Contextual Valence Research Articles

Morality or competence is more important? The effect of evaluation dimensions on ERP responses to neutral faces depends on contextual valence and self-relevance

Recent studies have shown that the processing of neutral facial expressions could be modulated by the valence and self-relevance of preceding verbal evaluations. However, these studies have not distinguished the dimension (i.e., morality and competence) from verbal evaluations. In fact, there is a hot controversy about whether morality or competence receives more weight. Therefore, using the ERP technique, the current study aimed to address this issue by comparing the influence of morality and competence evaluations on behavioral and neural responses to neutral facial expressions when these evaluations varied with contextual valence and self-relevance. Our ERP results revealed that the early EPN amplitudes were larger for neutral faces after receiving evaluations about self relative to evaluations about senders. Moreover, the EPN was more negative after a competence evaluation relative to a morality evaluation when these evaluations were positive, while this effect was absent when these evaluations were negative. The late LPP was larger after a morality evaluation compared to a competence evaluation when these evaluations were negative and directed to self. However, no significant LPP effect between morality and competence evaluations was observed when these evaluations were positive. The present study extended previous studies by showing that early and late processing stages of faces are affected by the evaluation dimension in a top-down manner and further modulated by contextual valence and self-relevance.

Lexical and contextual emotional valence in foreign language vocabulary retention

Abstract Studies suggest that not only words per se but also surrounding contexts play significant roles in foreign language vocabulary retention. This study investigated how different conditions of lexical and contextual emotional valence differently affect foreign language vocabulary retention. The target words were either positive (LexVal+), neutral (LexVal=), or negative (LexVal−) in meaning. Each visually enhanced target word was embedded in a sentence either positive (CtxVal+), neutral (CtxVal=), or negative (CtxVal−) in meaning. Sentences with different combinations of lexical valence and contextual valence were presented in the Study Session, which were later incidentally recalled in the Test Session. It was revealed that positive and negative words were remembered more often than neutral words and that negative contexts resulted in better retention of the embedded words than neutral contexts. These findings are in accordance with the predictions of the emotionally enhanced memory, the Emotion-Involved Processing Hypothesis, and the role of affect in the Modular Cognition Framework. Further, even if the target item is not emotional, embedding it in emotional context may result in better retention, a finding with potential pedagogical implications. Interestingly, words embedded in emotionally congruent contexts were not learned better than those in incongruent contexts, a finding contrary to expectation. The result may be explainable via the Deep Epistemic Emotion Hypothesis, calling for more empirical study.

Fear lies in the eyes of the beholder-Robust evidence for reduced gaze dispersion upon avoidable threat.

A rapid detection and processing of relevant information in our environment is crucial for survival. The human eyes are drawn to social or threatening stimuli as they may carry essential information on how to behave appropriately in a given context. Recent studies further showed a centralization of gaze that reminded of freezing behaviors in rodents. Probably constituting a component of an adaptive defense mode, centralized eye movements predicted the speed of motor actions. Here we conducted two experiments to examine if and how these presumably survival-relevant gaze patterns interact. Subjects viewed images including social, that is, faces (Experiment 1, N = 50) or threatening stimuli, that is, snakes or spiders (Experiment 2, N = 50) while awaiting an inevitable (shock), no (safety), or an avoidable shock (flight) they could escape from by a fast button press. The social and threatening cues within the scenes differed in their distance from the image center and we acquired eye-tracking and autonomic physiological data. Although we observed an initial orienting toward social and threatening stimulus aspects, this exploration pattern vanished towards the end of flight trials when a pronounced centralization of gaze emerged. Replicating previous findings, the amount of this center bias predicted the speed of motor reactions, and we observed a concurrent activation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Taken together, the exploration of potentially relevant cues seems to be part of a reflexive-orienting response regardless of contextual valence. However, centralization of gaze may be a threat-specific action-preparatory response that occurs across a wide range of stimulus contexts.

