Emotional Content Research Articles

Using the Driving and Dementia Roadmap (DDR) to address the emotional impact of driving cessation and dementia

AbstractBackgroundThe emotional impact of driving cessation for people living with dementia (PWD) and their family/friend carers (FCs) can be significant, often contributing to their avoidance of this issue. In addition to the grief and anger associated with PWD’s loss of identity and independence, feelings of fear and distress can accompany PWD’s and FC’s lack of knowledge about driving cessation. In this study, we conducted an implementation evaluation of the Driving and Dementia Roadmap (DDR). The DDR is a web‐based collection of resources and tools to support PWD and FCs through the decision‐making process and transition to non‐driving, including information on managing the oft‐neglected emotional implications of stopping to drive.MethodSemi‐structured interviews were conducted with 19 Alzheimer Society (AS) staff after a three to six month period of delivering the DDR to their clients in six AS sites in four Canadian provinces. Eight PWD and 13 FCs who engaged with the DDR were also interviewed. Participants were asked about their experiences of delivering or using the DDR. An inductive thematic analysis of the data was conducted.ResultAccording to study participants, the DDR had both a direct and indirect impact on the emotional aspects of driving cessation for FCs and PWD. FCs described how the emotion content gave them insight about the grief and loss the PWD was experiencing. This understanding helped them to attend to the emotional ramifications of driving cessation and to initiate conversations about driving with compassion, empathy and patience. Indirectly, the DDR also helped PWD and FCs feel that they are not alone, thus “normalizing” driving cessation. They reported being reassured that the actions they had taken and decisions made to stop driving were appropriate. Strategies about remaining mobile also brought relief and hope that PWDs’ quality of life could be maintained once driving ceased.ConclusionBy providing resources and tools that not only directly address the emotional impact of driving cessation, but also attend to other aspects of managing the decision‐making and transition to non‐driving, the DDR has the potential to lessen the associated grief, fear and distress often experienced by PWD and FCs.

Fluctuation in cognitive engagement during listening and reading of erotica and horror stories

ABSTRACT The present study examined whether emotional text content influences cognitive engagement and transportation during listening (Experiment 1) and reading (Experiment 2) of neutral, horror and erotic stories. In Experiment 1, fluctuation in arousal and cognitive engagement were measured by continuous arousal judgments and head movement recordings during story listening. Participants rated experienced transportation and emotional valence after each story. The results showed that emotional texts were more arousing and induced more transportation than neutral stories. There was less head motion overall and a steeper decrease in head motion across time for erotic than neutral or horror stories. In Experiment 2, participants’ head movements and reading times were recorded during reading, and participants rated experienced transportation, arousal, and valence after each text. The results showed that emotional texts were more arousing and induced higher transportation than neutral stories. There was less head motion during reading of erotic than neutral or horror texts. Horror texts were read slower and recalled better than neutral or erotic texts. The present results show that emotional text content impacts cognitive engagement during listening and reading of literary texts and demonstrates the importance of methodological triangulation when examining cognitive engagement.

Human-computer interaction based on background knowledge and emotion certainty.

Aiming at the problems of lack of background knowledge and the inconsistent response of robots in the current human-computer interaction system, we proposed a human-computer interaction model based on a knowledge graph ripple network. The model simulated the natural human communication process to realize a more natural and intelligent human-computer interaction system. This study had three contributions: first, the affective friendliness of human-computer interaction was obtained by calculating the affective evaluation value and the emotional measurement of human-computer interaction. Then, the external knowledge graph was introduced as the background knowledge of the robot, and the conversation entity was embedded into the ripple network of the knowledge graph to obtain the potential entity content of interest of the participant. Finally, the robot replies based on emotional friendliness and content friendliness. The experimental results showed that, compared with the comparison models, the emotional friendliness and coherence of robots with background knowledge and emotional measurement effectively improve the response accuracy by 5.5% at least during human-computer interaction.

A new perspective on the role of the frontoparietal regions in Stroop-like conflicts.

Humans are goal-directed; however, goal-unrelated information still affects us, but how? The Stroop task is often used to answer this question, relying on conflict (incongruency) between attributes, one targeted by the task and another irrelevant to the task. The frontal regions of the brain are known to play a crucial role in processing such conflict, as they show increased activity when we encounter incongruent stimuli. Notably, the Stroop stimuli also consist of conceptual dimensions, such as semantic or emotional content, that are independent of the attributes that define the conflict. Since the non-targeted attribute usually refers to the same conceptual dimension as the targeted-attribute, it is relevant to the task at hand. For example, when naming the emotion of an emotional face superimposed by an emotional word, both the targeted-attribute and the non-targeted attribute refer to the conceptual dimension "emotion". We designed an fMRI paradigm to investigate how conflicts between different conceptual dimensions impact us. Even though the conflict was task-irrelevant, incongruent stimuli resulted in longer reaction times, indicating a behavioral congruency effect. When examining the neural mechanisms that underlie this effect, we found that the frontal regions exhibited repetition suppression, while the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) showed a congruency effect linked to the behavioral effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals are unable to completely ignore task-irrelevant information, and that the IPS plays a crucial role in processing such information.

