title: Preserved emotional modulation of motor response time despite psychomotor slowing in young-old adults.
abstract: Whereas aging affects cognitive and psychomotor processes negatively, the impact of aging on emotional processing is less clear. Using an "old-new" binary decision task, we ascertained the modulation of response latencies after presentation of neutral and emotional pictures in "young" (M = 27.1 years) and "young-old" adults with a mean age below 60 (M = 57.7 years). Stimuli varied on valence (pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant) and arousal (high and low) dimensions. Young-old adults had significantly longer reaction times. However, young and young-old adults showed the exact same pattern of response time modulation by emotional stimuli: Response latencies were longer for high-arousal than for low-arousal pictures and longer for negative than for positive or neutral stimuli. This result suggests that the specific effects of implicitly processed emotional valence and arousal information on behavioral response time are preserved in young-old adults despite significant age-related psychomotor decline.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA. thomas.haelbig@charite.de
authors.forename: Thomas D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Hälbig
authors.forename: Judy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Creighton
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Assuras
authors.forename: Joan C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Borod
authors.forename: Winona
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Tse
authors.forename: Jean-Michel
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Gracies
authors.forename: Nancy S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Foldi
authors.forename: Horacio
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kaufmann
authors.forename: C Warren
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Olanow
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Voustianiouk
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001143:Arousal; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult