Cognition & emotion 2

Question 1

Does affect require cognition? The primacy debate

Answer 1

No
Zajonc (1984)- ‘affect and cognition are separate and partially independent systems’
Cognitive processes not necessary to produce affective response to stimulus

Question 2

Mere exposure experiment (Zajonc)

Answer 2

Presented items subliminally to participants
Participants then make judgements to stimuli set presented above plus new/novel stimuli
Results: patients gave higher liking ratings to perviously ‘seen’ stimuli
Suggests an emotional response despite no cognitive processing of subliminal stimuli
Emotion excedes cognition so cognition not required for an emotional experience

Question 3

Primacy debate

Answer 3

Does emotion precede cognition?

Question 4

Murphy & Zajonc (1993) priming experiment

Answer 4

Ratings of liking influenced by the affective/emotional primes but only when presented for 4 ms (not enough time to realise effect of prime)
At 1 sec, cognitive processes kick in and have time to realise response is due to prime not stimuli

Question 5

Does affect require cognition? The cognition/emotion debate

Answer 5

Yes (Zajonc)
Cognitive appraisal is not required to experience an emotion
‘Cognitive appraisal is an integral feature of all emotional states’

Question 6

Lazarus’ appraisal theory

Answer 6

Cognitive appraisal- the interpretation of a situation that helps determine the nature and intensity of the emotional response

Question 7

Speisman, Lazarus, Mordkoff & Davidson (1964)

Answer 7

Ps show anxiety evoking films, stress/arousal measured during viewing
Showed that manipulating appraisals influences an emotional experience

Question 8

Cognitive appraisal theory

Answer 8

Primary appraisal -> secondary appraisal -> reappraisal

Question 9

Appraisals

Answer 9

Evaluation of a situation relevant to our goals, concerns & well being

Question 10

Primary appraisal

Answer 10

Identify the stimulus/situation as to whether there is a threat to personal well-being
Significance/ meaning of the event to the individual
eg.Motivational relevance
Motivational congruence

Question 11

Secondary apraisasal

Answer 11

Determine which personal resources are available to cope with a situation
eg. Accountability, problem-focused coping potential, emotion-focused coping potential, future expectancy

Question 12

Reappraisals

Answer 12

Monitor 1º and 2º appraisals and modify if necessary

Question 13

Attention and emotion

Answer 13

Prior to coding information into memory, we need to attend stimuli
Evidence suggests that attentive processes are biased by emotion

Question 14

Cognitive biases

Answer 14

Attention bias-selective attention to emotionally related stimuli present at the same time as neutral ones
Interpretative bias- a tendency to interperet a situation or ambiguous situation in a negative way

Question 15

Stroop tasks, normal vs emotional

Answer 15

Normal troop- shown names of colours in congruent or incongruent ink and asked to report colour of in, slower on incongruent trials
Emotional stoop-shown both emotional and neutral words in different coloured inks- asked to name ink colour

Question 16

Stroop tasks- anxiety related attentional bias

Answer 16

Examine attention to word meanings and measures trait anxiety
The emotional meaning of a word captures attention away from the revilement stimulus (greater effect on high anxious individuals)

Question 17

Dot-probe attentional task

Answer 17

Examines early allocation of attention
Emotional threat and neutral information presented side by side
Location of threat controlled
Examine speed of responses when dot occupies location of each type of stimulus
Results: shows positive bias but reverse is true for anxious patients, slower for neutral words
Anxious patients allocate attention to threat words- attentional bias for threat

Question 18

Eysenck, MacLeod & Mathews (1987)

Answer 18

Interpretive bias
Presented homophones auditorialy, Ps write down words
High anxiety Ps write down more threatening word
Critiques: maybe both options were available but high anxiety Ps chose to write down the negative one

Question 19

Richards & French (1992)

Answer 19

Used homographs ( dual meaning, same spelling) in priming lexical der ecision task
If prime and target are related in meaning then responses are fast
Results: greater priming effect for target words related;ated to negative interpretation of the prime for high anxiety Ps so interpretive bias shown

Question 20

Basic visual search paradigm

Answer 20

Search display has target and distractors
The properties of the target or distractors is varies

Question 21

If reaction times for a target don’t vary as a function of a set size then the the search is assumed to be …

Answer 21

parrallel

Question 22

Target detection is more difficult when …

Answer 22

target features are shared with the distractors

Question 23

Detection of threatening faces Öhman (1999)

Answer 23

Suggests evolutionary adaptation to detect threat quickly and automatically

Question 24

Face in a crowd effect

Answer 24

Suggests anger superiority effect
Takes less time to detect an angry face in happy distractors than a happy face in angry distractors