Emotion regulation and age-related attentional bias in a Chinese sample

Abstract

Older adults have been reported to show attentional preference for positive stimuli and attentional avoidance from negative stimuli. The relationship between this pattern of emotional attention and emotion regulation, however, is not well known. The present study aims to replicate the findings of age-related attentional bias for emotional stimuli and investigate the potential relationship between biased attention and emotion regulation/dysregulation in Chinese older adults. 46 older adults and 46 younger adults participated in an attention task, which measured their reaction time towards negative and neutral facial stimuli, and a questionnaire survey, which elicited self-reports of their levels of emotion regulation and dysregulation. Results showed that there was a biased attention for negative faces in older adults, but not in younger adults. There were also differences between emotion regulation/dysregulation measures in the two age groups. When associating the attentional bias score with the emotion dysregulation measures, significant correlations were found between biased attention and overall difficulty in emotion regulation and lack of emotional clarity. The data supported the age-related bias of emotional attention, and revealed potential relationship between biased attention and emotion regulation in older adults.