Exploring emotional expression recognition in aging adults using the Moving Window Technique

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.

成年衰老与识别恐惧、愤怒等负面面部表情的障碍相关。但现有研究普遍发现，快乐与厌恶表情的识别受衰老的影响相对较小。眼动追踪（eye-tracking）研究表明，恐惧与愤怒表情的诊断性特征位于面部上部（眼部区域），而快乐与厌恶表情的诊断性特征则位于面部下部（鼻与嘴部区域）。这类研究还发现了视觉扫描行为的年龄差异，提示注意力在老年人的表情识别障碍中发挥了作用。不过，由于面部特征可经中央凹外通路处理，且表情识别过程极为迅速，眼动追踪作为情绪识别过程中注意力的测量指标受到了质疑。本研究采用移动窗口技术（Moving Window Technique, MWT）作为传统眼动追踪技术的替代方案。该技术通过将视野限制在可移动的窗口内，能够更直接地测量注意力水平。我们发现，两个年龄组的被试均表现出对嘴部区域的强烈探索偏好。与年轻成年人相比，老年人对左眼区域的关注更少，而对嘴部与鼻部区域的关注则略有增加。尽管存在上述不同的扫描模式，老年人在厌恶表情的识别准确率上受损最为严重。相关分析结果显示，在老年人群体中，对嘴部区域的探索越多，厌恶与快乐表情的识别速度越快。综合来看，本研究结果表明，衰老过程中注意力差异与感知缺陷共同导致了表情识别准确率的下降。