Adult aging is associated with difficulties in recognizing negative facial expressions such as fear and anger. However, happiness and disgust recognition is generally found to be less affected. Eye-tracking studies indicate that the diagnostic features of fearful and angry faces are situated in the upper regions of the face (the eyes), and for happy and disgusted faces in the lower regions (nose and mouth). These studies also indicate age-differences in visual scanning behavior, suggesting a role for attention in emotion recognition deficits in older adults. However, because facial features can be processed extrafoveally, and expression recognition occurs rapidly, eye-tracking has been questioned as a measure of attention during emotion recognition. In this study, the Moving Window Technique (MWT) was used as an alternative to the conventional eye-tracking technology. By restricting the visual field to a moveable window, this technique provides a more direct measure of attention. We found a strong bias to explore the mouth across both age groups. Relative to young adults, older adults focused less on the left eye, and marginally more on the mouth and nose. Despite these different exploration patterns, older adults were most impaired in recognition accuracy for disgusted expressions. Correlation analysis revealed that among older adults, more mouth exploration was associated with faster recognition of both disgusted and happy expressions. As a whole, these findings suggest that in aging there are both attentional differences and perceptual deficits contributing to less accurate emotion recognition.

Working memory (WM) functioning declines in old age. Due to its impact on many higher-order cognitive functions, investigating whether training can modify WM performance has recently been of great interest. We examined the relationship between behavioral performance and neural activity following five weeks of intensive WM training in 23 healthy older adults (M = 63.7 years). 12 participants received adaptive training (i.e. individually adjusted task difficulty to bring individuals to their performance maximum), whereas the others served as active controls (i.e. fixed low-level practice). Brain activity was measured before and after training, using fMRI, while subjects performed a WM task under two difficulty conditions. Although there were no training-related changes in WM during scanning, neocortical brain activity decreased post training and these decreases were larger in the adaptive training group than in the controls under high WM load. This pattern suggests intervention-related increases in neural efficiency. Further, there were disproportionate gains in the adaptive training group in trained as well as in non-trained (i.e. attention, episodic memory) tasks assessed outside the scanner, indicating the efficacy of the training regimen. Critically, the degree of training-related changes in brain activity (i.e. neocortical decreases and subcortical increases) was related to the maximum gain score achieved during the intervention period. This relationship suggests that the decreased activity, but also specific activity increases, observed were functionally relevant.

In an fMRI study, 20 younger and 20 healthy older adults were scanned while performing a spatial working-memory task under two levels of load. On a separate occasion, the same subjects underwent PET measurements using the radioligand [¹¹C] SCH23390 to determine dopamine D₁ receptor binding potential (BP) in caudate nucleus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The fMRI study revealed a significant load modulation of brain activity (higher load > lower load) in frontal and parietal regions for younger, but not older, adults. The PET measurements showed marked age-related reductions of D₁ BP in caudate and DLPFC. Statistical control of caudate and DLPFC D₁ binding eliminated the age-related reduction in load-dependent BOLD signal in left frontal cortex, and attenuated greatly the reduction in right frontal and left parietal cortex. These findings suggest that age-related alterations in dopaminergic neurotransmission may contribute to underrecruitment of task-relevant brain regions during working-memory performance in old age.

In normal aging, people are confronted with impairment in both socioemotional and cognitive abilities. Specifically, there are age-related declines in inhibitory processes that regulate attention towards irrelevant material. In last years, the intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin has mainly been related to improvements in several domains such as emotion recognition and memory, but to date the effects of oxytocin in aging remain largely unknown. In a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated whether oxytocin facilitates inhibitory processing in older adults compared to younger adults. In total, 41 older adults (51% women; age range 65-75 years) and 37 younger adults (49% women; age range 20-30 years) participated in this study two times, receiving a single intranasal dose of 40 IU of placebo and oxytocin in randomized order 45 minutes before engaging in the task. Participants were tested approximately a month apart and mostly at the same hour during both occasions. Inhibition was measured with a Go/NoGo task which included happy and neutral faces as targets (Go stimuli) and distractors (NoGo stimuli) shown on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to press a button any time they saw a target and remain passive when encountering a distractor. Preliminary results indicate effects for happy and neutral faces, but only in the distractor condition. For happy distractors, women rejected correctly happy faces more accurately than men did, both in the placebo and oxytocin conditions. A main effect of age was observed for the neutral distractors, where older adults were more successful in inhibiting responses than younger adults during oxytocin and placebo treatments. We did not observe effects of oxytocin in the different tasks. The role of oxytocin was not clear distinguished in the tasks. In sum, our findings showed that age and gender can influence inhibition but their effects depend on the displayed emotions. This suggests that the ability to inhibit interfering distractors may remain intact despite of age and that deficits in inhibition may be selective. The role of oxytocin in inhibition needs to be further investigated since it is possible that it is context dependent.

