1. Affective Norms for Italian Words in Older Adults: Age Differences in Ratings of Valence, Arousal and Dominance
- Author
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Nicola Mammarella, Maria Montefinese, Beth Fairfield, Ettore Ambrosini, Fairfield, Beth, Ambrosini, Ettore, Mammarella, Nicola, and Montefinese, Maria
- Subjects
Self-assessment ,Male ,Vocabulary ,Aging ,Self-Assessment ,Research Validity ,Physiology ,Emotions ,Social Sciences ,lcsh:Medicine ,adaptation ,stimulus ,Chi Square Tests ,Developmental psychology ,experience ,0302 clinical medicine ,Cognition ,Elderly ,Learning and Memory ,Mathematical and Statistical Techniques ,discrete emotional categorie ,Surveys and Questionnaires ,anew ,Medicine and Health Sciences ,Ethnicities ,Psychology ,lcsh:Science ,media_common ,Language ,Multidisciplinary ,list ,05 social sciences ,acquisition ,Middle Aged ,Research Assessment ,Italian People ,Italy ,self evaluation ,Physical Sciences ,Female ,Valence arousal ,Arousal ,Statistics (Mathematics) ,Research Article ,media_common.quotation_subject ,recognition memory ,Affect (psychology) ,Research and Analysis Methods ,050105 experimental psychology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Memory ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Valence (psychology) ,Statistical Methods ,Statistical Hypothesis Testing ,Aged ,Age differences ,lcsh:R ,Reproducibility of Results ,Biology and Life Sciences ,Linguistics ,Affect ,Age Groups ,People and Places ,Cognitive Science ,Population Groupings ,lcsh:Q ,Physiological Processes ,Organism Development ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Mathematics ,self-assessment mannequin ,Developmental Biology ,Neuroscience - Abstract
In line with the dimensional theory of emotional space, we developed affective norms for words rated in terms of valence, arousal and dominance in a group of older adults to complete the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for Italian and to aid research on aging. Here, as in the original Italian ANEW database, participants evaluated valence, arousal, and dominance by means of the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in a paper-and-pencil procedure. We observed high split-half reliabilities within the older sample and high correlations with the affective ratings of previous research, especially for valence, suggesting that there is large agreement among older adults within and across-languages. More importantly, we found high correlations between younger and older adults, showing that our data are generalizable across different ages. However, despite this across-ages accord, we obtained age-related differences on three affective dimensions for a great number of words. In particular, older adults rated as more arousing and more unpleasant a number of words that younger adults rated as moderately unpleasant and arousing in our previous affective norms. Moreover, older participants rated negative stimuli as more arousing and positive stimuli as less arousing than younger participants, thus leading to a less-curved distribution of ratings in the valence by arousal space. We also found more extreme ratings for older adults for the relationship between dominance and arousal: older adults gave lower dominance and higher arousal ratings for words rated by younger adults with middle dominance and arousal values. Together, these results suggest that our affective norms are reliable and can be confidently used to select words matched for the affective dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance across younger and older participants for future research in aging.
- Published
- 2017