Abstract
Facial emotion detection declines when stimuli are presented in more distal peripheral relative to more central foveal and parafoveal locations. Younger and older adults display similar decline in facial emotion detection with increased display distance from the center of the visual field when the stimuli used include a broad range of spatial frequencies. The current study examined younger and older adults’ emotion detection performance when low or high spatial frequencies have been filtered from the facial stimuli. Younger (n = 37, ages 18–29) and older (n = 40, ages 61–80) adults observed either angry and neutral or happy and neutral facial expressions presented at 5, 10, and 15 degrees from the center of the visual field. Spatial frequency filters were applied to the images so that participants observed stimuli consisting of broad, low, or high spatial frequencies at each location. Happiness was more easily detected than anger, and, as a result, happiness detection was more greatly impacted by stimulus distance from the center of the visual field than was anger. Likewise, emotion was more easily detected in broad and low spatial frequency stimuli at peripheral locations than in high spatial frequency stimuli. Younger adults outperformed older adults at detecting happiness and anger in high spatial frequency facial stimuli presented at 5 and 10 degrees from the center of the visual field, but not at 15 degrees, where both age groups were equally poor at detecting emotion. Younger and older adults did not differ in their ability to detect anger and happiness in broad and low spatial frequency expressions. Overall, these findings suggest that peripheral emotion detection relies more heavily on low spatial frequency information in facial images, and that this tendency is maintained throughout adulthood.
Acknowledgement: Western Kentucky University Graduate School