Seabird’s cry: repertoire and vocal expression of contextual valence in the little auk (Alle alle)

Many seabird species breed in colonies counting up to hundreds of thousands of individuals. Life in such crowded colonies might require special coding–decoding systems to reliably convey information through acoustic cues. This can include, for example, developing complex vocal repertoires and adjusting the properties of their vocal signals to communicate behavioural contexts, and thus regulate social interactions with their conspecifics. We studied vocalisations produced by the little auk (Alle alle)—a highly vocal, colonial seabird—over mating and incubation periods on the SW coast of Svalbard. Using passive acoustic recordings registered in a breeding colony, we extracted eight vocalisation types: single call, clucking, classic call, low trill, short call, short-trill, terror, and handling vocalisation. Calls were grouped by production context (based on the typically associated behaviour), to which a valence (positive vs negative) was later attributed, when possible, according to fitness threats, i.e. predator or human presence (negative) and promoters, i.e. interaction with a partner (positive). The effect of the putative valence on eight selected frequency and duration variables was then investigated. The putative contextual valence significantly affected the acoustic properties of the calls. Calls assigned positive valence had higher fundamental frequency and spectral centre of gravity as well as shorter sound duration than these assigned negative valence. These results indicate that the little auk’s vocal communication system may facilitate expression of complex behavioural contexts, and seems to include vocal plasticity within vocalisation types—however, more data are necessary to better understand this effect and possible interplays of other factors.

Contextual valence influences the neural dynamics of time and magnitude representation during feedback evaluation.

Contextual valence is an important dimension during value-based decision-making. Previous research has revealed behavioral and neural asymmetries between the gain context and the loss context. The present event-related potential study investigated the effects of contextual valence on neural dynamics underlying magnitude and time, two important reward dimensions, during feedback evaluation. Forty-two participants performed a simple guessing task in which they experienced both a gain context wherein high or low rewards were delivered immediately or six months later, and a loss context wherein high or low losses were delivered in the same way. Results showed that in the gain context, time and magnitude information were processed in a parallel way during the time windows of the reward positivity (RewP) and the P3. In the loss context, however, time and magnitude information were processed in a serial way such that time information was encoded during the RewP and P3 periods, whereas magnitude information was not tracked until the time window of the late positive potential. Our findings suggest that the neural dynamics underlying time and magnitude information are distinct between the gain and loss contexts, thus providing a novel perspective for the well-known gain-loss asymmetry.

A Knowledge-Based Model for Polarity Shifters

Polarity shifting can be considered one of the most challenging problems in the context of Sentiment Analysis. Polarity shifters, also known as contextual valence shifters (Polanyi and Zaenen 2004), are treated as linguistic contextual items that can increase, reduce or neutralise the prior polarity of a word called focus included in an opinion. The automatic detection of such items enhances the performance and accuracy of computational systems for opinion mining, but this challenge remains open, mainly for languages other than English. From a symbolic approach, we aim to advance in the automatic processing of the polarity shifters that affect the opinions expressed on tweets, both in English and Spanish. To this end, we describe a novel knowledge-based model to deal with three dimensions of contextual shifters: negation, quantification, and modality (or irrealis).

Cognitive mechanisms of the face context effect: An event related potential study of the effects of emotional contexts on neutral face perception

Face context effect refers to the influence of the emotional context on facial expression perception. Numerous empirical studies have explored the mechanisms of the face context effect, but no consistent conclusions have been drawn. Hence, we investigated the cognitive mechanisms of the face context effect using recordings of event-related potentials. In Experiment 1, we adopted the context-target paradigm to explore the mechanisms of the effect of context with different emotional valences on the neutral face perception (emotional valence-based face context effect). In Experiment 2, we explored the mechanisms of the effect of context with different emotional types on the neutral face perception (specific emotion-based face context effect). The results of Experiment 1 indicated that the participants were biased toward contextual valence when recognizing the emotional valence of neutral faces, and that the neutral target faces under emotional contexts with different valences induced significant differences in the P1, N170, and LPP amplitudes. In Experiment 2, the results of Experiment 2 indicated that the participants were biased toward specific contextual emotions when recognizing the emotion type of neutral faces, and that the neutral target faces under contexts of different emotional types induced significant differences in the LPP amplitude, but not in the P1 or N170 amplitude. We concluded that the emotional valence-based face context effect occurred in the early processing stage, whereas the specific emotion-based face context effect occurred in the late processing stage.

