The Specificity of Age-Related Decline in Interpretation of Emotion Cues From Prosody

Mitchell, RLC; Kingston, RA; Boucas, SLB

Abstract

Older adults are not as good as younger adults at decoding prosodic emotions. We sought to determine the specificity of this finding. Performance of older and younger adults was compared on a prosodic emotion task, a “pure” prosodic emotion task, a linguistic prosody task, and a “pure” linguistic prosody task. Older adults were less accurate at interpreting prosodic emotion cues and nonemotional contours, concurrent semantic processing worsened interpretation, and performance was further degraded when identifying negative emotions and questions. Older adults display a pervasive problem interpreting prosodic cues, but further study is required to clarify the stage at which performance declines.

Citation

Mitchell, R., Kingston, R., & Boucas, S. (2011). The Specificity of Age-Related Decline in Interpretation of Emotion Cues From Prosody. Psychology and Aging, 26(2), 406-414. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021861

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Apr 30, 2012
• Journal: Psychology and Aging
• Print ISSN: 0882-7974
• Electronic ISSN: 1939-1498
• Publisher: American Psychological Association
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 406-414
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021861
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1499638