How Different Negative Emotions Affect Young and Older Adults’ Arithmetic Performance in Addition and Multiplication Problems?

Abstract

We examined how different types of negative emotional states (anger, disgust, sadness) influence arithmetic performance, and whether this influence is modulated by the types of arithmetic operations and moderated by adults’ age. Younger and older adults verified addition and multiplication problems that were superimposed on emotionally negative (angry, disgust, sad) or neutral images. Emotionally negative images were matched on both arousal and valence. We found that different negative emotional stimuli had different effects on arithmetic performance. We also found that these effects differed for addition and multiplication problems, and were moderated by participants’ age. More specifically: (a) younger adults were more impaired by sad stimuli than older adults while solving addition problems; (b) older adults but not younger adults solved multiplication problems more slowly following disgust and sad stimuli than emotionally neutral stimuli and (c) anger stimuli did not affect younger and older adults’ performance while solving addition and multiplication problems. These findings shed important lights on how different negative emotional stimuli influence arithmetic performance and how this influence changes with age during adulthood.