Task 4 Flashcards
Cognitive models of affect - Appriasal based models
= emotional experience is determined by the way a situation is interpreted + appraised
o :( models do not explain how differentiated emotions can be elicited very rapidly and with little conscious awareness of presence of a stimuli
Processing affective information - a dynamic cycle
- dynamic circle between emotion & cognition: emotion induce a cognitive bias –> particular mood-relevant information is prioritized in processing system –> bias influences the ongoing mood state + increase the experience related emotions
- cycle is continually influenced by personality and external environmental factors
Cognitive models of affect - Process based models
= appraisals occurs parallel at multiple levels ranging from low-level action tendencies to high-level conscious decisions
o :( based on self-reports & still cannot inform about automatic appraisal processes
Cognitive models of affect - Information based models
Advantages
= try to explain how information are collected, modified, interpreted and stored. Attempted to understand why + how biases in appraisal had come about.
Advantages:
- based on behavioral paradigms: implicit (non-conscious) & explicit (conscious) biases (–>advantage over self-report)
- behavioral paradigms can be combined with neuroimaging techniques to determine the neural mechanisms
Percetion and Attention
- what makes an object affectively significant/salient?
- attetional biases
- 2 ways how affect modulates percetion
(limited capacities on how much information we can process –> selectivity in attention: detect important & ignore irrelevant info)
- salient stimuli are…
o innately affectively significant stimuli
(snakes, spiderers)
o learning history –> association, conditioning (guns)
o novelty or unpredictability
o intrinsic pleasantness
o relevant to goals - Attentional biases occur at any stage of prossesing
o for threat-related stimuli occur very early in processing (increase chances of survival)
–> consequences of missing a threat are greater than the consequences of missing a positive stimulus - 2 ways:
o direct
o indirect by influencing attention (affect can increase attentional allocation to an object, prioritizes processing of that object)
–> If affect influences early processes (perception and attention) -> likely that also influence later stages of cognitive processing (memory, decision-making and judgment)
Behavioural studies
- visual search paradigma
- treat- superiority effect
Behavioral tasks can assess biases towards particular classes of stimuli.
- How fast do people detect a particular type of stimuli? (valence, shape etc.)
–> Study: faces (neutral, angry, happy) are presented & subject has to indicate if face is angry (or happy)
o faster detecting angry faces relative to happy faces –> threat-superiority effect
o :( Methodological problems: faces differ also on non-emotional features - :) Solution: schematic pictures of faces –> confirms threat-superiority effect
o addition of distracting faces slowed overall RT, BUT degree of slowing was less angry faces
> angry faces are processed more efficiently (not simply pop out)
> search is serial (attention from item to item)
> speed of attention shifts faster for angry faces
–> thren all; even sad faces (no threat value!)
