Emotion processing: bottom-up effects of emotions on cognitive processes Flashcards
What is attention?
A set of cognitive functions that select and prioritise information for further processing
Why is there a selection of the information in attention?
Because of the limits in our cognitive abilities to process all the information
How does the adaptative evolutionary perspective explain why emotional stimuli ‘grab’ our attention?
For survival
- emotional stimuli are likely to filter through the selection process to be processed further, physiologically and cognitively
- to enable us to act accordingly in present and future situations
What is the ‘pop-out’ effect of emotional stimuli in visual attention (Öhman, Flykt and Esteves, 2001)?
What marks a robust pop-out effect?
Using artificial threat relevant and irrelevant stimuli:
- participants quicker to detect the fear relevant stimulus from fear irrelevant stimuli (distractors)
- speed reaction times of participants for detecting fear relevant stimuli was unaffected by other task factors
(e. g. number of distractors, location of target stimuli) - > robust pop-out effect
Are ‘pop-out’ effects restricted to non-human fear threat stimuli?
What does it suggest?
No, they extend to social threat stimuli
- identifying a discrepant angry face from crowd of happy faces
-> Natural tendency to detect and respond to dangerous situations
How to measure selective attention bias for threats?
Visual probe task:
- fixation cross in middle of screen, orienting attention
- threat and neutral stimuli appear on left and right of screen
-> response to the probe = measure of where your attention is at a particular time
Does the selective attention bias for threats differ across individuals?
Yes
- Inter-individual differences
- Individuals can differ in the extent to which they can disengage from threat stimuli
- They can differ in the type of stimulus that captures their attention
What is the attention bias index in a visual probe task?
= difference between congruent and incongruent trials
What are congruent and incongruent trials in a visual probe task measuring selective attention bias for threats?
> Congruent trial: probe (arrow) appears in the place of threatening stimulus
> Incongruent trial: probe appears in the place of neutral stimulus
What do results show for the selective attention bias of people with mental health problems?
> Heightened attention for threatening stimuli
- particularly stimuli that match with their concerns
> If threat stimulus matches their concerns, they’re quicker at responding on congruent trials, and slower on incongruent trials
-> their attention was very quickly captured and possibly locked in by the presence of threatening stimulus
What do studies on attention bias of women with eating disorders show?
> Attention orienting bias towards negative and neutral weight stimuli
- and towards negative and neutral body shape stimuli
> Attention avoidance to positive (healthy) stimuli
What are the limitations of the visual probe task in studying attention bias for threats?
- We don’t know if it shows attention orienting or inability to disengage?
- Hard to determine when the attention focus shifts from vigilance to avoidance because the image is too distressing
What is the solution to the limitations of the visual probe task?
Use eye-tracking
- enables a more continuous measure
-> precise information about time course of attention biases from early to late
AND map out direction of the bias when changing from vigilance to avoidance
What does the emotional Stroop task show?
Emotional stimuli not only capture our attention but also disrupt processing of concurrent tasks
- absorb cognitive resources
What did the study on patients with anxiety show with the emotional Stroop task?
They’re more affected by the threatening content of the words and are therefore slower at colour-naming threat words
- words that disrupted their attention were dependent of their content and the specific concerns of the patients
What are the implications of being hyper vigilant to mild threats?
> Can be maladaptive
- characteristic of people with mental disorders (anxiety, eating disorders, depression)
> Can contribute to psychopathologies
What do we see in people with depression regarding positive stimuli?
Their attention is less captured by positive stimuli
vs. people with more optimistic and resilient traits
What are the effects of emotion on learning?
> They can disrupt attention processing so we perform worse at a task
> They can enhance learning
- rewards motivate children for learning, employees to perform well
What is the evidence on external rewards for motivation?
External rewards can dampen intrinsic motivation
How to study how rewards enhance simple learning?
Associative learning tasks
- associating cues through contingency
> Training: associate shapes with high/medium/low monetary rewards
> Test: complete matching task
- for correct match and non-matching judgments: participants gain extra rewards to the value assigned to the shape
What do associative learning tasks show for monetary rewards and self associations?
> Monetary rewards: beneficial learning effect for high-reward
> Self associations (shape for self vs. friend vs. stranger):
- clear bias to shapes associated with self
- self associations as salient as monetary rewards
Which experiment studied fear conditioning?
What did it show?
‘Little Albert’ study:
- object paired with emotional stimulus
- conditioned stimulus, previously neutral, induced fear response
-> threatening stimuli can facilitate fear conditioning
What is the common protocol for fear conditioning?
What are the findings?
Pair geometric shape with electric shock while another geometric shape is not
- > individuals can generalise their fear
- show slightly elevated fear to the conditioned safe stimulus as well
What did Lissek and colleagues show in their study on the “generalisation of conditioned fear-potentiated startle in humans” (2008)?
How does it relate to Little Albert?
> Conditioning applies to similar stimuli
- Little Albert generalised his fear of mouse )conditioned stimulus) to other white furry objects
> Fear to conditioned threat stimulus can be resistant to change
- depends partly on the nature of the unconditioned stimulus that generated the fear
> It is suggested that even after a fear extinction process, memory for the conditioned fear is not erased bu simply inhibited
How does fear conditioning model the development of phobias?
