The effect of font emphasis on emotional words and its aging changes during sentence reading: evidence from fNIRS

Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2024-04-11

Lin, Lvfeng Zhang, Shengnan Wang, Zhengxing Wu, Yingying Xie, Hanying

Abstract： Font emphasis has been demonstrated to attract attention and to facilitate language processing at all levels in young adults, and it may also help the elderly reduce the negative effects of declining working memory and visual ability. While there are considerable discrepancies in emotional information processing between the elderly and younger adults and the previous findings have been almost focused on neutral sentences, the present study aimed to examine the effects of font emphasis on emotional information processing and its aging changes. In the study, the author designed a sentence reading task in which sentences were embedded with keywords. The experimental sentences consist of 8-13 words, and the keywords which the emphasis status was controlled were all two-word verbs. In the emphasized condition, the keywords were presented in red font, and the other words in the sentence were presented in black font. In the control condition, all words of the sentence were presented in black font. In addition, the emotionality of the keywords was manipulated to be negative, positive, and neutral. We recruited 24 older adults (60-68 years old) and an equal number of younger adults (18-29 years old) to record prefrontal cortex activation while they read. In the experiment, sentences were presented word by word using a fixed-step paradigm. And the hemodynamic responses of the participants’ prefrontal cortex were recorded by using the LIGHTNIRS. Both HbO and HbR data were analyzed. The data were processed by using the NIRS_KIT software, and task-related β-values were calculated for the different conditions using general linear model. To obtain a clearer picture of the extent to which brain activation is enhanced during emotional processing, the β-values in the emotional condition were subtracted from those in the neutral condition. The HbR results showed that there was a significant interaction among age, emotion and font status in channels 8 and 16 (located at the right ventrolateral prefrontal lobe; rVLPFC). Further analyses revealed that in the control condition, compared to young adults, older adults showed a trend toward lower activation on the rVLPFC when reading positive words and higher activation when reading negative words. In the emphasized condition, the activation differences between older and younger adults disappeared. By observing the data, it can be found that when reading positive words, font emphasis leads to an upward trend in the activation of this brain region in older people and a decrease in activation in younger people; when reading negative words, font emphasis leads to a decrease in activation intensity in older people and an increase in activation intensity in younger people. These findings provide evidence that font emphasis, dependent on rVLPFC, captures attention in a bottom-up manner during emotional information processing, enhances readers’ appraisal and integration of emotional information, and facilitates controlled processing of emotional information. Furthermore, font emphasis has a different mechanism for older versus younger adults. Font emphasis produces positive affective effects in older adults, but stimulates negative affective preferences in younger adults.

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

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