task 4 Flashcards
Different feelings are suggested to
influence attention to negative information. Do
you have any idea in what direction? (does
sadness increase or decrease attention/dwell
time for negative stimuli? And what about
felling happy?)
Study supporting this: recall following induction of happiness, sadness, or anger, by assigning students
grade A or D on a surprise quiz. Then PP listened to a narrative story about a person’s forst term at Uni and
then recall as many details as they could.
→ Happy PP recalled more enhanced memory for narrative as the whole
→ Sad or angry PP: recall specific information (sad = recalled more info about negative outcome than angry
pp)
–> sad and anfry people recalled more inf. tat was goal-specific
Information processing strategies can influence memory
–> Happy PP recognized more script-typical material even when It was
not presented, while sad PP recognized items that were or were not presented
How does it work that selective attention and thus perception is influenced by affective salience of sensory events?
- affect provides cognitive system with a representation of the value of significance of a
stimulus
–> Dynamic circle
–> Threat-superiority effect
–> weapon-focus effect
= less attention directed to peripheral information. No memory of
surrounding context of emotional scene but more accuracy of memory for the central/gist of the scene)
o Memory for peripheral details was found to be inversely correlated with the degree of arousal (the
more aroused, the more central the focus = narrowing of attention)
(for Encoding) - emotional stimuli draw attention more rapidly and impede attentional
disengagement for a longer time than neutral stimuli
–> modulated by amygdala - some processing of affective significance must take place before
perceptual processes have been completed; however, attention determines what is salient and what is not
salient, but is again influenced by affective significance of sensory events
What makes an object/situation affectively significant?
→ Objects that are naturally prioritized by the attentional system – snakes, spiders etc.
→ Learning history
→ Novelty of stimuli, its pleasantness, certainty or predictability, general relevance to individual goals,
situation’s compatibility with personal and social standards…
What is the Visual Search Task?
pop-out effects
- look how quick people are to detect a particular class of stimuli
–> arrays of letters are presented briefly on a computer screen and pp
are required to detect a target that might have a particular colour or a particular
conjunction of features (e.g., colour and shape).
Targets can be presented against
backgrounds of varying sizes (e.g., number of background distractors ). Typically the
time to detect single features such as colour is not affected by display size, whereas the
time ro detect a conjunction of features is strongly affected by display size
–> single features ‘pop-out’ ofa crowded display
while conjunctions of features can only be detected by a slow serial search
–> that the speed or detection of angry expressions was relatively
unaffected by increasing display size. On the other hand, the detection of a discrepant
happy expression was substantially slower in large (9 items) displays relative to small
( 4 items) ones. This parrern of results led to conclude
that the angry expression popped out of the crowd
What is the Interference Task?
emotional Stroop Task
- fear-relevant stimuli induced an
interference with performance in an emotional stroop task: - -> words varied in valence and ink
- -> PP took longer to name color of ink for negative words
What can be concluded from fMRI/ERP studies abouth the influence of affect (or threat-related stimuli) on attention-perception or sensory processes?
ERP -> faster processing of negative stimuli
→ ERP studies:
P100 reflect changes of early allocation of attention in extrastriate cortex:
P100 amplitudes
were larger for negative than for positive pictures = behavioral evidence for enhanced detection of negative
stimuli due to early allocation of attention
–> P100 was also larger for targets appearing at locations were previously fearful facial expression stimuli
were located = fearful expressions elicit rapid orienting of spatial attention towards their own location
→ C1 component is the earliest response in V1 to a stimulus = enhanced for fearful relative to happy faces;
also enhanced for negatively learned stimuli over time (occurred to previously neutral stimuli that had been
aversively conditioned)
fMRI
- amygdala activity correlates with enhanced activity of neurons in extrastriate cortex to emotional stimuli
- -> extrastriate cortex = snesory processing = emotional stimuli boost sensory processing
→ faces elicited activity in fusiform face area: activity increased for fearful faces, regardless of
whether they were attended = mere presence of fearful stimuli elicits increased activity
→ amygdala activity increased when fearful expressions were attended, and the degree was
not modulated by spatial attention
→ Neglect patients: rather see affective stimuli than neutral stimuli in their neglected field
By what processes or factors does affect (positive vs
negative feelings, arousal, etc) influences things we can remember?
better remembering or not?
Effects of arousal
–> amygdala
Effects of valence
Enhanced memory for these items was associated with different neural networks:
→ Memory for arousing words: amygdala activity and correlation btw amygdala and
hippocampal activity
→ Memory for negative but non-arousing words: correlation btw PFC and hippocampus
Inconsistent results regarding recall accuracy for positive and negative arousing stimuli:
(autobiographical studies)
a) no difference
b) Negative stimuli are remembered with more accuracy
c) Positivity bias: positive stimuli are remembered with better accuracy
→ could be because we experience more pleasant than unpleasant events
→ or because intensity fades more for negative events than for positive events
→ or because events relevant to us show a bias towards positive info (concepts of self are
more positively evaluated as concepts of others)
How might a person’s intrinsic (positive vs negative) mood state influences memory and on what stage of memory processing (encoding, consolidation, retrieval) does it have a positive or negative influence (how does that work?)
MOOD CONGRUENCY AT ENCODING
Usually investigated by inducing a sad or happy mood and asking pp to learn a list of words with
a negative or positive valence. When PP are in a neutral state again, they are asked to recall as
many words as possible
→ recall more items that were congruent with mood at encoding
MOOD CONGRUENCY AT RETRIEVAL:
pp to learn list of words that vary in valence while in a neutral mood.