People constantly evaluate faces to obtain social information. However, the link between aging and social evaluation of faces is not well understood. Todorov and colleagues introduced a data-driven model defined by valence and dominance as the two main components underlying social judgments of faces. They also created a stimulus set consisting of computer-generated faces which systematically vary along various social dimensions (e.g., Todorov et al., 2013, Emotion, 13, 724-38). We utilized a selection of these facial stimuli to investigate age-related differences in judgments of the following dimensions: attractiveness, competence, dominance, extraversion, likeability, threat, and trustworthiness. Participants rated how well the faces represented the intended social dimensions on 9-point scales ranging from not at all to extremely well. Results from 71 younger (YA; mean age = 23.42 years) and 60 older adults (OA; mean age = 69.19 years) showed that OA evaluated untrustworthy faces as more trustworthy, dislikeable faces as more likeable, and unattractive faces as more attractive compared to YA. OA also evaluated attractive faces as more attractive compared to YA, whereas YA did rate likeable and trustworthy faces as more likeable and trustworthy than did OA. In summary, our findings showed that OA evaluated negative social features less negatively compared to YA. This suggests that older and younger persons may use different cues for social evaluation of faces, and is in line with prior research suggesting age-related decline in the ability to recognize negative emotion expressions.

In everyday life throughout the life span, people frequently evaluate faces to obtain information crucial for social interactions. We investigated age-related differences in judgments of a wide range of social attributes based on facial appearance. Seventy-one younger and 60 older participants rated 196 computer-generated faces that systematically varied in facial features such as shape and reflectance to convey different intensity levels of seven social attributes (i.e., attractiveness, competence, dominance, extraversion, likeability, threat, and trustworthiness). Older compared to younger participants consistently gave higher attractiveness ratings to faces representing both high and low levels of attractiveness. Older participants were also less sensitive to the likeability of faces and tended to evaluate faces representing low likeability as more likable. The age groups did, however, not differ substantially in their evaluations of the other social attributes. Results are in line with previous research showing that aging is associated with preference toward positive and away from negative information and extend this positivity effect to social perception of faces.

We investigated how memory for faces and voices (presented separately and in combination) varies as a function of sex and emotional expression (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral). At encoding, participants judged the expressed emotion of items in forced-choice tasks, followed by incidental Remember/Know recognition tasks. Results from 600 participants showed that accuracy (hits minus false alarms) was consistently higher for neutral compared to emotional items, whereas accuracy for specific emotions varied across the presentation modalities (i.e., faces, voices, and face-voice combinations). For the subjective sense of recollection (“remember” hits), neutral items received the highest hit rates only for faces, whereas for voices and face-voice combinations anger and fear expressions instead received the highest recollection rates. We also observed better accuracy for items by female expressers, and own-sex bias where female participants displayed memory advantage for female faces and face-voice combinations. Results further suggest that own-sex bias can be explained by recollection, rather than familiarity, rates. Overall, results show that memory for faces and voices may be influenced by the expressions that they carry, as well as by the sex of both items and participants. Emotion expressions may also enhance the subjective sense of recollection without enhancing memory accuracy.