Computational Aesthetics of the Collective Affective Dynamics of IMDB Movie Reviews

This paper proposes an approach to visualising affective metadata from movie reviews on IMDB. First, a natural language processing (NLP) method is applied for automatic topic modelling and sentiment analysis using contextual valence and subjectivity as measures of emotional expression intensity. A t-Distribut- ed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE) was used to project these meta- data into a compact 2D representation. A cluster analysis was used to extract the spatial dynamics of this representation, which were mapped into a genera- tive visualization. Each generated visual ‘signature’ represented the emotional dynamics of a single movie extracted from 150 reviews, for a total of 20 mov- ies. Based on the visualised metadata, a qualitative evaluation of 79 participants demonstrated the capacity to communicate affective metaphors, as well as a robust sense of perceptual consistency. Furthermore, we assert that the gener- ative visualisation of data shows a nuanced expression of an aesthetic approach instead of an abstract articulation of an idea.

Stage Performance and Musical Analysis of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa Works by using Sentiment Analysis Techniques

This research is initiated to analysis the stage performance and musical analysis of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa works on Afaan oromoo reviews text collected from social Medias by applying the concept of sentiment analysis techniques. The data (reviews) were collected manually from social media on Haacaaluu Hundeessaa musical works. Haacaaluu Hundeessaa is Oromo singer, songwriter, civil rights activist and his being a voice his people. He is the most famous young singer, hero and icon of Oromo musician. From his musical works Sanyii Mootii(Race of the King), Waa'ee Keenyaa(Our Plight), Maalan Jira(What existence is mine), JIRTUU? are the most popular known in Oromo peoples as well as nation and nationality of Ethiopia. From Hacaaluu musical works, the researcher considered reviews (opinions) afaan oromoo text data on his single sang “JIRTUU?” to analysis stage performance of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa’s. The researcher inspires to use this single sang because; reviews (comments) are easier to access, available on you tube channel, extensive in size relatively from other his songs from social media. Additionally this song was broadcast live by Oromia Broadcasting Network and other Medias on different stage. Opinion lexicon approach with contextual valence shifter is used for analyzing opinions (comments) given on stage performance of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa works. Totally 18,687 reviews opinions or sentences were collected for experimentations to analysis stage performance and musical works of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa. Accordingly our result indicates around 99.52 percents peoples likes the stage performance and musical works of Hacaaluu Hundeessaa. From the results researcher observed Haacaaluu Hundeessaa has good performer with sing emotional and physically when he sing on the stages. In future works, further research needs to study others musical works of Hacaaluu Hundeessaa.

The influence of contextual factors on the subjective value of control.

The propensity to perceive and exert control in our environment contributes to both our adaptive behavior and general well-being. Prior studies have shown that humans have an inherent behavioral bias toward control-conferring environments and that this bias translates into greater subjective affect and is protective of our well-being. As such, it is vital to understand contextual factors that can alter our preference for control. In our previous work, we demonstrated that the behavioral bias toward control can be captured experimentally as the subjective value of control using a novel Value of Control task. We adapted this task in two experiments to study whether one's subjective value of control is (a) tied to overestimation of success probability or outcome magnitude (Experiment 1) and (b) affected by the contextual valence of a decision (e.g., gain, loss; Experiment 2). Using a within-subjects design (Experiment 1), we found that participants showed similar behavioral bias toward control regardless of whether probability or magnitude was manipulated, suggesting that the perception of control can increase both how much a reward is subjectively worth and the probability estimation for obtaining the given reward. Using a between-subjects design (Experiment 2), we showed that when the outcome was framed as a potential loss, participants significantly lowered their subjective value of control, suggesting that outcome valence plays a role in shaping how much perceived control influences our behavior. Collectively, these findings offer further insight into the malleability of an individual's perception of control and drive to perform control-seeking behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Liking and perceived safety across judgments of distinct instances of a category of activity

