title: What's good for the goose is not good for the gander: Age and gender differences in scanning emotion faces.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Research indicates that older adults' (≥60 years) emotion recognition is worse than that of young adults, young and older men's emotion recognition is worse than that of young and older women (respectively), older adults' looking at mouths compared with eyes is greater than that of young adults. Nevertheless, previous research has not compared older men's and women's looking at emotion faces so the present study had two aims: (a) to examine whether the tendency to look at mouths is stronger amongst older men compared with older women and (b) to examine whether men's mouth looking correlates with better emotion recognition.
  
  
  METHODS
  We examined the emotion recognition abilities and spontaneous gaze patterns of young (n = 60) and older (n = 58) males and females as they labelled emotion faces.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Older men spontaneously looked more to mouths than older women, and older men's looking at mouths correlated with their emotion recognition, whereas women's looking at eyes correlated with their emotion recognition.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings are discussed in relation to a growing body of research suggesting both age and gender differences in response to emotional stimuli and the differential efficacy of mouth and eyes looking for men and women.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK.
authors.forename: Sam B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Hutton
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Ted
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ruffman
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005123:Eye; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009055:Mouth; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012737:Sex Factors
keywords: Emotion recognition; Gender differences; Visual scanning