Normal adult aging is associated with decline in some socioemotional abilities, such as the ability to recognize emotions in others, and age-related neurobiological processes may contribute to these deficits. There is increasing evidence that the neuropeptide oxytocin plays a key role in social cognition, including emotion recognition. The mechanisms through which oxytocin promotes emotion recognition are not well understood yet, and particularly in aging. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subjects design, we investigated the extent to which a single dose of 40 IU of intranasal oxytocin facilitates emotion recognition in 40 younger (M = 24.90 yrs., SD = 2.97, 48% women) and 40 older (M = 69.70 yrs., SD = 2.99, 55% women) men and women. During two fMRI sessions, participants viewed dynamic positive and negative emotional displays. Preliminary analyses show that younger participants recognized positive and negative emotions more accurately than older participants (p < .001), with this behavioral effect not modulated by oxytocin. In the brain data, however, we found an age x treatment interaction in medial prefrontal cortex (xyz [14, 14, 6], p = .007) and superior temporal gyrus (xyz [53, 9, 2], p = .031). In particular, oxytocin (vs. placebo) reduced activity in these regions for older participants, while it enhanced activity in these regions for younger participants. In line with previous research, these findings support the notion that the effects of oxytocin vary by context and individual factors (e.g., social proficiency, age).

In recent years, the intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin has mainly been related to improvements in domains such as emotion recognition and memory, but to date the effects of oxytocin in aging remain largely unknown. A major caveat in oxytocin research is that it is almost exclusively based on young men which may reflect an inadequate picture of the potential benefits of oxytocin administration. In a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated whether oxytocin affects the recognition of positive and negative stimuli differently in younger and older adults. Forty-four older adults (50% women; M= 69.82) and 44 younger adults (50% women; M= 24.75) participated in this study two times, receiving a single intranasal dose of 40 IUs of placebo and oxytocin in randomized order 40 minutes before engaging in the task. Participants watched short videoclips where actors displayed nine emotions: neutrality, happiness, pride, interest, relief, anger, despair, sadness, and disgust. Preliminary results indicate that oxytocin-induced reductions to negative emotions were found in bilateral fusiform gyrus (Z > 4.16, Family wise error corrected, pFWE < 0.009), hippocampus (Z > 4.53, pFWE < 0.002), insula (Z > 3.69, pFWE < 0.045), and superior temporal gyrus (Z > 4.34, pFWE < 0.008), as well as, right-lateralized reductions in the amygdala (Z = 3.73, pFWE = 0.005). These findings are in line with previous studies showing decreased brain activity to negative stimuli and suggest that this mechanism in not only present in younger adults but it can also be extended to an older population. Future studies should investigate how oxytocin impacts socioemotional and cognitive processes in elderly.

The neuropeptide oxytocin plays a prominentrole in social and emotional cognition. Findings suggest that exogenous intranasal oxytocin administration facilitates emotion recognition in humans, but individual and contextual differences may have moderating effects. A major caveat in this line of work is that it is predominantly based on young males, which limits current knowledge and potential for generalizability across gender. To uncover potential gender effects, the present study included younger and older men and women. Utilizing a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated the effects of a single-dose of 40 IUs intranasal oxytocin administration on emotion recognition of dynamic positive and negative stimuli in 32 men (mean age 45.78, sd. 22.87) and 39 women (mean 47.87, sd. 47.87), 40 minutes prior to MRI scanning. Preliminary analyses show that oxytocin induced brain activity reductions during exposure to negative (relative to positive) stimuli in women, while increasing brain activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in men. We speculate that the effects of oxytocin on emotion recognition may possibly be related to emotion regulation and mentalization processes, and that oxytocin is related to potential sex-differences in these processes. The results also raise concern that previous oxytocin literature on emotion recognition may be biased as there appears to be gender-differential effects of oxytocin on brain activity across adulthood that have been underestimated. In the next stage of the present study, we will investigate the interaction effects among treatment, sex, age, and presentation modality.

Intranasal oxytocin (OT) has previously been found to increase spirituality, an effect moderated by OT-related genotypes. This pre-registered study sought to conceptually replicate and extend those findings. Using a single dose of intranasal OT vs placebo (PL), we investigated experimental treatment effects, and moderation by OT-related genotypes on spirituality, mystical experiences, and the sensed presence of a sentient being. A more exploratory aim was to test for interactions between treatment and the personality disposition absorption on these spirituality-related outcomes. A priming plus sensory deprivation procedure that has facilitated spiritual experiences in previous studies was used. The sample (N = 116) contained both sexes and was drawn from a relatively secular context. Results failed to conceptually replicate both the main effects of treatment and the treatment by genotype interactions on spirituality. Similarly, there were no such effects on mystical experiences or sensed presence. However, the data suggested an interaction between treatment and absorption. Relative to PL, OT seemed to enhance spiritual experiences in participants scoring low in absorption and dampen spirituality in participants scoring high in absorption.

