Lecture 9 - Emotion And Cognition

Question 1

Basic emotions

Answer 1

“On the origin of species” (1859), Charles Darwin was one of the first to propose that there are a limited number of basic and universal human emotions
Observations of people far removed from Western Culture, all reported similar emotional expressions
Darwin hence suggested that this universality of emotional expressions implies a common emotional experience

Question 2

Ekman’s study of basic emotions

Answer 2

Studies of facial expressions of emotion and suggested that there are 6 basic expressions of emotion (Emmanuel & Friesen, 1971):
- anger
- disgust
- fear
- happiness
- sadness
- surprise
These facial expressions appear similar in rnage, appearance and interpretation across culture
Each basic emotion is characterised by a unique subset of facial muscle movements
Basic emotions are presumably innate as infants display these facial expressions as do people who have been blind since birth and so never had the opportunity to mirror them
Each of the 6 basic emotions has the following features
1. Universal
2. Innate
3. Unit hey subset of facial muscle movements

Question 3

Basic emotions and the brain

Answer 3

We assume that ea h basic emotion is universal, innate and relies on its own neural substrate even though we have not clearly identified each of them (but some)
Ekman’s basic emotions do not capture rhe range of human emotional experience
Several more complex emotions, among them guilt and love, are less clearly linked to specific facial displays and presumably neural correlates
Anger: involvement of many regions depending on different aspects
Disgust: insular cortex, basal ganglia
Fear: amygdala
Sadness: reduced cortical activation and connectivity (depression of neural activity)
Happiness: some candidate regions but generally messy
Surprise: ???

Question 4

Amygdala: fear

Answer 4

Patients with amygdala damage struggle to perceive/recognise fear in each other
Amygdala also mediates valence in all cognitive domains (both positive and negative)

Question 5

Dimensional approaches to clarify emotions

Answer 5

Why dimensions?
Emotions are not experiences as an on/off button as a continuum
Attempt to capture complexity of emotions
Exmaple: nervousness vs excitation
Similar emotions with high levels of arousal. Mainly different in whether we expect something pleasant or unpleasant (worry vs anticipation)
Arousal is the overall term for bodily changes that occur in emotion, such as chnages in heart rate, sweating and the release of stress hormones in response to a stimuli. The intensity of the emotional reaction may be assessed b y the strength of these responses)

Question 6

The circumflex model of human emotion

Answer 6

Emotions are defined on a spectrum of arousal and valence (subjective experience of emotional quality : good vs bad)
Barrett and Russell 1999, Russell 1980

Question 7

Geneva emotion wheel (Tran 2004)

Answer 7

Similar to circumplex but spectrum is along pleasantness and control

Question 8

Approach vs withdrawal/avoidance approach

Answer 8

Classifies emotions according to motivation:
Different emotions lead to different goals for action
“Approach emotion” evoke the desire approach the stimulus object or situation (e.g. happiness, surprise, anger)
“Withdrawal emotions” evoke the desire to withdraw from objects situations linked to these emotions (e.g. sadness, disgust, boredom and fear)

Question 9

What should be clear?

Answer 9

1. Emotions are difficult to classify
2. Researchers do not agree on definitions/classifications
3. Cognitive approaches and neurobiological approaches do not align well
4. Cognitive classifications can be useful but do not map on biology
5. Our understanding and conceptualisation of emotions from a scientific perspective is currently not satisfactory

Question 10

Manipulating emotions

Answer 10

Critical form of social regulation e.g. calming an upset child, de-escalating fights
Critical aspect of investigating the interaction of emotions and cognition for scientific study

Question 11

Manipulating emotions in research

Answer 11

There are 2 main strategies to manipulate emotions for scientific study
Evocative stimuli:
- stimuli that elicit emotional responses
- e.g. pictures of faces with different emotional expressions, pictures of emotional scenes, words that vary in valence and arousal, money, loud noise or mild shock
Mood induction:
- mood is more stable and diffuse affective state than emotion (longer lasting and not necessarily linked to a specific event or object)
- e.g. by watching affective film clips (funny or grim and despairing depending on the change sought), playing music (upbeat or solemn) or foxing on affective situations, real or imagines, that result on either positive or negative mood states

Question 12

Measuring emotions

Answer 12

Direct assessment - relies on introspection and is affected by cultural conventions
- self report measures (e.g. questionnaires)
Indirect assessment
- behaviour (e.g. decisions)
- pupil dilation, skin conductance, heart rate, respiratory rate, eye gaze, response time, facial movements (EMG)

Question 13

Why/how can we measure emotions with electrodes on the body

Answer 13

Our peripheral nervous system is not only regulating bodily functions
It is also affected by emotional states
E.g. we can measure arousal (a component of emotional states) with electrophysiological measures

