title: Angry faces get noticed quickly: threat detection is not impaired among older adults.
abstract: Previous studies have found that younger adults detect threatening stimuli more quickly than other types of stimuli. This study examined whether older adults also show this adaptive threat-detection advantage. On each trial in the experiment, participants saw an array consisting of nine schematic faces. Eight of the faces were neutral; the ninth was neutral, angry, happy, or sad. Participants indicated whether there was a discrepant face in each array. Both older and younger adults were significantly faster to correctly detect a discrepant face when it signaled threat than when it signaled happiness or sadness. There was no age difference in this threat-detection advantage, indicating that this automatic process is maintained among older adults.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. mather@ucsc.edu
authors.forename: Mara
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mather
authors.forename: Marisa R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Knight
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000786:Anger; D003071:Cognition; D003617:Dangerous Behavior; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013997:Time Factors