Effects Of Emotional Stimuli Research Articles

The effects of emotional stimuli on Word retrieval in people with aphasia

PurposePrior studies have shown that people with aphasia (PWA) have demonstrated superior language performance for emotional compared to nonemotional stimuli on a range of tasks, including auditory comprehension, verbal pragmatics, repetition, reading, and writing. However, studies on word retrieval, specifically, have suggested a possible interference effect of emotion on naming. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the emotional valence of stimuli on word retrieval in a series of naming tasks in PWA. MethodThirteen PWA and 13 neurotypical controls participated in four single-word naming tasks, including 1) object picture naming, 2) action picture naming, 3) category-member generation, and 4) verb generation. Each task included three valence sets of positively-, negatively-, and neutrally-rated pictures or words, which were obtained from the standardized International Affective Picture System (Lang et al., 2008) and the Affective Norms for Emotional Words (Bradley and Lang, 1999) databases. Accuracy and reaction time (RT) were measured and compared across groups, tasks, and valence sets. ResultsEmotional stimuli, especially negative stimuli, resulted in worse naming performance, as measured by accuracy and RT, compared to nonemotional stimuli in PWA and neurotypical controls. This effect was relatively robust across the four naming tasks. In most cases, negative stimuli resulted in lower accuracy and slower RT than positive stimuli. ConclusionsThese findings suggest that stimulus valence may interfere with word retrieval for PWA and neurotypical adults and that this effect is robust across different types of naming tasks that vary by word class (nouns versus verbs) and stimulus type (pictures versus words). Negative stimuli resulted in worse naming performance than positive stimuli. These results suggest that emotionality of stimuli is an important variable to consider in word retrieval research.

Influence of emotional stimuli on metacognition: A study in arithmetic.

We investigate the role of negative emotional stimuli on direct and indirect metacognition, and document age-related differences in this role during adulthood. Participants were presented with negative or neutral pictures while asked to select which of two available strategies was the better strategy to find approximate estimates of two-digit multiplication problems. Following each strategy selection, participants provided either a direct (confidence judgment; Expt. 1) or an indirect (opt-out judgment; Expt. 2) evaluation of their strategy choice. Negative emotional stimuli decreased metacognitive accuracy for arithmetic strategy selection, but only when indirect metacognitive measures were collected. No differences were found when direct metacognitive judgments were requested. The effects of emotional stimuli on indirect metacognition and lack of effects on direct metacognition were found in both young and older adults. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the effects of emotion on metacognition in young and older adults.

Differential Effect of Emotional Stimuli on Performance on Verbal and Facial Priming Tasks and Their Relation to PTSD Symptoms in Girls with Intrafamiliar Sexual Abuse

Differential Effect of Emotional Stimuli on Performance on Verbal and Facial Priming Tasks and Their Relation to PTSD Symptoms in Girls with Intrafamiliar Sexual Abuse

Risk-taking Behavior Under the Effect of Emotional Stimuli Among Children and Adults.

Risk-taking has an important role in human life, either positive or negative. Finding a method to control or drive this in a particular way can affect the health of individuals and communities by discouraging negative risks, such as reckless driving, or encouraging positive risks. It has been shown that emotion induction can enhance risk-taking behavior. Nonetheless, studies are mainly conducted on adults and a gap to focus on adolescents group as the peak age of risk-taking is required. Therefore, a new risk-taking task is introduced and development of risk-taking behavior in children is compared with a group male adults. In addition, influence of positive and negative emotional images on the risk-taking behavior is also evaluated. A total of 21 children and 20 adults participated in this experiment. Their risk taking behavior is obtained using a new version of the dice game task with emotional stimuli. Subsequently, performances of two groups before and after emotional priming are statistically compared. The results showed that children have a higher tendency to choose riskier options when they are affected by positive emotion, while adults are more risk-averse after being primed by negative emotion. These findings can be helpful for policymakers and tutoring planners to control risk-taking behavior at different ages using the priming effect of positive and negative emotions. Children perform riskier than adults in our new version of the game of dice task.Children are affected by choosing riskier options by positive priming.Adults are affected by choosing less risky options by negative priming.Results were proved by dual-process theory. Every second of our life is consistent with decision-making. When you decide you face conditions that you do not know the result when you choose them. Choosing these options is associated with risks. Choosing these options can have both advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it will be very useful for communities, if they can find a way to control it. In this study, we aimed to test whether it is possible to control risk-taking by viewing emotional pictures before decision-making or not. Hence, we design gambling-like experiments and test adults and children using this experiment. These two age groups were used to test the existence of any difference or similarity between their behaviors. We used three main emotions to check their effect on people's choices. We wanted to check what happens to people's decisions if they are faced with positive, negative, or neutral images before their choice. Results showed that children were riskier than adults and affected more when facing positive images and selecting riskier options. On the other hand, adults are more affected by negative images and chose safer options after seeing the pictures in this emotion.

