Sequential modulations of emotional effects on cognitive performance in young and older adults

The present study brings evidence of a new type of emotional processes, namely sequential modulations of emotional effects, and how these processes change during aging. Sequential modulations of emotional effects refer to the changes in emotional effects (i.e., differences in performance between current negative and positive items) as a function of emotional valence of the immediately preceding items. Young (18–30-year-olds) and older adults (62–89-year-olds) were presented neutral, positive, and negative pictures and had to determine whether each of these pictures included humans or not. Differences in emotional effects were found after negative and neutral items whereas they were absent after positive items in young adults. Moreover, age-related differences in sequential modulations of emotional effects revealed that young and older adults modulated emotional effects to the same extent after negative items, but older adults showed reverse sequential modulations after positive items. These findings have important implications to further our understanding of the sequential modulations of emotion during aging.