Prior research on the affect heuristic demonstrated that the more a person likes an object or activity, the safer and more valuable it is judged to be. That relation was found when judging stimuli at the categorical level (e.g., nuclear power, airplane travel, heart surgery). Yet risk judgments and decisions usually pertain to specific instances of an object or activity rather than their categorical representations. We examined whether the relation between liking and perceived safety holds across multiple judgments of specific instances of an activity distinguished by contextual information. In four studies (N = 372), participants with domain-specific experience (backcountry skiers) completed multicue risk judgments under high uncertainty (judging the avalanche risk in backcountry skiing scenarios) and reported their degree of liking the scenarios. We demonstrate that the positive relation between liking and perceived safety holds across multiple judgments of specific instances of the activity. Furthermore, the liking-perceived safety relation (i.e., judging liked slopes to be safe, judging disliked slopes to be unsafe) held among backcountry skiers who like the activity and consider it safe at the categorical level. We discuss these findings from the perspective that contextual valence and perceived risk can dynamically diverge from categorical valence and perceived risk when perceiving specific instances of that category. These findings have implications for research on attitudes toward risk in extreme sports and other high-risk activities. Although it has been proposed that participants in extreme sports like risk and the thrill it provides, we found that backcountry skiers exhibit a healthy positive relation between liking and perceived safety when judging specific instances of skiing in avalanche terrain.

Prelimbic and Infralimbic Prefrontal Regulation of Active and Inhibitory Avoidance and Reward-Seeking.

Flexible initiation or suppression of actions to avoid aversive events is crucial for survival. The prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) regions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) have been implicated in different aspects of avoidance and reward-seeking, but their respective contribution in instigating versus suppressing actions in aversive contexts remains to be clarified. We examined mPFC involvement in different forms of avoidance in rats well trained on different cued lever-press avoidance tasks. Active/inhibitory avoidance required flexible discrimination between auditory cues signaling foot-shock could be avoided by making or withholding instrumental responses. On a simpler active avoidance task, a single cue signaled when a lever press would avoid shock. PL inactivation disrupted active but not inhibitory avoidance on the discriminative task while having no effect on single-cued avoidance. In comparison, IL inactivation broadly impaired active and inhibitory avoidance. Conversely, on a cued appetitive go/no-go task, both IL and PL inactivation impaired inhibitory but not active reward-seeking, the latter effect being diametrically opposite to that observed on the avoidance task. These findings highlight the complex manner in which different mPFC regions aid in initiating or inhibiting actions in the service of avoiding aversive outcomes or obtaining rewarding ones. IL facilitates active avoidance but suppress inappropriate actions in appetitive and aversive contexts. In contrast, contextual valence plays a critical role in how the PL is recruited in initiating or suppressing actions, which may relate to the degree of cognitive control required to flexibly negotiate response or motivational conflicts and override prepotent behaviors.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Choosing to make or withhold actions in a context-appropriate manner to avoid aversive events or obtain other goals is a critical survival skill. Different medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) regions have been implicated in certain aspects of avoidance, but their contributions to instigating or suppressing actions remains to be clarified. Here, we show that the dorsal, prelimbic (PL) region of the medial PFC aids active avoidance in situations requiring flexible mitigation of response conflicts, but also aids in withholding responses to obtain rewards. In comparison the ventral infralimbic (IL) cortex plays a broader role in active and inhibitory avoidance as well as suppressing actions to obtain rewards. These findings provide insight into mechanisms underlying normal and maladaptive avoidance behaviors and response inhibition.