The influence of stimuli valence, extraversion, and emotion regulation on visual search within real-world scenes

Affective traits, including extraversion and emotion regulation, are important considerations in clinical psychology due to their associations with the occurrence of affective disorders. Previously, emotional real-world scenes have been shown to influence visual search. However, it is currently unknown whether extraversion and emotion regulation can influence visual search towards neutral targets embedded within real-world scenes, or whether these traits can impact the effect of emotional stimuli on visual search. An opportunity sample of healthy individuals had trait levels of extraversion and emotion regulation recorded before completing a visual search task. Participants more accurately identified search targets in neutral images compared to positive images, whilst response times were slower in negative images. Importantly, individuals with higher trait levels of expressive suppression displayed faster identification of search targets regardless of the emotional valence of the stimuli. Extraversion and cognitive reappraisal did not influence visual search. These findings add to our understanding regarding the influence of extraversion, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression on our ability to allocate attention during visual search when viewing real-world scenes.

The Influence of Discrete Negative and Positive Stimuli on Recognition Memory of Younger vs. Older Adults

ABSTRACT Background: The effects of emotional stimuli on memory in older adults are often addressed in terms of socio-emotional selectivity theory and the valence dimension. Older adults usually remember positive stimuli better than negative stimuli. However, studies examining the effects of discrete emotions on the elderly are still limited. The present study examined the effects of negative and positive discrete emotions (fear, disgust, and happiness) on recognition memory of older and younger adults. Method: In the encoding phase, participants studied happiness-, disgust-, fear-, and neutral- related photos while doing a line discrimination task that assessed their attention. After 45 minutes, they completed an old/new recognition memory test on a confidence rating scale and also rated self-relevance of photos. Results: Younger participants showed a more liberal response bias for disgust- and fear-related stimuli, and were also more accurate in recognizing disgust-related photos compared to others. Older adults showed a more liberal bias only for disgust-related stimuli, however, their recognition accuracy did not differ across emotion categories. Conclusion: These results suggested that the effect of disgust-related stimuli on recognition memory may decrease with age and emotion effects cannot solely be accounted for by the valence/arousal dimensions.

Language-Based Modulation of the Stream/Bounce Judgment.

When two identical objects on a screen move toward each other, coincide at the center of the screen, and then continue to move along their original trajectories to the opposite starting points, observers perceive these visual stimuli as showing one of the two possible scenarios: streaming through or bouncing off each other (stream/bounce perception). Previous research has shown that when a high-arousal face is presented along with the two moving objects, the bouncing percept was predominant, as compared with when a middle- or low-arousal face is presented. In this study, however, such a modulatory effect of the emotional face was eliminated when participants did not judge stream or bounce and the terms “bouncing/streaming” were not used in the experiments. These results suggest that the modulatory effect of emotional stimuli on the stream/bounce judgment cannot be explained solely by the emotional processing per se but, rather, can be modulated by language-based processing.

Evaluation of emotional and neutral pictures as flashing stimuli using a P300 brain–computer interface speller

Objective. Previous works have reported that complex emotional and visual stimuli can increase the amplitude of the P300 brain potential. Thus, the aim of the present work is to assess these kinds of images in a P300 brain–computer interface (BCI) speller as flashing stimuli. Approach. Twenty-three volunteers controlled four spellers with different sets of flashing stimuli: flashing letters, neutral pictures (NP), emotional pleasant pictures (EPP) and emotional unpleasant pictures (EUP). Main results. The sets of pictures showed a higher performance than the letters in accuracy and information transfer rate. These results were supported by the analysis of the P300 signal, where the picture sets offered the greatest amplitudes. The NP and EPP sets were the best evaluated in the subjective questionnaire. Significance. In short, despite the fact that the effect of emotional stimuli could not be observed in the performance metrics, picture sets have offered a high performance and should be considered in future proposals for visual P300-based BCI applications.

