Emotion and Cognitive Processes

Question 1

Emotion

Answer 1

Emotions involve:
-Physiological responses
-Overt behaviors
-Conscious feelings
Function: marshal body’s resources to respond to important situations.

Question 2

Valence

Answer 2

*is the emotional vividness of an object, person, or word

Emotional valence has been show to affect performance even on the most simple of task such as a serial reaction time task

serial reaction time task: participants on this task respond as rapidly as possible to stimuli typically;

Question 3

Ekman and Friesnan

Answer 3

indicate that emotions are universal (innate), but appropriate display differs by culture (nurture).

Question 4

Ekman’s Universal Emotions

Answer 4

Happiness
Sadness
Anger
Fear
Disgust
Surprise

Question 5

Arousal

Answer 5

bodily responses that prepare to face threat (fight-or-flight response).

Responses Include:

• Increased blood flow to muscles
• Increased respiration
• Depressed digestion
• Depressed immune function

Question 6

Bodily Changes by autonomous nervous system (ANS)

Answer 6

• Sympathetic division of ANS becomes active (especially cardiovascular system).
• Increased respiration is needed for high oxygen saturation

Question 7

How ANS processes of bodily changes

Answer 7

ANS sends signal to adrenal glands, which secrete stress hormones, including:
-Epinephrine (or adrenaline) which…
Quickly increases heart rate, blood pressure, respiration.
- Glucocorticoids (including cortisol)

Question 8

James Lange Theory

Answer 8

-James-Lange theory of emotion = see the danger, bodily reaction (increased breathing), and then feel fear.

Stimulus → Bodily Response → Feelings of Emotions

Question 9

Modern Emotional Theory

Answer 9

Modern emotional theory = see the danger, bodily reaction, interpret the danger based on the context, & then you feel fear.
*Look at notes for diagram

Question 10

Emotions and Encoding of Memory

Answer 10

emotions strengthen explicit memories

Question 11

Flashbulb Memories

Answer 11

emotional-event memory quickly formed; preserve vivid detail.

• Shocking event has “consequentiality” or personal significance.
• Act like “flash photographs.”

Question 12

Zajonic and Lazarus

on specific role of emotion in cognition

Answer 12

• Zajonc believed emotions occurred before and were independent of cognition
• Lazarus proposed that cognition was used to understand emotion

Question 13

Circumplex Model

Answer 13

• used the axes of valence and arousal to interpret emotional state
• This allows for the parsing of emotional responses due to context and assessment of emotional levels

Question 14

Approach - Withdraw model of cognition

Answer 14

It is a spectrum model

-Some emotions are approach emotions (e.g. happiness)
We approach things that make us happy

-Some emotions require withdraw
Avoiding depressing movies or traumatic new stories

Question 15

Recovered Memory

Answer 15

are generally thought to be false

Loftus and colleageus created false memories by using plausible childhood events, family support, doctored photos.

• may involve the use of semantic memory and schemas to create a false episodic memory

Question 16

Learned Helplessness

Answer 16

Learned helplessness is the conditioning to not escape a painful or traumatic stimulus (or situation) even if an means of escape is available and obvious

Question 17

Extreme Stress and memory

Answer 17

• Extreme stress can disrupt the hippocampus, resulting in an incomplete memory
• Such memories may be vulnerable to distortion.
  
  • Lab research suggests memories recovered during guided imagery or hypnosis can be distorted.

*Further understanding of the brain substrates of false memories may help identify recovered memories.

Question 18

Papez’s findings on lesions and emotional processing

Answer 18

• Papez (1937) sees that lesions cause emotional impairment; ***Look in notes for more info.
• **” Discovered we have multiple structures processing emotion

Question 19

Emotional structures known as limit system

Answer 19

• Emotions involve many regions of the brain (limbic system and adjacent areas).
• Amygdala is critical for emotional processing.

Question 20

Stress and Learning

Answer 20

Low levels of stress can improve memory.

• Mild stress leads to moderate arousal.

-Chronic high stress and arousal can impair encoding and recall.
Stress hormones may overexcite hippocampus.

-Unclear how much stress is too much.
Different people = different breaking points.

Question 21

Hippocampus and role in emotion

Answer 21

-Area associated with learning

Question 22

Hypothalamus and role in emotion

Answer 22

fight or flight response

Question 23

Amygdala and role in emotion

Answer 23

initiate emotion

Question 24

Chronic stress and too little stress

Answer 24

Chronic stress very terrible for us but having too little stress is bad for us in preformance.
Bc… bad reactions times, make mistakes.

-Chronic stress and how some people handle it better than others: basleine plays a role—> different jobs have different levels of stress.

Question 25

Yerkes Dodson Law

Answer 25

• Refer to notes for model
• Moderate level of alertness or arousal is the best spot
• Too high levels of stress, too stressed and panicky so emotions playing a larger role, more seen to make false alarms.
• Low levels of stress not as alert, so causes people to make errors, bad at noticing things.

Question 26

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Answer 26

Extreme reaction to very traumatic events

Noted with hyperarousal, avoidance, and emotional numbness

The hippocampus is involved in likelihood of PTSD

*Stress response to abnormal stress mission.. has a traumatizing nature to it…“Overly reactive”