Age effect on attention orientation towards emotional scenes during emotional and action appraisals.

International audiencePrevious studies suggest that the attentional prevalence towards negative information in young adults tends to disappear in normal aging and, sometimes, to change towards a prevalence of the positive information, particularly in a low-arousal context. However, this age-related effect called the positivity effect may depend on task demands. The study investigated visual exploration of high and low arousal emotional scenes in young and older adults during a classical emotional task based on the self-emotional experience and a motivational task based on the tendency to action. A categorization task was also used as a control task. Preliminary results revealed a greater attention for negative stimuli relative to other ones in both age groups, regardless of arousal level and task demands. A more extensive exploration of emotional scenes was also observed for emotional and motivational tasks compared to categorization task and for emotional task compared to motivational task in both age groups