Age-related positivity effect: Distinct mechanisms for lexical access and episodic memory of emotional words.

The age-related positivity effect is the tendency of older adults to preferentially process positive information over negative information when compared to younger adults (e.g., Reed & Carstensen, 2012).

The age-related positivity effect: forgetting the negative and/or remembering the positive? An inter-task study.

A growing number of studies have shown that when compared to younger adults, older adults are better at recalling positive information than negative information. However, it is not yet clear whether this age-related positivity effect relies on a greater ability to recall positive information or on a decreased ability to recall negative information. We therefore aimed to study the specific mechanisms underlying the age-related positivity effect using different memory tasks.

[The age-related positivity effect: forgetting the negative and/or remembering the positive? An inter-task study].

A growing number of studies have shown that, compared to young adults, older adults better remember positive information than negative information. However, it is not clear whether this age-related positivity effect relies on an increase in positive information memory and/or on a decrease in negative information memory. Thus, we aimed to study the specific mechanisms underlying the age-related positivity effect in different memory tasks.