As it happens to us, attentional bias towards threat is diminished in aged monkeys

Santistevan, Anthony, Olivia Fiske, Gilda Moadab, Derek Isaacowitz, and Eliza Bliss-Moreau. 2022. “See No Evil: Attentional Bias Towards Threat Is Diminished in Aged Monkeys.” PsyArXiv. November 30. doi:10.31234/osf.io/2zth7

Abstract: Prior evidence demonstrates that relative to younger adults, older human adults exhibit attentional biases towards positive and/or away from negative socioaffective stimuli (i.e., the age-related positivity effect). Whether or not the effect is phylogenetically conserved is currently unknown and its biopsychosocial origins are debated. To address this gap, we evaluated how visual processing of socioaffective stimuli differs in aged, compared to middle-aged, rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) using eye-tracking in two experimental designs that are directly comparable to those historically used for evaluating attentional biases in humans. Results of our study demonstrate that while younger rhesus possess robust attentional biases towards threatening pictures of conspecifics faces, aged animals evidence no such bias. Critically, these biases emerged only when threatening faces were paired with neutral and not ostensibly ‘positive’ faces, suggesting social context modifies the effect. Results of our study suggest evolutionarily shared mechanisms drive age-related decline in visual biases towards negative stimuli in aging across primate species.

As it happens to us, attentional bias towards threat is diminished in aged monkeys