Age differences in Inattentional blindness to emotional stimulus

Abstract

Aging is associated with declines in attention, but also with a tendency to attend to emotionally positive information. When attention is engaged in an ongoing task, an unexpected stimulus may not be detected, resulting in inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness increases in older age, due to reduced attentional capacity. In the present study, age differences in inattentional blindness to emotional unexpected stimulus were investigated. Younger and older adults completed an inattentional blindness task in which a positive and a negative unexpected stimulus appeared concurrently while attention was engaged in a counting task. Overall, the findings replicated previous results showing greater inattentional blindness for older adults. While both groups were more likely to detect the positive stimulus, this tendency was stronger in older adults. The participants who detected only the positive stimulus were more likely to be the older ones. There were no group differences in the detection of the negative stimulus. The results are partially consistent with age-related positivity effect, demonstrating that older adults’ positive mood affects their attentional filter. The results emphasize the role of emotional and motivational changes in older age and show that higher inattentional blindness for older adults cannot solely be explained by reductions in attentional capacity. © 2023 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.