Lecture 9 - Emotion and Cognition

Question 1

Describe the relationship between emotion and cogniton.

Answer 1

Motivation and emotion have historically been treated as a different subfield in psychology that was not considered cognitive

Question 2

What is meant by ‘affective’?

Answer 2

Emotions and preferences

Question 3

What is meant by ‘appraisals’?

Answer 3

think or reason about emotions

Question 4

What did Darwin propose?

Answer 4

There is a limited number of basic and universal human emotions

Question 5

*Describe Ekmans study of basic emotions.

Answer 5

Studied facial expressions of emotions, suggested 6 basic expressions.
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Happiness
Sadness
Surprise

Question 6

What are the features of the 6 emotions?

Answer 6

Universal (similar across all cultures)
Innate
Unique subset of facial muscle movements

Question 7

Where is anger located?

Answer 7

Includes involvement of many regions of brain depending on different aspects

Question 8

Where is disgust located?

Answer 8

Insular cortex and basal ganglia are both involved in experiencing and recognising disgust

Question 9

Where is fear located?

Answer 9

Amygdala

Question 10

What effect does sadness have on the brain?

Answer 10

Reduced cortical activation and connectivity

Question 11

Where is happiness loacted?

Answer 11

Some candidate regions

Question 12

What happens when amygdala is damaged?

Answer 12

Struggle to perceive fear or recognise fear in others
Also mediates valence in all cognitive domains

Question 13

What is valence?

Answer 13

A characteristic of emotions that describes how pleasant or unpleasant they are

Question 14

How are emotions experienced?

Answer 14

As a continuum
eg. nervousness vs excitation
similar emotions with high levels of arousal

Question 15

What is arousal?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

*What is the circumplex model of human emotion?

Answer 16

Emotions defined on a spectrum of arousal and valence.

Question 17

What is the Geneva Emotion wheel?

Answer 17

Similar to circumplex model but spectrum is along pleasantness and control

Question 18

What are approach emotions?

Answer 18

They evoke the desire to approach the stimulus
eg. happiness, surprise and anger

Question 19

What are withdrawal emotions?

Answer 19

Evoke the desire to withdraw from the object or situation linked to these emotions
eg. sadness, disgust, fear

Question 20

Why do we manipulate emotions?

Answer 20

1. In order to study them
2. Critical form of social regulation - eg. calming upset child

Question 21

What are the 2 main strategies to manipulate emotions?

Answer 21

Evocative stimuli and Mood induction

Question 22

What is evocative stimuli?

Answer 22

Stimuli that elicit emotional responses
eg. pictures of faces with different expressions

Question 23

What is mood induction?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

What is direct assessment?

Answer 24

Way of measuring emotions that relies on introspection and is affected by cultural conventions
- self report

Question 25

What is indirect assesment?

Answer 25

Way of measuring emotions
- behaviour
-pupil dilation, skin conductance, heart rate, facial movements

Question 26

How can we measure emotions with electrodes on the body?

Answer 26

Our peripheral nervous system not only regulates bodily functions but is also affected by emotional states.
Eg. measure arousal with electrophysiological states

Question 27

How can a stimulus gain or lose value?

Answer 27

Through classical conditioning - leads to association

Question 28

What is emotional classical conditoning?

Answer 28

the learned association between a neutral event and an emotional event

Question 29

What are the two types of emotional conditioning?

Answer 29

1. Autonomic conditioning - can be expressed through bodily responses such as arousal
2. Evaluative conditioning - can be expressed through a preference or attitude

Question 30

What is aversive conditioning?

Answer 30

Autonomic conditioning - its a learned fear response

Question 31

Describe the role of the amygdala and hippocampus in aversive conditioning.

Answer 31

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)

Question 32

What is extinction?

Answer 32

Reverse conditioning
Learned associations can be unlearned
If conditioned stimulus id presented repeatedly without the negative experience

Question 33

What is instrumental conditioning?

Answer 33

Operant - reward and punishment
Dopamine linked to reward in all stimuli

Question 34

What is instructional and observational learning?

Answer 34

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.

Question 35

What are mirror neurons?

Answer 35

These fire when we do a task or observe another doing that same task

Question 36

How does emotion effect memory?

Answer 36

Highly emotional memories are more robust to forgetting
Amygdala mediates emotional memories by interacting with the hippocampus
Arousal enhances consolidation (better memory)

Question 37

Describe the relationship between stress and memory.

Answer 37

Stress can improve memory under some circumstances.
Emotional learning high with increased stress.
Other types of learning decrease

Question 38

Describe the relationship between emotion and attention.

Answer 38

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 .

Question 39

What is the emotional stroop task?

Answer 39

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).

Question 40

What is the affective primacy hypothesis?

Answer 40

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