Then a positive or negative mood state is induced at retrieval and pp must recall the learned
words
→ Inconsistent results, but autobiographical material found more consistent results: when pp
are asked to recall events from own life, the valence of the recalled events are congruent
with mood state at retrieval
MOOD DEPENDENT MEMORY
Material learned while in a particular mood is more likely
to be recalled when the individual is in the same mood
again (= consistency between mood at encoding and
mood at retrieval)
→ Study found that recall of neutral words was better
when the mood at retrieval matched the mood at
encoding. The size of this effect was equal for both
sad and happy moods
almost always occurs in real lie events
–> a) The mood itself is the retrieval cue: when other retrieval cues are minimal, mood plays a
strong role in influencing memory
–> b) Real-life events are likely to have internally generated retrieval cues = better recall than in
laboratory studies
–> siehe how happy and negative modd can have an influence on how we approach a situation
In general, are positive and negative moods
associated with different memory information processing strategies?
Happy mood:
- people rely more on general knowledge and stereotypes consistent with the notion that
happiness occurs when a goal has been attained and there is no immediate problem to solve
→ Positive affective states support information processing by means of assimilation, which involves the active
cognitive elaboration of stimuli using schemata and knowledge structures.
→ Useful in appetitive situations were exploration and creativity are important
Negative mood:
- people rely more on detailed evaluation of information with a reduced emphasis on general
knowledge. Consistent with notion that negative moods are experienced when important goals are
threatened or have failed
→ accommodation: adaptive process whereby the organism focuses on the demands of the external words
(careful and detailed perception and analysis of external stimuli)
→ more relevant in aversive situations in which it is important that one doesn’t make a mistake
Does the mood state in which one encodes certain information cause later higher recall of
information that was congruent in affective tone with that mood state?
Yes –> → recall more items that were congruent with mood at encoding
Explanation:
→ Associative network model: info that is congruent with mood should be more salient and
processed at deeper levels than incongruent information
Associative Network Model
Tutorial
- -> too simple
- -> does NOT account for the attentional and cognitive biases
- -> cannot explain the disinction between depressed and anxious state
All concepts and facts we hold in memory are represented as nodes within a complex
network. → Nodes are interconnected by means of semantic relationship (closely related concepts
are closely associated
→ When activating one node, activation spreads out to activate closely related concept
-> can explain semantic
priming effects
Mood states could be stored
as nodes within a semantic
network
→ activation of one emotion inhibits activation of another emotion node (push-pull
mechanism)
→ explains mood-congruency and mood dependent memory effects
–> does not explain why people engage in INcongruent memory
–> different mood states are associated with different types of cognitive biases, and this is
not considered by the model
–> Different moods depend on
the emotion regulation strategies used (rumination, distraction etc.)
Affect Infusion Model (AIM)
Main aim:
provide a specification of circumstances in which mood congruity effects are likely or unlikely to occur
→ affect infusion: process by which affectively salient information becomes incorporated
into cognitive and behavioral processes and exerts congruent influence
–> relience on constructive and generative processes that prime affectively congruent thoughts, memories and interpretations
–> Assumption: mood congruity predictors of associative network models should occur under
conditions that allow an open and unbiased search and processing strategy to operate.
Limited affect infusion:
- direct access: retrieval of pre-existing response. Used when the task is familiar, and no
strong motivational cues call for more elaborate processing - motivated: directed by motivation objective and includes targeted and selective info
search relevant to the objective (triggered by negative moods)
Allowing for affect infusion:
- heuristic: no motivational pressures for more detailed processing, simple task and little
personal relevant. People rely on affect to deal with the situation - substantive: adopted when the task is difficult, or novel and there is no motivational
goal to guide processing. People rely on constructive and generative processes that
selectively prime access to affectively congruent thoughts, memories, or
interpretations
How emotion changes the way in which we 1)
perceive and pay attention to events/stimuli 2)
store and retrieve information in memory?
Attention:
Stimuli compete for neural processing, so attention is needed to resolve the conflict:
a) exogenous attention:
b) endogenous attention
Neural correlates: both implicate frontoparietal networks of cortical regions:
→ endogenous attention: interactions of dorsal regions (intraparietal sulcus and FEF)
→ exogenous attention: ventral regions in the right hemisphere (right ventral frontal cortex and
temporoparietal junction)
Prioritization of emotional information: emotional stimuli draw attention more rapidly and impede attentional
disengagement for a longer time than neutral stimuli
→ if attention is directed to one location, it facilitates processing of subsequent non-emotional target stimuli
at the same location
→ emotional relevant stimuli are prioritized across all sensory channels
→ however, attentional biases can be difunctionally exaggerated in clinical populations
–> prioritization of emotional inf. is driven by amygdala and partially separated from frontoparietal network involved in attention allocation
→ amygdala subserves rapid detection of the relevance of a stimulus for the needs, goals, and values of an
organism to modulate the processing of these stimuli through direct feedback projections to the sensory
cortex and to fronto-parietal attention regions
Know the different routes in
the brain by which threat-related stimuli
become prioritized for further processing
(including amygdala, sensory-cortices and
parietal cortices).
- threat-related stimuli may directly activate the amygdala, which then rapidly modulates the
sensory cortex by means of feedback loops to allow in depth-processing of salient stimuli - affective stimuli directly activate parietal and frontal regions that are involved in attentional
control. These areas then project to sensory processing areas
Processing of of affective information
–> Dynamic Circle
A particular emotion is likely to induce a cognitive bias so that
mood relevant material is then prioritized by the processing system.
Such a
bias is also likely to influence ongoing mood states and increase the propensity
of experiencing related emotions
→ circle is further influenced by ongoing individual differences in personality and environmental factors
Gabor stimuli
The results demonstrated that the level
of contrast needed to perform the orientation discrimination task was lower when a
stimulus followed a fearful face relative to a neutral face. These results indicate that
the emotional expression of the face can alter a very early visual process an affective
stimulus actually influenced the quality of visual perception
