A study published in PLoS suggests that the ability to recognize emotional cues in voices accurately declines with age. This change affects both negative and positive emotions. A University of Essex research team compared the brain functioning of older and younger study participants, and they observed that older adults (people in their 60s) were less accurate at identifying emotional intentions of a speaker than younger adults (people in their 20s). In addition, electrical stimulation of certain brain areas did not have the desired “jumpstarting” effect on older participants. Researchers attribute these cognitive changes to aging of the brain.
The study examined two age-split groups of participants (N-117) over a series of experiments. The younger group consisted of participants with an average age of 21 and the other group had an average age of 67. The participants listened to 196 sentences and then were asked to determine the emotion behind them. Brain activity was monitored during this step. Younger adults were accurate 76% overall, and older adults were accurate 69% of the time.
Detection of specific emotions was also evaluated. Younger adults were more effective at detecting happiness in the emotions of a speaker. They identified this emotion correctly 53% of the time whereas older adults were only accurate 35% of the time.
Changes to the brain during the aging process can affect how a person interprets a speaker’s tone. Doctoral researcher Constantina Maltezou-Papastylianou explained the significance of this research study: “Research suggests that one of the explanations for this mismatch of our emotional intention when we say something and how it is actually received by the listener may be due to hormonal and anatomical changes that happen in a brain as we age naturally.” It may be helpful for those interacting with older adults to be mindful of how vocal emotion expressions may or may not be interpreted accurately when communicating with older people.
Sources: Eureka News Alert, PLoS
