Event Abstract Back to Event Older Adults Suppress Emotion as Effectively as Young Adults But Only the Young Incur Memory Costs. Peter G. Rendell1*, David Pedder1, Gill Terrett1, Julie Henry2, Phoebe Bailey3 and Ted Ruffman4 1 Australian Catholic University, School of Psychology, Australia 2 The University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Australia 3 University of Western Sydney, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Australia 4 University of Otago, Psychology, New Zealand The ability to influence ones facial expression of emotion, known as emotion regulation, is adaptive depending on the social context. Previous research indicates that older adults can suppress their emotional expression as well as young adults, and surprisingly, only for young does this suppression incur memory costs. Differential use of strategies was investigated by instructing participants (20 young and 20 older adults) to suppress their behavioural responses to positive and negative pictures. A watch only condition was compared with three regulatory suppression conditions (unspecified suppression, suppression of facial muscles, detached reappraisal). The novel use of electromyography (EMG) showed that both age groups were effectively able to suppress the intensity of their emotional expression back to level at resting baseline for each condition. Also, both groups were able to suppress their self-reported emotional experience for positive but not negative pictures. The young but not the older adults incurred costs as assessed comparing the amount of pictures recalled in the watch condition with the strategy conditions. There was no supporting evidence for the strategy selection explanation, with regulatory instruction making no differences to the measures of suppression, and the amount of emotional stimuli recalled. Interestingly, EMG also documented that compared to baseline recordings, the percentage increase of older adults' facial muscle activity in the watch condition was both substantially and consistently lower in emotional display relative to young adults. It was proposed that older adults do not experience memory costs during emotion regulation due to having much less facial reaction to suppress, and thus less mentally effortful, in the first place. Further research is needed with emotional stimuli that for young and old, produces low and high levels of the increase in the facial reactivity in the watch condition compared to base line. Keywords: Aging, Electromyography, Emotion Regulation, Supression, regulation strategies, memory costs Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Emotional and Social Processes Citation: Rendell PG, Pedder D, Terrett G, Henry J, Bailey P and Ruffman T (2015). Older Adults Suppress Emotion as Effectively as Young Adults But Only the Young Incur Memory Costs.. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00349 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Prof. Peter G Rendell, Australian Catholic University, School of Psychology, Melbourne, Australia, peter.rendell@acu.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Peter G Rendell David Pedder Gill Terrett Julie Henry Phoebe Bailey Ted Ruffman Google Peter G Rendell David Pedder Gill Terrett Julie Henry Phoebe Bailey Ted Ruffman Google Scholar Peter G Rendell David Pedder Gill Terrett Julie Henry Phoebe Bailey Ted Ruffman PubMed Peter G Rendell David Pedder Gill Terrett Julie Henry Phoebe Bailey Ted Ruffman Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.
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