Week 3: Emotion Processing: Bottom-Up Effects of Emotions on Cognitive Processes Flashcards
Attention
Is a set of cognitive functions that select and prioritise some information for further
processing.
Emotional Stimuli
Objects, events, or situations that signal potential danger or reward, can grab attention.
‘Pop-out’ Effects of Emotional Stimuli
- Things that signal danger or reward (scary animal or delicious food) quickly grab our attention.
- We quickly focus on important things helped us survive.
- Our brains process emotional things faster and remember them better.
Discrepant Stimulus
A stimulus or something that stands out or is different from the other things around it.
Autonomic Arousal
This refers to the body’s automatic responses to a stimulus, like increased heart rate or sweating.
Pop-Out Effect
This is when a stimulus is so different from others that it immediately grabs your attention, like a red dot on a white page.
Attentional Bias
The tendency to pay attention to some things while simultaneously ignoring others.
Negative Attentional Bias
Is a specific type of attentional bias that refers to a tendency to focus on negative information, particularly threats.
Attentional Orienting
Automatically directing attention towards a specific stimulus.
A hypervigilance towards the emotional stimulus
Attentional Avoidance
Deliberately shifting attention away from a specific stimulus.
Eye Tracking Methods
Are methods that enable a more continuous measure of attention because they can measure initial fixations to particular stimuli as they appear on a screen. As well as the length of time spent gazing at a particular stimulus before a fixation away from the stimulus occurs.
Hypervigilance
Excessive attention to potential threats.
Disengagement Difficulty
Trouble shifting attention away from a stimulus.
Emotional Stroop Task
Measures the impact of emotional words on task performance.
Social Threat Cues
These are words or phrases related to social situations that might cause anxiety, such as “rejected,” “embarrassed,” or “alone.”
Physical Worriers
Individuals who are primarily concerned with physical symptoms of anxiety, like heart palpitations or shortness of breath.
Positive Attentional Bias
Is an attentional bias that is associated with optimism and resilience.
It’s less common in depression.
Maladaptive
Behavior or thoughts that are harmful or dysfunctional.
They interfere with a person’s ability to adjust to their environment and achieve their goals.
Example: In anxiety - excessive worry and avoidance behaviors
Psychopathology
The scientific study of mental disorders.
It also refers to the manifestations of mental illness.
Self Associations (self-reference effect)
Information related to oneself is learned and remembered better than information about others.
Fear Conditioning
The occurrence of an aversive or unpleasant stimulus can transfer some of the fear-provoking effects to other neutral stimuli that are in the environment through association.
Fear Extinction
To reduce the fear, the individual has to experience
the conditioned threat stimulus without the aversive unconditioned stimulus across many trials.
Phobia
An excessive and irrational fear of a specific object or situation.
Unlike fear, they are often persistent and uncontrollable.
Vicarious Learning
Sometimes also referred to as observational learning or social referencing.
It is when people acquire fears by observing fearful responses to what was previously a neutral stimulus or situation in other people.
Social Referencing
Relying on others’ emotional cues to guide one’s own behavior.
Informational/Instructional Transmission
Learning about a threat through verbal communication can lead to fear.
Verbal > Visual
Adult (authoritative) > Peer
Maintenance of Fear
The combination of fear generalization and impaired extinction contributes to the persistence of phobias.
Appetitive Conditioning
A type of learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a positive or rewarding event.
Aversive Conditioning
A type of learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an aversive or unpleasant event.
Memory
It is the process by which new information is encoded, consolidated, and subsequently retrieved.
Confabulation
The creation of fabricated memories to fill in memory gaps.
Korsakoff’s Syndrome
A severe memory disorder caused by a lack of thiamine (vitamin B1) in the brain.
It’s often associated with chronic alcohol abuse, but it can also occur due to other conditions that lead to malnutrition.
People who suffer from this have difficulty learning new information and recalling recent events.
Memory & Emotions
Stress hormones affect memory retention.
Emotional events are better remembered than nonemotional events.
Emotional arousal can narrow attention to honing in on particular aspects of the central event but not those that are peripheral.
Flashbulb Memories
Refer to memories that are laid down in great detail to salient events, however, the details can be inaccurate over time.
Weapon Focus Effect
The tendency to focus on a weapon in a crime scene, leading to poorer memory for other details, including the criminal.
Memory Consolidation
The process of making memories stable and long-lasting.
Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory
Vague and general memories, often seen in people with mental health conditions.
Causes of Overgeneral Memories
1) Extreme stress
2) Structural memory deficit
3) Adaptive strategy for managing extreme emotional distress
4) Resulting from people with psychiatric conditions following a stressful life event
Intrusive Visual/Involuntary Images
Vivid, unwanted, and recurring memories, often associated with trauma.
Mood-Congruent Memory
We remember things that are similar to the mood that we are in.
Is about what you remember based on your current feelings.
Mood-Dependent Memory
We are better at recalling information when our mood at retrieval matches our mood during learning.
Is about when you remember something based on your past feelings.
Context-Dependent Learning
Material is thought to be recalled best when in the same environment as when it was learned.
Implicit Memory Test
In these tasks, it is not obvious that the participants are being tested on memory.
Implicit Memory
Memories that are unconscious and unintentional.
Mood Disturbance
A significant alteration in mood, typically characterized by symptoms like sadness, euphoria, or irritability.