Age-related differences in emotion recognition have predominantly been investigated using static pictures of facial expressions, and positive emotions beyond happiness have rarely been included. The current study instead used dynamic facial and vocal stimuli, and included a wider than usual range of positive emotions. In Task 1, younger and older adults were tested for their abilities to recognize 12 emotions from brief video recordings presented in visual, auditory, and multimodal blocks. Task 2 assessed recognition of 18 emotions conveyed by non-linguistic vocalizations (e.g., laughter, sobs, and sighs). Results from both tasks showed that younger adults had significantly higher overall recognition rates than older adults. In Task 1, significant group differences (younger > older) were only observed for the auditory block (across all emotions), and for expressions of anger, irritation, and relief (across all presentation blocks). In Task 2, significant group differences were observed for 6 out of 9 positive, and 8 out of 9 negative emotions. Overall, results indicate that recognition of both positive and negative emotions show age-related differences. This suggests that the age-related positivity effect in emotion recognition may become less evident when dynamic emotional stimuli are used and happiness is not the only positive emotion under study.

Normal adult aging is associated with a decline in socioemotional abilities, and underlying these deficits are age-related neurobiological processes. There is increasing evidence that the neuropeptide oxytocin plays a key role in social cognition, specifically in the ability to recognize emotions. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled within-subjects design, we investigated the extent to which a single dose of 40 IU of intranasal oxytocin facilitates neural recruitment in younger and older adults during negative compared to positive dynamic multimodal expressions. Based on the literature, several regions of interest were selected prior analyses: insula, amygdala, caudate head, fusiform gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, medial orbitofrontal cortex, ventral medial prefrontal cortex, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Behavioral data showed that younger adults outperformed older adults. and higher accuracy scores were observed during the PL condition compared to the OT condition. This was further qualified by the brain data, where OT induced brain activity reductions in the fusiform gyrus, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and medial orbitofrontal cortex in response to negative compared to positive expressions. Both age groups showed hypoactivity in most regions of interest during auditory stimuli compared to visual and multimodal stimuli. In line with previous research, these findings suggest that the effects of oxytocin may vary due to context, social proficiency, and individual factors (i.e. age). Future studies should target how age, presentation modality, and oxytocin interact.

Age-related differences in emotion recognition have predominantly been investigated usingstatic pictures of facial expressions. Previous studies have also mainly studied recognition ofnegative emotions, and positive emotions beyond happiness have rarely been included. Thecurrent study instead used dynamic facial and vocal stimuli, and included a wider than usualrange of positive emotions. In Task 1, younger and older adults were tested for their abilities torecognize 12 positive and negative emotions from brief video recordings presented in visual,auditory and multimodal blocks. Task 2 assessed recognition of 18 positive and negativeemotions conveyed by non-linguistic vocalizations (e.g., laughter, sobs, and sighs). Resultsfrom both tasks showed that younger adults had higher overall recognition rates than olderadults. In Task 1, significant age-related differences (younger > older) were only observed inthe auditory condition, and for relief, anger, and irritation. In Task 2, significant groupdifferences were instead observed for most of the emotions. Overall, results indicate thatrecognition of both positive and negative emotions show age-related differences. This suggeststhat the age-related positivity effect in emotion recognition may become less evident whendynamic emotional stimuli are used and happiness is not the only positive emotion under study.

Background: Computerized trainings for emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) have shown to be successful, however, are often lacking external validity. The use of still pictures, the focus on the face, and limited response sets limit generalizability of findings. Further, trainings often use between-subjectsdesigns and short time intervals between, or same items for ERA training and outcome measure. In response, we developed and evaluated a multi-modal ERA training in a randomized controlled trial.

Method: Seventy-two undergraduate students (M=24.7, SD=7.69, 75% women) signed up for the study; 68 completed all measurements. They were randomly assigned to the multimodal ERA training or one of two control conditions. The ERA outcome measure (ERAM; Laukka et al., 2015) assesses 12 emotions separately in three modalities (audio, video, audio-video) using 72 dynamic stimuli. The multimodal training consisted and immediate and extensive feedback using different items. The last training session and the ERA outcome measurement lay approximately one week apart.

