H. (2015a). Aging and the attentional patterns of emotional faces: new evidence using the moving window technique. (Submitted).

Svärd, J, Lundqvist D, Fischer H (2015b). Linguistic contextual availability affects younger and older adults’ recognition of angry, happy and neutral facial expressions. (Submitted).

Länkar till egna hemsidor/Links to own webb-pages:
http://w3.psychology.su.se/staff/hkfi/
http://www.psychology.su.se/forskning/forskningsomr%C3%A5den/biologisk-psykologi/forskning/fischers-forskningslabb