Phobias = incident + association
- fear cues present at the time and seems to predict the outcome
- it’s plausible that the conditioned fear generalises to other cues that were present
Which evidence suggest that fear conditioning as a model of the development of phobias is too simplistic?
- Not everyone who has a phobia can immediately recall a negative event that preceded it
- Not everyone who has similar accidents subsequently develop phobias
How can conditioned fear be acquired?
- Through direct experience
- Through vicarious or informational learning
- transmission of fears, which can occur in the absence of direct contact with fear stimuli
What do experiments on the acquisition of conditioned fear through observational learning and social referencing show?
Vicarious learning:
- fear is acquired by observing fearful responses to a previously neutral stimulus/situation
- children model fear on parents’ responses
e. g. visual Clift experiment
What can vicarious learning of conditioned fear explain?
Why many specific fears or phobias have an early age of onset
- children model fear on parents’ responses
What do experiments on the acquisition of conditioned fear through informational/instructional transmission show?
> Fear can be transferred verbally
> Fear beliefs are only changed when information was presented as a story verbally (vs. video)
> Fear beliefs only changed if information was presented by an adult (teacher, adult stranger) but not by peers
-> transmission of fear from adults - parents - to children
Does everyone develop phobias with fear conditioning?
What does that imply for models of fear conditioning?
Not everyone develops phobias
-> Model of fear conditioning must account for individual differences in how fear is acquired
What did the “updated meta-analysis of classical fear conditioning in the anxiety disorders” (Duits, Cath and Lissek, 2015) show?
What does it suggest?
Those with anxiety conditions differ in:
- how they generalised fears
- how much they resist fear extinction
What is the consequence of disturbances in the processes of generalisation and extinction of fear?
Can maintain a state of fear that then affects avoidance behaviours
- > vicious cycle: the more individuals avoid the fear stimuli, the less natural extinction can occur
- > maintaining fear
What is the potential consequence of acquiring threatening associations in PTSD?
Cues associated with elements of experiences at point of trauma can provoke powerful sensory images through flashbacks - reliving the original trauma
-> extreme fear and avoidance
- individual differences, also in addiction (reward associations)
What are the effects of emotions on memory?
- Emotional events are better remembered that non-emotional events
- e.g. patients with amnesia shower no overall recollection of faces, BUT their judgments were consistent with initial descriptions of photographs presented a week before
- > emotions can impact the outputs of the system - Emotions can narrow the focus of attention
- stress hormones affect memory retention
What are flashbulb memories?
Memories of salient events which can be described in great detail
- even for big events in the news (Kennedy’s assassination, Princess Diana’s death, 9/11)
- > who was there, what they were doing, who were they with
- However not always accurate
What kind of design protocol is used to measure accuracy of memories?
Interviewing people immediately after even, and again 3 years later
- with some discrepancies between the 2 assessment points
Are memories of dramatic events always accurate?
Why?
No
- post-event analysis can be confused with experience
e. g. Ochsner (2000):
- negative pictures more accurately remembered than positive or neutral pictures
- arousing pictures, both negative and positive, are remembered accurately
- of the correctly identified old negative pictures, participants were more likely to endorse ‘remember’ judgements rather than ‘know’ judgments
- > negative pictures appeared more accurately remembered with rich detail
How do stress hormones affect memory retention?
Emotional arousal can narrow attention of central event, but not peripheral events
What is the ‘weapon focus’ effect?
Participants spend a greater deal of attention on the weapon than the face of the offender
What is ‘over general autobiographical memory’?
For some individuals stress can cause over generalised memories
Which people often present ‘over general autobiographical memory’?
People with psychiatric conditions following a stressful life event
e. g. PTSD, bipolar, major depression
- inter-individual differences between people with such disorders vs. healthy controls
- overgeneralised memory can’t be explained by other factors than extreme stress
(education, verbal intelligence, general memory differences)
What could explain the production of over general memories?
> Structural memory deficit
> Adaptive strategy for managing extreme emotional distress following aversive events
What do studies show on children and young people who’ve experienced maltreatment in early life, vs. non-abused or non-neglected participants?
They are less specific in their description of autobiographical memories when responding to positive, negative and neutral cue words
How can memories formed under stress present themselves?
Through intrusive involuntary images
- extremely vivid and detailed
- prominent in many mental health conditions
(e. g. PTSD: reports of visual intrusions of small number of real or imaginary events, than occur be highly distressing and central in maintaining arousal, fears, and other psychopathological features
What are the two phenomena of the effecting of mood states on memory processes?
- Mood-congruent memory
- we remember things similar to mood that we are in - Mood-dependent memory
- material more likely recalled when in same mood than at learning time
What is necessary to mood-dependent memory?
Context-dependent learning:
- congruence between mood at learning and at retrieval for maximal effects on memory performance
How could memories biases play a role in maintaining depression?
> Mood difficulties will have an impact on memory formation
- people with depression often can recall negative material more frequently
What is the criticism against the potential role of memory biases in maintaining depression?
Memory biases could just reflect a response bias:
- e.g. depressed participants remember both positive and negative words equally well, but they choose to select the negative word
Which task confirmed the role of memory biases on depression?
Implicit memory task:
- Encoding: rate how much this word applied to you: foolish, clever, peaceful, failure
- Test: complete the word fragments with the missing word as quick as you can
- > Depressed participants are quicker at completing word fragments of negative words
- > Even when response biases are reduced, there still appears to be a memory bias