Lexicon-based sentiment analysis of web discussion posts using SentiWordNet

Sentiment Analysis is the computational study of opinions that are expressed in text (e.g. blogs, comments and discussion forums). Web discussion forums provide a means to express and share user views on different topics. Such content is usually rich in opinion which if mined can provide useful insight into the interaction. Although several contextual sentiment analysis techniques have been proposed and tested in the domain of product reviews, little of such techniques have been tested in a web discussion setting which fundamentally differs from reviews. This research presents the result of accounting for lexical and non-lexical contextual valence shifters to the problem of sentiment classification of web discussion posts using SentiWordNet lexicon. The approach comprises the extraction of prior polarity scores from the lexicon and modification of such scores based on context. An evaluation on three discussion forums data sets shows that SentiWordNet together with the proposed approach could be used as important resource for sentiment classification of web discussion posts.Keywords: sentiment analysis, contextual polarity, genre-adaptation

Anterior insula activity and the effect of agency on the Stimulus‐Preceding Negativity

If you know that you are the author of a freely chosen action and that you bear responsibility for its outcome, then you are said to have "a sense of agency." When there is a delay between action and outcome, this response must be remembered if you are to learn from the experience. Previous studies have shown that the Stimulus-Preceding Negativity (SPN) recorded during the delay interval is larger under conditions that foster a sense of agency. In an EEG experiment (N=27), we confirmed that the SPN is larger when participants have a choice between two responses in a gambling task as compared to when there is only a single button and the computer determines the monetary outcome. This SPN agency effect was largest over right prefrontal cortex and it did not vary significantly between trial blocks in which only gains or only losses were possible. Participants in a second experiment (N=26) performed the same task while activity in anterior insular cortex, a known SPN generator, was measured via functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI). An essentially identical pattern of results was obtained: Activity was greater on choice than no-choice trials, especially for the right hemisphere, and no effect of contextual valence was observed. Although parallel observations such as these cannot warrant causal inference, our findings are consistent with the assumption that anterior insular cortex contributes to the effect of agency on the SPN.

The effect of emotional and self-referential contexts on ERP responses towards surprised faces

The perception of surprised faces is demonstrably modulated by emotional context. However, the influence of self-relevance and its interaction with emotional context have not been explored. The present study investigated the effects of contextual valence and self-reference on the perception of surprised faces. Our results revealed that faces in a negative context elicited a larger N170 than those in a neutral context. The EPN was affected by the interaction between contextual valence and self-reference, with larger amplitudes for faces in self-related positive contexts and sender-related negative contexts. Additionally, LPP amplitudes were enhanced for faces in negative contexts relative to neutral and positive contexts, as well as for self-related contexts in comparison to sender-related contexts. Together, these findings help to elucidate the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of emotional and self-referential contexts on the perception of surprised faces, which are characterized by distinctive ERPs.

Enhancement of SentiWordNet using contextual valence shifters

Sentence structure has a considerable impact on the sentiment polarity of a sentence. In the presence of contextual valence shifters like conjunctions, conditionals and intensifiers some parts of the sentence are more relevant to determine the sentence polarity. In this work we have used valence shifters in sentences to enhance the sentiment lexicon SentiWordNet in a given document set. They have also been used to improve the sentiment analysis at document level. In the near past, micro blogging services like Twitter have become an important data source for sentiment analysis. Tweets, being restricted to 140 characters have slangs, are grammatically incorrect, have spelling mistakes and have informal expressions. The method is aimed at noisy and unstructured data like tweets on which computationally intensive tools like dependency parsers are not very successful. Our proposed system works better on both noisy (Stanford and airlines datasets of Twitter) and structured (movie review) datasets.

Contextual valence modulates the effect of choice on incentive processing.