The effect of emotional stimuli on stream/bounce perception: Investigation of response bias based on word labels

The effect of emotional stimuli on stream/bounce perception: Investigation of response bias based on word labels

Interaction of music and emotional stimuli in modulating working memory in macaque monkeys.

Background music is one of the most frequently encountered contextual factors that affect cognitive and emotional functions in humans. However, it is still unclear whether music induces similar effects in nonhuman primates. Answering this question might bring insight to the long-lasting question regarding the ability of nonhuman primates in perceiving and dissociating music from other nonmusical acoustic information. In the present study, macaque monkeys were trained to perform a working memory task that required matching visual stimuli. These stimuli had different emotional content (neutral, negative, and positive). Monkeys performed the task within different background acoustic conditions (music, same-intensity noise, and silence). We hypothesized that the auditory stimuli might interact with emotional information of visual stimuli and modulate monkeys' performance. Furthermore, if the effects of music and noise on monkeys' behavioral measures differ it would mean that monkeys perceived and processed music differently. We found that, monkeys committed more errors and were slower when they encountered stimuli with negative or positive emotional content. In the presence of music, the influence of emotional stimuli on monkeys' performance significantly differed from those of the neutral stimuli, however, in the presence of noise, the effects of emotional stimuli on monkeys' performance were not distinguishable. The dissociable effects of music and noise on monkeys' performance show that the effects of emotional stimuli were dependent on the background acoustic conditions. Our findings indicate that background music and the same-intensity noise were differentially perceived by monkeys and influenced their cognitive functions.

Memory detection: The effects of emotional stimuli

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) aims to detect the presence of crime-related information in memory. In two experiments, we examined the influence of stimulus emotionality on the outcomes of the CIT. In experiment 1, each participant was tested immediately or after one week, on a series of neutral and either negative arousing or negative non-arousing pictures. CIT detection efficiency was unaffected, but physiological and recognition data did not support the manipulation’s effectiveness. In experiment 2, each participant was tested after a week on a series of neutral versus negative arousing pictures. Importantly, stimulus arousal was increased and memory ceiling effects were prevented. This time, both memory and CIT detection efficiency using the skin conductance, but not the respiration and heart rate measures, were enhanced for emotional compared to neutral pictures. Taken together, these results indicate that the use of emotional stimuli does not deteriorate and may even improve CIT validity.

The interaction between emotion and executive control: Comparison between visual, auditory, and tactile modalities.

The reciprocal connections between emotion and attention are vital for adaptive behaviour. Previous results demonstrated that the behavioural effects of emotional stimuli on performance are attenuated when executive control is recruited. The current research studied whether this attenuation is modality dependent. In two experiments, negative and neutral pictures were presented shortly before a visual, tactile, or auditory target in a Simon task. All three modalities demonstrated a Simon effect, a conflict adaptation effect, and an emotional interference effect. However, the interaction between picture valence and Simon congruency was found only in the visual task. Specifically, when the Simon target was visual, emotional interference was reduced during incongruent compared to congruent trials. These findings suggest that although the control-related effects observed in the Simon tasks are not modality dependent, the link between emotion and executive control is modality dependent. Presumably, this link occurs only when the emotional stimulus and the target are presented in the same modality.

Postural Control in Children with Dyslexia: Effects of Emotional Stimuli in a Dual-Task Environment.