Question 14

Emotional learning and preferences

Answer 14

Some stimuli are inherently bad (e.g. Electroshocks) but others we ascribe value based on experiences (e.g. flowers are considered beautiful and pleasing, weddings are joyful, roller coasters are Exhilarating)
Money has value because we have learned to associate it it with stimuli that are inherently motivating, can buy things that keep us warm, taste good and provide safety
Emotional memories are stronger than neural ones
We often forget why we have an emotional association but the memories can still persist in a semantic memory (i don’t like horror movies, i love hot chocolate)

Question 15

Emotional classical conditioning

Answer 15

A stimuli can lose or gain value through classical conditioning
The learned association between a neural event and an emotional event
Examples:
- feel uneasy at places where unpleasant situations happened to you in the past
- nostalgic when you smell a specific food
- a playlist that can regulate your mood
2 types of emotional conditioning:
Autonomic conditioning - can be expressed through bodily responses such as an arousal response
Evaluative conditioning - can be expressed through a preference or attitude

Question 16

Aversive conditioning (autonomic conditioning, learned fear response)

Answer 16

Amygdala and hippocampus are closely connected
Amygdala mediates learning (memory) that is associated with fear or stimulus valence (streamed of good or bad)
Double dissociation - amygdala is involved in the anticipation of negative stimuli (conditioned autonomic responses)
Hippocampus hold memory of what association that is (awareness)

Question 17

Evaluative conditioning

Answer 17

• learning subjective preferences or attitudes
• acquired through classical conditioning
• that goal is many (most) forms of advertisements
  If we experience positive affect (e.g. admiration of a celebrity endorser) in the presence of a neural stimulus (e.g. deodorant) we may eventually come to prefer that stimulus
  Evaluative conditioning manifests itself via a subsequent change in valence that is the degree to which the stimulus is regarded as pleasant (unpleasant)
  Can co-occur with autonomic conditioning
  Current example - fat-phobia advertisements (we are conditioned to associate thinness with health)

Question 18

Instrumental/operant conditioning

Answer 18

• learning by reward and punishment
• response will increase or decrease in frequency depending on the outcome (reward vs punishment)
  Reward response via dopamine can result in addiction (e.g. gambling)
  Dopamine is linked to rewards in all types of stimuli (reward, actions and experience, money, sex etc)
  (Pre)frontal cortex evaluates stimuli (codes perceived value) and coordinates action (approach/avoidance)

Question 19

Instructional and observational learning

Answer 19

If instructions or observations (media) are threatening enig, we also learn emotional responses to things because we are unlikely to experience (e.g. shakers)
Tbh is works because we evolved complex communication (language) which allows us to experience things vicariously (embodiment, stimulation)
Learning via instruction and via conditioning activate the Sam brain networks
Just being told that some neural stimulus is linked to threat, will already result in a fear response (anticipation/stimulation) when experiencing it
The same principle is true when yo see someone else being punished or rewarded for certain behaviours

Question 20

Mirror neurones: learning vicariously

Answer 20

Mirror neurones:
Fire when do a task and we observe another doing the same
We also mirror emotions and pain of others

Monkey sees monkey does

Question 21

Emotion affects memory

Answer 21

Highly emotional memories are more robust to forgetting (hence why we don’t forget highly embarrassing moments or public emotional events)
Amygdala mediates emotional memories by interacting with the hippocampus (where physical traces of many memories are made (engrams))

Question 22

Stress and memory

Answer 22

Similar to arousal, stress can improve memory under some circumstances
Emotional learning stays high with increased stress (e.g. fear responses), other types of learning decrease at very high levels of stress (e.g. spatial learning)

Question 23

Emotion captures attention

Answer 23

Emotion increases salience of stimulus and hence perceptual processing of and attention towards them
As a result, other stimuli presented at the same time get processed less and are less attended to
This can facilitate (if emotional stimulus or target) or decrease (if emotional stimulus is not the target) performance in tasks
- e.g. eyewitness remembering a weapon (high emotion) but not the face of the perpetrator (relatively lowers emotion)
Emotional stimulus can also ‘pop out’ in visual search task (no display size effect) due to their salience

Question 24

Emotional stroop task

Answer 24

Similar to classic stroop task but instead of a colour word, highly emotional words are used as distractors
The more emotional the word, the harder it is to ignore the word and say the colour resulting in large error rates and longer reaction times

Question 25

Affective primacy hypothesis

Answer 25

The affective primacy hypothesis 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 our effects for:
- emotional faces in crowds
- enhanced stimulus detection in neglect patients