Older adults have been found to favor positive stimuli over negative stimuli; further, developing a negative preference may be a cognitively demanding process. In the present study, we focused on the joint effects task self‐relevance and cognitive load have on older adults' emotional information preferences when performing decision‐making. To examine this, we used multi‐attribute decision tasks and process‐tracing procedure to measure their searching process. The study composed of a 2 (age: young/old) × 2 (cognitive load: load/non‐load) × 3 (attribute valence: positive/neutral/negative) × 3 (task self‐relevance: high/medium/low) mixed design. Sixty‐one young adults and 62 older adults viewed 5 (alternatives) × 5 (attributes) decision matrices that contained positive, negative, and neutral information, with the total views and mean time spent viewing each different valence (positive, negative, and neutral information) set as dependent variables. The results indicated that both young and old adults have no emotional information preference in regard to self‐relevance. When under no cognitive load, both positive and negative information were viewed more than neutral information; however, under cognitive load, preference for negative information decreased; this effect size was more robust in older adults. There was also a main effect of self‐relevance on total views and mean checking time, with attributes concerning higher self‐relevance tasks being more likely to attract attention. Older adults exhibited a consistent hedonic focus, even in highly self‐relevant contexts; however, this effect disappeared under cognitive load. Overall, the findings suggest that cognitive resources play an important role in emotional information processing during decision processes.

中文翻译：

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认知负荷和自我相关性在情绪信息搜索中对决策的作用

已经发现，老年人倾向于积极的刺激而不是消极的刺激。此外，发展消极的偏好可能是一个认知上苛刻的过程。在本研究中，我们集中于任务自我相关性和认知负荷对老年人在执行决策时的情感信息偏好的共同影响。为了对此进行研究，我们使用了多属性决策任务和过程跟踪过程来衡量其搜索过程。该研究由2（年龄：年轻人/老年人）×2（认知负荷：负荷/非负荷）×3（属性价：正/中/负）×3（任务自我相关性：高/中/低）组成）混合设计。61位年轻人和62位老年人查看了包含正，负和中性信息的5个（替代）×5个（属性）决策矩阵，总视图和平均花费在查看每个不同价数（正，负和中性信息）上的时间设置为因变量。结果表明，无论年轻人，老年人都没有关于自我相关性的情感信息偏好。在没有认知负担的情况下，正面和负面信息都比中立信息看得更多；然而，在认知负担下，对负面信息的偏好降低了；在老年人中，这种效应的大小更为明显。自我相关性对总体视图和均值检查时间也有主要影响，与更高自我相关性任务相关的属性更可能引起关注。即使在高度自我相关的环境中，老年人也表现出一致的享乐主义焦点。然而，这种作用在认知负荷下消失了。总体，