The aim of this study was to compare the visual exploration strategies used during a postural control task across participants with and without dyslexia. We simultaneously recorded eye movements and postural control while children were viewing different types of emotional faces. Twenty-two children with dyslexia and twenty-two aged-matched children without dyslexia participated in the study. We analysed the surface area, the length and the mean velocity of the centre of pressure for balance in parallel with visual saccadic latency, the number of saccades and the time spent in regions of interest. Our results showed that postural stability in children with dyslexia was weaker and the surface area of their centre of pressure increased significantly when they viewed an unpleasant face. Moreover, children with dyslexia had different strategies to those used by children without dyslexia during visual exploration, and in particular when they viewed unpleasant emotional faces. We suggest that lower performance in emotional face processing in children with dyslexia could be due to a difference in their visual strategies, linked to their identification of unpleasant emotional faces. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effects of happy and sad facial expressions on the perception of time in Parkinson’s disease patients with mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a movement disorder caused by deterioration of the dopaminergic system. Previous studies have demonstrated temporal as well as emotional facial recognition impairment in PD patients. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that emotional facial expressions alter temporal judgments. In the present study, we investigate the magnitude of temporal distortions caused by the presentation of emotional facial expressions (happiness, sadness, and neutral) in PD patients with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) and controls.Method: Seventeen older adults with PD-MCI and 22 healthy older adults took part in the present study. Participants were tested with a time bisection task with standard intervals lasting 400 ms and 1600 ms. Moreover, a complete neuropsychological evaluation was conducted to characterize the sample.Results: Differences between groups were observed indicating a general underestimation of time in PD-MCI patients. Temporal impairments in PD-MCI patients seem to be caused mainly by a dysfunction at the level of reference memory. The effect of emotional facial expressions on time perception was evident in both PD patients and controls, with an overestimation of perceived duration when happiness was presented and an underestimation when sadness was presented.Conclusion: Overall, our results indicate that reduced cognitive abilities might be responsible for the lower temporal ability observed in PD-MCI patients. Moreover, similar effects of emotional stimuli were observed in both PD-MCI patients and controls.

Modulation of Auditory Spatial Attention by Angry Prosody: An fMRI Auditory Dot-Probe Study

Emotional stimuli have been shown to modulate attentional orienting through signals sent by subcortical brain regions that modulate visual perception at early stages of processing. Fewer studies, however, have investigated a similar effect of emotional stimuli on attentional orienting in the auditory domain together with an investigation of brain regions underlying such attentional modulation, which is the general aim of the present study. Therefore, we used an original auditory dot-probe paradigm involving simultaneously presented neutral and angry non-speech vocal utterances lateralized to either the left or the right auditory space, immediately followed by a short and lateralized single sine wave tone presented in the same (valid trial) or in the opposite space as the preceding angry voice (invalid trial). Behavioral results showed an expected facilitation effect for target detection during valid trials while functional data showed greater activation in the middle and posterior superior temporal sulci (STS) and in the medial frontal cortex for valid vs. invalid trials. The use of reaction time facilitation [absolute value of the Z-score of valid-(invalid+neutral)] as a group covariate extended enhanced activity in the amygdalae, auditory thalamus, and visual cortex. Taken together, our results suggest the involvement of a large and distributed network of regions among which the STS, thalamus, and amygdala are crucial for the decoding of angry prosody, as well as for orienting and maintaining attention within an auditory space that was previously primed by a vocal emotional event.

Affective processing bias in youth with primary bipolar disorder or primary attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

High rates of comorbidity and overlapping diagnostic criteria between pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) contribute to diagnostic and treatment confusion. To advance what is known about both disorders, we compared effect of emotional stimuli on response control in children with primary BD, primary ADHD and typically developing controls (TDC). Participants included 7-17 year olds with either "narrow-phenotype" pediatric BD (n = 25), ADHD (n = 25) or TDC (n = 25). Groups were matched on participant age and FSIQ. The effect of emotional stimuli on response control was assessed using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Affective Go/No-Go task (CANTAB AGN). We found a group by target valence interaction on commission errors [F(2,71) = 5.34, p < 0.01, ƞ p (2) = 0.13] whereby ADHD, but not TDC participants, made more errors on negative than positive words [t(24) = -2.58, p < 0.05, r = 0.47]. In contrast, there was a nonsignificant trend for BD participants to make fewer errors on negative versus positive words compared to ADHD and TDC participants. Between-subjects effects showed that ADHD participants made more errors than TDC, but not BD participants. Our main finding advances what is known about the effect of emotional stimuli on response control in children with ADHD. Our results suggesting a positive affective processing bias in children with ADHD compliment emerging literature show that difficulties with emotional processing and regulation may be core features of ADHD. Further, given the observed pattern of results in children with ADHD compared to BD children, our behavioral results suggest the importance of examining differences in the brain-behavior mechanisms involved in affective processing in children with ADHD compared to BD children.