Behavioural studies
- interference task =
- -> emotional stroop task
- gabor stimuli
= sometimes, presence of fear-relevant stimuli impairs performance
–> words varying in valence presented in different colored ink + subjects asked to name the color (while ignoring word’s meaning)
o longer time to name the colors of the negative words
=> shows that attentional mechanisms are tuned to prioritize negative stimuli over positive stimuli (negative stimuli difficult to ignore–> interfere more)
- stimuli, difficult to detect, provide a good measure of perceptual sensitivity
o after presentation of fearful face, subjects could discriminate lower contrasts in the stimuli (= higher sensitivity)
–> presence of affective stimuli can improve the quality of perception (direct or indriect)
Brain imaging - fMRI
- Neuroimaging studies (of Visual cortex)
- fMRI (faces vs. house, netural vs. fearful)
- AMY
=>
- showed that emotionally significant stimuli boost sensory processing (especially threat related)
o enhanced activity in visual cortex for threat stimuli - showed that emotional stimuli - enhanced cortical activity - specifically related to that stimulus (not generally)
o Fusiform gyrus greater activity when faces were attended (not houses or neutral faces) –> BUT, activity still enhanced for fearful faces, even when not attended
–> FFA activity was enhanced for fearful faces - AMY increased activity when fearful expressions - not difference between attended and unattended locations
=> mere presence of threat-relevant stimuli can boost sensory processing (all modalities)
brain imaging - 2 neural mechanisms 1 - fimdings suggest 2 neural mechsnisms that allow... o o =>
–> prioritization of processing stimuli with emotional value (esp. threat-related stimuli)
o amygdala and its modulatory effects on sensory areas by means of a feedback loop (more extensive processing of the salient stimuli)
o affective stimuli might directly activate parietal and frontal regions of the brain that are involved in attentional control (these areas modulate sensory processing)
=> enhanced processing of emotional stimuli is modulated by activation of the amygdala as well as attentional mechanisms
Time course of affective processing 1
- suggested that threat-related stimuli are processed faster than positive or neutral stimuli because they are prioritized in processing –> testable with ERPs
- P100
- C1 (in V1)
- Some studies suggest that emotional stimuli elicit a rapid orienting of spatial attention toward their own location o P100 (=reflects allocation of attention) --> larger for negative than for positive pictures
- Other studies argue that emotional stimuli have a direct effect on sensory processing
o C1 component (= represents the earliest response of V1) is stronger for negative than for positive stimuli
(studies of autobiografic memory)
flashbulb memory =
- 9/11 studies
=>
= emotional events (9/11) are often recalled with high degree of vividness and clarity
- higher vividness (confidence) of memory but mot more accurate
=> emotion can enhance the vividness of memories
(not equivalante with better memory!!)
(lab studies –> presenting emotional and non-emotional stimuli)
Remeber/know paradigma =
- studies
–> differences in recollection can be more clearly investigated
= series of emotional and neutral pictures presented, same items mixed with new items and subject indicates whether they:
o Remember = retrieve memory with contextual information
o Know = seems familiar but no recollection of encoding context
- Findings showed subjective ratings of remembering (= confidence) for emotional stimuli were higher - although accuracy was not enhanced
- -> enhanced feeling of remembering - increased activity in the amygdala
=> emotions can enhance the subjective!! sense of remembering of a memory (confidence)
(memory of the “gist”)
weapon-focus effect =
- correlation memory and arousal
= in witness testimonies: people remember details about weapon, but nothing about other aspects of situation –> enhance the accuracy of memories for a central aspects (“gist”)
- memory for details inversely correlated with degree of arousal (the more aroused a person by the weapon, the less likely to remember other things)
- emotional arousal –> narrowing of attention to most important/threatening aspect
=> Emotions can improve accuracy of memories for central aspects but impair memory for peripheral aspects.
Effect of arousal on memory
- amydala
- supporting evidence
=> Zusammenfassung
- AMY = structure underlying enhancement of memory for arousing stimuli
o Physiological arousal activates beta-adrenergic receptors (AMY) which modulate activity in Hippocampus –> enhanced consolidation - studies:
o patients with AMY damage: no enhanced recall of the “gist” of emotional events
o degree of activity in AMY during encoding predicted number of emotional videos recalled later (not so for neutral ones)
–> Hippocampus activity related to subsequent recall of neutral words
o AMY activity correlates with arousing quality of the stimuli, regardless of their valence
=> AMY activity during encoding related to improved memory for emotionally arousing material -> done via modulation of Hippocampus
Effect of valence on memory
- Does valence influences explicit memory independently of arousal?
- fading affect bias =
- Some studies tested that by subdividing aversive words into arousing (rape) and non-arousing (sorrow) ones
–> subjects remembered more aversive words, regardless whether arousing or not
–> BUT recall of the two word classes - different neural networks:
o AMY & Hippocampus for arousing words
o PFC & Hippocampus for non-arousing words
= in autobiographical memory biased in favor of positive experiences –> intensity of negative events fades more quickly than that of positive events
–> implies we process positive information about ourselves more deeply
