Differential Effects of Angry Faces on Working Memory Updating in Younger and Older Adults

Research suggests that cognition-emotion interactions change with age. In the present study, younger and older adults completed a 2-back task, and the effects of negative stimuli were analyzed as a function of their status in the n-back sequence. Older adults were found to benefit more from angry than from neutral probes relative to younger adults. However, they were slower when lures were angry and less accurate when lures and probes had the same emotion. The results suggest that recollection of the n-back sequence was reduced in older adults, making them more susceptible to the facilitating and impairing effects of negative emotion.