Attentional biases to emotion in impulsive and instrumental violent offenders: an event-related potential study

Background: Interpersonal violent behavior is often induced by extreme emotional states but the effects of emotional stimuli on this behavior remain poorly understood. Aim: We compared the effects of emotional stimuli on behavior in individuals with a history of impulsive or instrumental violence to test for either general problems in processing of emotional stimuli or problems in disengagement from this type of information. Methods: Behavioral and electrophysiological data were collected using emotional stimuli preceding a Posner Cuing Task. Results: Impulsive violent individuals showed more attentional resource allocation to angry faces whereas instrumental violent individuals attended less to sad faces. Electrophysiological measures showed there were differences in attentional allocation leading to differences when disengaging from invalid emotional cues, rather than a pattern indicating differences in early processing in extrastriate cortex. Conclusions: Different emotion–attention problems are seen in impulsive and instrumental violent offenders due to abnormalities in disengaging attention from specific types of emotional content.

Mutual influences of pain and emotional face processing.

The perception of unpleasant stimuli enhances whereas the perception of pleasant stimuli decreases pain perception. In contrast, the effects of pain on the processing of emotional stimuli are much less known. Especially given the recent interest in facial expressions of pain as a special category of emotional stimuli, a main topic in this research line is the mutual influence of pain and facial expression processing. Therefore, in this mini-review we selectively summarize research on the effects of emotional stimuli on pain, but more extensively turn to the opposite direction namely how pain influences concurrent processing of affective stimuli such as facial expressions. Based on the motivational priming theory one may hypothesize that the perception of pain enhances the processing of unpleasant stimuli and decreases the processing of pleasant stimuli. This review reveals that the literature is only partly consistent with this assumption: pain reduces the processing of pleasant pictures and happy facial expressions, but does not – or only partly – affect processing of unpleasant pictures. However, it was demonstrated that pain selectively enhances the processing of facial expressions if these are pain-related (i.e., facial expressions of pain). Extending a mere affective modulation theory, the latter results suggest pain-specific effects which may be explained by the perception-action model of empathy. Together, these results underscore the important mutual influence of pain and emotional face processing.

The effects of emotional stimuli on visuo-spatial vigilance.

In the present study we explored the impact of task-irrelevant emotive picture stimuli on visuo-spatial vigilance. Ninety-five participants completed the experiment in which task-irrelevant emotive picture stimuli were embedded in the vigilance task. Four experimental groups were tested by combining two levels of picture valence, positive versus negative, and two levels of picture arousal, arousing versus non-arousing, for the picture stimuli. The task was organized so that baseline performance, the initial impact of the images, and any continual carry-over effects of the images on performance could be measured. In addition to performance on the task, subjective state was measured using a self-report questionnaire designed to examine energetic and tense arousal as well as task-related and task-unrelated thoughts. The performance decrement of the groups exposed to the arousing picture stimuli was attenuated in comparison to those exposed to the non-arousing stimuli. Further the relationship between self-reported energetic arousal and performance differed for the arousing and non-arousing picture groups. Post-task energetic arousal significantly predicted the performance decrement for the arousing picture group, but not for the non-arousing picture group. These results provide support for the perspective that the arousal quality of picture stimuli matters more for performance than valence, and that arousing pictures while possibly disruptive when presented concurrently with the vigilance task may result in improved performance later due to an increase in energetic arousal.

Effects of emotional stimuli on time perception in manic and euthymic patients with bipolar disorder.

Time perception, which plays a fundamental role in decision-making and the evaluation of the environment, is also influenced by emotions. Patients with bipolar disorder have impairments in emotional processing as well as interval timing. We investigated the effects of emotional stimuli on time estimation and reproduction in manic and euthymic bipolar patients compared with healthy controls. We recruited 22 manic bipolar patients, 24 euthymic bipolar patients and 24 healthy controls. Each subject performed time estimation and reproduction tasks using standardized affective pictures that were classified into 4 stimulus groups according to valence and level of arousal and presented for durations of 2, 4, and 6s. We analyzed temporal performance on these tasks using transformed data expressed as a proportion of the target period. The interactions between arousal and valence were different in manic patients compared with euthymic patients and healthy controls in both time estimation and reproduction tasks. Manic patients showed no effect of positive valence low arousal stimuli in the time estimation task compared to euthymic patients and healthy controls. In the time reproduction task, the effect of emotional stimuli was reversed in manic patients compared to euthymic patients and healthy controls. Significant correlations between the severity of manic symptoms or illness severity and average temporal performance scores were found in manic patients. Our results suggest that altered emotion-related time judgments may be a state-dependent phenomenon observed in manic patients only. This difference in time perception for emotional stimuli may be related to the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of the manic state.