Processing of Emotions in Speech in Healthy Older and Young Adults

Emotions in speech are conveyed through the lexical content and prosody. With increasing age, healthy older adults have trouble recognizing affective prosody, however, literature pertaining to the concurrent role of lexical content and prosody in emotion processing is scarce. Therefore, this study examines the role of lexical content and prosody in emotion recognition in healthy older and young adults. Two different versions of a novel tool, the Test for Recognition of Emotions in Speech or T-RES, were used to study emotion processing in spoken language and specifically, to examine how emotion processing is influenced by selective attention and a potential positivity bias in healthy older adults. The results gathered from these tools demonstrate impairment in selective attention, particularly when attending to the prosody and stronger positivity bias in healthy older adults compared to young adults. Moreover, both tools can be used for emotion processing assessments, as they provide similar data.M.Sc.2018-01-05 00:00:0