Previous research has demonstrated that reward-related neural activity is enhanced for choice relative to no-choice opportunities in the gain context. The current event-related potential study examined whether this modulatory effect of choice can be observed in both the gain and the loss contexts across anticipatory and consummatory phases of incentive processing. Thirty-two participants performed a simple choice task during which choices were made either by themselves (a choice condition) or by a computer (a no-choice condition) during a gain context (gain vs nongain) and a loss context (nonloss vs loss). Behaviorally, participants reported a higher level of perceived control in the choice than the no-choice condition as well as in the gain than loss context. During the anticipatory phase, the choice relative to the no-choice condition elicited an increased cue-P3 in the loss context and an enhanced stimulus-preceding negativity in the gain context. During the consummatory phase, the choice condition elicited a larger reward positivity (ΔRewP) than the no-choice condition in the gain relative to the loss context but a comparable feedback P3 across contexts. These findings demonstrate that the crucial role of voluntary choice in reward processing is contingent upon contextual valence.

ML-Ask: Open Source Affect Analysis Software for Textual Input in Japanese

We present ML-Ask – the first Open Source Affect Analysis system for textual input in Japanese. ML-Ask analyses the contents of an input (e.g., a sentence) and annotates it with information regarding the contained general emotive expressions, specific emotional words, valence-activation dimensions of overall expressed affect, and particular emotion types expressed with their respective expressions. ML-Ask also incorporates the Contextual Valence Shifters model for handling negation in sentences to deal with grammatically expressible shifts in the conveyed valence. The system, designed to work mainly under Linux and MacOS, can be used for research on, or applying the techniques of Affect Analysis within the framework Japanese language. It can also be used as an experimental baseline for specific research in Affect Analysis, and as a practical tool for written contents annotation. Funding statement: This research has been supported by: a Research Grant from the Nissan Science Foundation (years 2009–2010), The GCOE Program founded by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (years 2009–2010), (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (Project Number: 22-00358) (years 2010–2012), (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Project Number: 24600001) (years 2012–2015), (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up (Project Number: 25880003) (years 2013–2015), and (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientists (B) (Project Number: 15K16044) (years 2015-present, project estimated to end in March 2018).

Reward processing in gain versus loss context: An ERP study.

Previous research has shown that consummatory ERP components are sensitive to contextual valence. The present study investigated the contextual valence effect across anticipatory and consummatory phases by requiring participants to play a simple gambling task during a gain context and a loss context. During the anticipatory phase, the cue-P3 was more positive in the gain context compared to the loss context, whereas the stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) was comparable across the two contexts. With respect to the consummatory phase, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) in response to the zero-value outcome was more negative in the gain versus loss context, whereas the feedback P3 (fb-P3) in response to the zero-value outcome was insensitive to contextual valence. These findings suggest that contextual valence effect occurs at a relative early stage of both the reward anticipation and consumption. Moreover, across the gain and loss contexts, the SPN was selectively correlated with the FRN, whereas the cue-P3 was selectively associated with the fb-P3, pointing to a close association between the anticipatory and consummatory phases in reward dynamics.

Data-Driven Contextual Valence Shifter Quantification for Multi-Theme Sentiment Analysis.

Users often write reviews on different themes involving linguistic structures with complex sentiments. The sentiment polarity of a word can be different across themes. Moreover, contextual valence shifters may change sentiment polarity depending on the contexts that they appear in. Both challenges cannot be modeled effectively and explicitly in traditional sentiment analysis. Studying both phenomena requires multi-theme sentiment analysis at the word level, which is very interesting but significantly more challenging than overall polarity classification. To simultaneously resolve the multi-theme and sentiment shifting problems, we propose a data-driven framework to enable both capabilities: (1) polarity predictions of the same word in reviews of different themes, and (2) discovery and quantification of contextual valence shifters. The framework formulates multi-theme sentiment by factorizing the review sentiments with theme/word embeddings and then derives the shifter effect learning problem as a logistic regression. The improvement of sentiment polarity classification accuracy demonstrates not only the importance of multi-theme and sentiment shifting, but also effectiveness of our framework. Human evaluations and case studies further show the success of multi-theme word sentiment predictions and automatic effect quantification of contextual valence shifters.