ORLANDO, Fla. - On the surface, older people might seem to show feelings less than the young, but their emotions might actually be more intense, according to a new study.

Research that measured the responses of 30 young, middle-aged and older people to a series of slides with emotional content found that though the elders had less pronounced physical responses, such as changes in their heart rate, they reported more feelings than young people did.

The findings could help doctors better assess older people's emotional state when prescribing antidepressants, said Donald Powell of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Columbia, S.C., who reported on the study at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

He also said it could be helpful to know that, for example, "at a funeral, an older person who seems stoic and is not showing a lot of grief may be feeling grief much more deeply than the younger person."

Researchers have long known that physical responses to emotional experiences decline with age. But that decline coincides with an actual increase in emotional intensity, the study indicated. During the study, young, middle-aged and older people looked at the slides and rated how happy or sad, calm or excited they felt.

Why would emotional intensity increase with age? Previous research findings show that older people tend to lose social connections as they age, and therefore invest even more emotion in those connections that remain.

Or in general, Powell said, "There may be some kind of developmental process that takes place in which older people feel things more intensely."

The variation in responses during the study, he said, indicates that "something happens between 30 and 40." As for why physiological responses to emotional stimuli decline with age, he said, it seems to be because older people tend to filter things more through their richer experience before reacting.

He said young people felt more emotional intensity than the old people only in one area: the three slides meant to trigger sexual arousal.

In another study on emotion and age, researchers from the University of Montreal reported that the brains of 8- and 9-year-old girls had to work far harder to suppress sadness than did the brains of adults.

When the girls were asked to watch sad film clips and then suppress the sadness they evoked, 11 regions of their brains showed heightened activity, as compared with two regions in adults. The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging, which can show which parts of the brain are activated by certain tasks.

Mario Beauregard, the researcher who reported the study, said that "for children, the circuitry is there, but it requires much more work."