From Emotional Detection of Dynamic Stimuli to Facial Identity Recognition: Age Difference in the Processing of Partially Occluded Faces

Age-related differences in facial identity recognition and emotion categorization are well established, but whether these differences extend to dynamic stimuli remains underexplored. We compared younger and older adults’ performances in dynamic emotion categorization (phase 1) and identity recognition (phase 2) tasks, incorporating different types of facial occlusion to test their influence on both tasks. Stimuli included whole faces and two types of occlusion (surgical masks, white rectangles). In phase 1, participants observed videos of neutral expressions transitioning to emotional ones and categorized the emerging emotion. In phase 2, static neutral faces were judged as either previously seen or new. Occlusion impaired performances in both groups, with older adults struggling more in emotion categorization. Age had no effect on identity recognition, and occluded faces were better remembered than whole faces. The findings highlight the interplay between emotion processing and identity recognition, stressing the importance of using dynamic stimuli in aging research.