Positive memory bias and trait anxiety across the adult lifespan: a pre-registered investigation of midlife specificity and neural mechanisms

This project examines whether object recognition positivity bias, the tendency to better recognize objects encountered in positive versus negative emotional contexts, is associated with trait anxiety in midlife adults. We use data from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (CamCAN) dataset, a population-derived lifespan sample of 305 adults aged 19 to 88 years. Object recognition positivity bias is operationalized as the difference in discriminability between objects studied with positive versus negative backgrounds (ObjDprPos minus ObjDprNeg). Anxiety is measured using the HADS anxiety subscale. Midlife adults are defined as the third age quartile of the sample (approximately 55-70 years). We expect to find a significant correlation between object recognition positivity bias and trait anxiety in midlife adults, based on theoretical predictions from socioemotional selectivity theory that midlife represents a period of intensifying regulatory motivation in which emotional memory processes become increasingly relevant to affective wellbeing. This pre-registration covers only this primary behavioral hypothesis. Any additional analyses conducted after this registration are exploratory and will be reported as hypothesis-generating.