Lecture 9 - Emotion and Cognition Flashcards
What is meant by ‘affective’?
Emotions and preferences
What is meant by ‘appraisals’?
think or reason about emotions
What did Darwin propose?
There is a limited number of basic and universal human emotions
*Describe Ekmans study of basic emotions.
Studied facial expressions of emotions, suggested 6 basic expressions.
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Happiness
Sadness
Surprise
What are the features of the 6 emotions?
Universal (similar across all cultures)
Innate
Unique subset of facial muscle movements
Where is anger located?
Includes involvement of many regions of brain depending on different aspects
Where is disgust located?
Insular cortex and basal ganglia are both involved in experiencing and recognising disgust
Where is fear located?
Amygdala
What effect does sadness have on the brain?
Reduced cortical activation and connectivity
Where is happiness loacted?
Some candidate regions
What happens when amygdala is damaged?
Struggle to perceive fear or recognise fear in others
Also mediates valence in all cognitive domains
What is valence?
A characteristic of emotions that describes how pleasant or unpleasant they are
How are emotions experienced?
As a continuum
eg. nervousness vs excitation
similar emotions with high levels of arousal
What is arousal?
Term for the bodily changes that occur in emotion such as changes in heart rate, sweating and release of stress hormones in response to a stimulus.
*What is the circumplex model of human emotion?
Emotions defined on a spectrum of arousal and valence.
What is the Geneva Emotion wheel?
Similar to circumplex model but spectrum is along pleasantness and control
What are approach emotions?
They evoke the desire to approach the stimulus
eg. happiness, surprise and anger
What are withdrawal emotions?
Evoke the desire to withdraw from the object or situation linked to these emotions
eg. sadness, disgust, fear
Why do we manipulate emotions?
- In order to study them
- Critical form of social regulation - eg. calming upset child
What are the 2 main strategies to manipulate emotions?
Evocative stimuli and Mood induction
What is evocative stimuli?
Stimuli that elicit emotional responses
eg. pictures of faces with different expressions
What is mood induction?
mood is a more stable and diffuse affective state than emotion (longer lasting and not linked to specific object)
eg. watching affective clips that result in a positive or negative mood state
What is direct assessment?
Way of measuring emotions that relies on introspection and is affected by cultural conventions
- self report
What is indirect assesment?
Way of measuring emotions
- behaviour
-pupil dilation, skin conductance, heart rate, facial movements
How can we measure emotions with electrodes on the body?
Our peripheral nervous system not only regulates bodily functions but is also affected by emotional states.
Eg. measure arousal with electrophysiological states
How can a stimulus gain or lose value?
Through classical conditioning - leads to association
What is emotional classical conditoning?
the learned association between a neutral event and an emotional event
What are the two types of emotional conditioning?
- Autonomic conditioning - can be expressed through bodily responses such as arousal
- Evaluative conditioning - can be expressed through a preference or attitude
What is aversive conditioning?
Autonomic conditioning - its a learned fear response
Describe the role of the amygdala and hippocampus in aversive conditioning.
Both closely connected.
Mediates learning (memory) that is associated with fear or stimulus valence (extremes of good or bad)
Double dissociation - amygdala involved in anticipation of negative stimuli
Hippocampus holds memory of what association that is. (awareness)
What is extinction?
Reverse conditioning
Learned associations can be unlearned
If conditioned stimulus id presented repeatedly without the negative experience
What is instrumental conditioning?
Operant - reward and punishment
Dopamine linked to reward in all stimuli
What is instructional and observational learning?
If instructions or observations (media) are threatening enough, we learn emotional responses to things we are unlikely to experience (eg. germs, sharks, terrorists)
This works because we evolved complex communication which allows us to experience things vicariously.
How does emotion effect memory?
Highly emotional memories are more robust to forgetting
Amygdala mediates emotional memories by interacting with the hippocampus
Arousal enhances consolidation (better memory)
Describe the relationship between stress and memory.
Stress can improve memory under some circumstances.
Emotional learning high with increased stress.
Other types of learning decrease
Describe the relationship between emotion and attention.
Emotion increases salience of stimuli and hence perceptual processing and attention towards them.
Other stimuli presented at the same time are less attended to.
Can facilitate or decrease performance depending on which stimulus is the target .
What is the emotional stroop task?
Similar as classic Stroop task but instead of color word, highly emotional words are used as distractors.
The more emotional a word, the harder it is to ignore the word and say the color (resulting in larger error rates and longer reaction times).
What is the affective primacy hypothesis?
It proposes that emotional stimuli are processed relatively automatically, making fewer demands on limited cognitive resources than do other types of stimuli (Wundt, 1907).
Supported by findings of pop out effects for:
- emotional faces in crowds,
- enhanced stimulus detection in neglect patients
