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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Peter GallagherORCiD, Dr Richard Porter
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Copyright © 2024 Gray, Moot, Frampton, Douglas, Gallagher, Jordan, Carter, Inder, Crowe, McIntosh and Porter. Introduction: Emotion processing is an essential part of interpersonal relationships and social interactions. Changes in emotion processing have been found in both mood disorders and in aging, however, the interaction between such factors has yet to be examined in detail. This is of interest due to the contrary nature of the changes observed in existing research - a negativity bias in mood disorders versus a positivity effect with aging. It is also unclear how changes in non-emotional cognitive function with aging and in mood disorders, interact with these biases. Methods and results: In individuals with mood disorders and in healthy control participants, we examined emotional processing and its relationship to age in detail. Data sets from two studies examining facial expression recognition were pooled. In one study, 98 currently depressed individuals (either unipolar or bipolar) were compared with 61 healthy control participants, and in the other, 100 people with bipolar disorder (in various mood states) were tested on the same facial expression recognition task. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to examine the effects of age and mood disorder diagnosis alongside interactions between individual emotion, age, and mood disorder diagnosis. A positivity effect was associated with increasing age which was evident irrespective of the presence of mood disorder or current mood episode. Discussion: Results suggest a positivity effect occurring at a relatively early age but with no evidence of a bias toward negative emotions in mood disorder or specifically, in depressed episodes. The positivity effect in emotional processing in aging appears to occur even within people with mood disorders. Further research is needed to understand how this fits with negative biases seen in previous studies in mood disorders.
Author(s): Gray V, Moot W, Frampton CMA, Douglas KM, Gallagher P, Jordan J, Carter JD, Inder M, Crowe M, McIntosh VVW, Porter RJ
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Frontiers in Psychology
Year: 2024
Volume: 15
Online publication date: 26/01/2024
Acceptance date: 09/01/2024
Date deposited: 20/02/2024
ISSN (electronic): 1664-1078
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
URL: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1204204
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1204204
Data Access Statement: The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.
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