Results and Conclusions: A repeated-measures ANOVA with baseline as covariate showed a main effect of training on the ERAM, F(2/63) = 8.04, p < .001, ηp2 = .20. Bonferroni-corrected posthoc tests revealed the change for the multimodal training was significantly superior to the control conditions (p=.001; p=.003). Detailed results per modality and descriptive statistics will be presented. Due to its multimodal and dynamic nature, delay between training and outcome measure and use of different items, the multimodal training is a promising tool for training ERA in different contexts, like clinical settings, assessment procedures or law enforcement training.

This study presents findings about the effectiveness of two computerized training-programs for emotion recognition accuracy that were evaluated in a double-blind randomized controlled study with repeated measures design. Both trainings are effective in training emotion recognition accuracy. The trainings and results are presented in detail and practical implications are discussed.

Introduction: Psychotherapists’ emotional and empathic competencies have a positive influence on psychotherapy outcome and alliance. However, it is doubtful whether psychotherapy education in itself leads to improvements in trainee psychotherapists’ emotion recognition accuracy (ERA), which is an essential part of these competencies.

Methods: In a randomized, controlled, double-blind study (N = 68), we trained trainee psychotherapists (57% psychodynamic therapy and 43% cognitive behavioral therapy) to detect non-verbal emotional expressions in others using standardized computerized trainings – one for multimodal emotion recognition accuracy and one for micro expression recognition accuracy – and compared their results to an active control group one week after the training (n = 60) and at the one-year follow up (n = 55). The participants trained once weekly during a three-week period. As outcome measures, we used a multimodal emotion recognition accuracy task, a micro expression recognition accuracy task and an emotion recognition accuracy task for verbal and non-verbal (combined) emotional expressions in medical settings.

Results: The results of mixed multilevel analyses suggest that the multimodal emotion recognition accuracy training led to significantly steeper increases than the other two conditions from pretest to the posttest one week after the last training session. When comparing the pretest to follow-up differences in slopes, the superiority of the multimodal training group was still detectable in the unimodal audio modality and the unimodal video modality (in comparison to the control training group), but not when considering the multimodal audio-video modality or the total score of the multimodal emotion recognition accuracy measure. The micro expression training group showed a significantly steeper change trajectory from pretest to posttest compared to the control training group, but not compared to the multimodal training group. However, the effect vanished again until the one-year follow-up. There were no differences in change trajectories for the outcome measure about emotion recognition accuracy in medical settings.

Discussion: We conclude that trainee psychotherapists’ emotion recognition accuracy can be effectively trained, especially multimodal emotion recognition accuracy, and suggest that the changes in unimodal emotion recognition accuracy (audio-only and video-only) are long-lasting. Implications of these findings for the psychotherapy education are discussed.

Nonverbal emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) is a central feature of successful communication and interaction, and is of importance for many professions. We developed and evaluated two ERA training programs—one focusing on dynamic multimodal expressions (audio, video, audio-video) and one focusing on facial micro expressions. Sixty-seven subjects were randomized to one of two experimental groups (multimodal, micro expression) or an active control group (emotional working memory task). Participants trained once weekly with a brief computerized training program for three consecutive weeks. Pre-post outcome measures consisted of a multimodal ERA task, a micro expression recognition task, and a task about patients' emotional cues. Post measurement took place approximately a week after the last training session. Non-parametric mixed analyses of variance using the Aligned Rank Transform were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the training programs. Results showed that multimodal training was significantly more effective in improving multimodal ERA compared to micro expression training or the control training; and the micro expression training was significantly more effective in improving micro expression ERA compared to the other two training conditions. Both pre-post effects can be interpreted as large. No group differences were found for the outcome measure about recognizing patients' emotion cues. There were no transfer effects of the training programs, meaning that participants only improved significantly for the specific facet of ERA that they had trained on. Further, low baseline ERA was associated with larger ERA improvements. Results are discussed with regard to methodological and conceptual aspects, and practical implications and future directions are explored.