| The present study used a cross-splicing method to explore whether andhow aging affects the recognition of emotional speeches. Two experimentswere set to better understand this issue. A behavioral experiment was designedto quest whether aging has a negative influence on the process of emotionalprosody recognition. Thirty elderly participants (ages50-60) were invited intothe experiment as the elder-group and thirty younger participants (ages18-28)as the younger-group. The results indicated that elderly participants' reactiontime was delayed in the emotion category task compared to youngparticipants. The second experiment used a cross-splicing method to explorehow aging affects the recognition of emotional prosodies (e.g., angry or happy)as they unfold in time. To better understand the time course of the processing,event-related potentials (ERPs) obtained from9elderly (ages50-60) and10younger participants (ages19-24) in a probe verification task were analyzed.The results confirmed that categorization of emotional prosodies can bedetected rapidly in early negativity. Most importantly, elderly participantswere delayed in early positivity compared to younger participants, revealingan age-related defect during early emotion information transition into furtherprocessing. |
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