Effects of emotional decorative pictures on cognitive load as assessed by pupil dilation and EEG frequency band power

AbstractThe present study examined the effects of decorative pictures (DP) on cognitive load during learning factual knowledge from texts assessed by physiological proxies, namely pupil dilation and the electroencephalogram (EEG) theta (4–6 Hz) and alpha (8–13 Hz) frequency band power at frontal and parietal electrodes, respectively. In a complete within‐subjects design the presence of DP positioned beside learning texts and the emotional content of the DP (i.e., negative, neutral, and positive DP) were manipulated. For DP present, pupil dilation and the EEG alpha frequency band power indicated increased cognitive load, specifically for negative DP. Behavioral performance measures (i.e., learning times and learning outcomes) were not affected by the presence of DP. Subjective effort ratings were also not affected by DP, although specifically the negative DP were subjectively perceived as distracting. In sum, DP only moderately affected cognitive load allowing subjects to compensate.

Emotionality effects in Korean visual word recognition: Evidence from lab-based and web-based lexical decision tasks

Previous studies have shown that processes of word recognition are influenced by the emotional content of a word. This pattern is most readily explained by the motivated attention and affective states model (Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 1997), which states that emotional stimuli are motivationally significant and capture attention. Drawing on this theoretical account, the current study compared lexical decision response times to positive and negative emotion words versus neutral words across two experimental environments - a traditional lab-based environment and a web-based environment. In addition, the experiment was conducted using Korean words presented to native Korean speakers in order to test whether the emotionality effect emerges in a non-English language. The results revealed faster response times to emotion words versus neutral words across both experimental environments with no evidence of a difference between the two environments. These findings provide important evidence that emotion words successfully attract attention and facilitate word processing even in situations where participants might be more easily distracted than they would be in a traditional lab setting. This work also constitutes the first demonstration of an emotionality effect in Korean word recognition, thus providing further evidence that the emotionality effect may be a language-universal phenomenon.

Autistic traits shape neuronal oscillations during emotion perception under attentional load modulation

Emotional content is particularly salient, but situational factors such as cognitive load may disturb the attentional prioritization towards affective stimuli and interfere with their processing. In this study, 31 autistic and 31 typically developed children volunteered to assess their perception of affective prosodies via event-related spectral perturbations of neuronal oscillations recorded by electroencephalography under attentional load modulations induced by Multiple Object Tracking or neutral images. Although intermediate load optimized emotion processing by typically developed children, load and emotion did not interplay in children with autism. Results also outlined impaired emotional integration emphasized in theta, alpha and beta oscillations at early and late stages, and lower attentional ability indexed by the tracking capacity. Furthermore, both tracking capacity and neuronal patterns of emotion perception during task were predicted by daily-life autistic behaviors. These findings highlight that intermediate load may encourage emotion processing in typically developed children. However, autism aligns with impaired affective processing and selective attention, both insensitive to load modulations. Results were discussed within a Bayesian perspective that suggests atypical updating in precision between sensations and hidden states, towards poor contextual evaluations. For the first time, implicit emotion perception assessed by neuronal markers was integrated with environmental demands to characterize autism.

USE OF PERIPHRASES IN ART LITERATURE

Figurative phrases with high emotional content used in works of art have a high lexical-semantic character. Paraphrases are one of the artistic means of the language of literature. The article analyzes the structure and meaning of paraphrases using examples taken from the works of G. Musrepov and S. Mukanov, T. Sauketaeva.

The Effects of Emotional Transmission on Mainstream Social Media A Case Study of Guangming Dailys Account on Douyin

Studies on the use of emotional factors by mainstream media mostly start from the perspectives of narrative and content, while few studies focus on the influence of emotional communication. Based on the existing literature on the mainstream media's emotionalized narrative in short videos, this research investigates the influence of this narrative in the process of communication, with a specific focus on the official account of Guangming Daily on Douyin. It combines questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Collected data are analyzed through the tool, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to uncover the effect of emotional content transmission. The result shows that the short videos released by Guangming Daily are characterized by a folk narrative that aims to stimulate emotional resonance. They are of educational significance, providing positive guidance and arousing patriotic feelings.

Blended Emotions can be Accurately Recognized from Dynamic Facial and Vocal Expressions

People frequently report feeling more than one emotion at the same time (i.e., blended emotions), but studies on nonverbal communication of such complex states remain scarce. Actors (N = 18) expressed blended emotions consisting of all pairwise combinations of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness – using facial gestures, body movement, and vocal sounds – with the intention that both emotions should be equally prominent in the resulting expression. Accuracy of blended emotion recognition was assessed in two preregistered studies using a combined forced-choice and rating scale task. For each recording, participants were instructed to choose two scales (out of 5 available scales: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) that best described their perception of the emotional content and judge how clearly each of the two chosen emotions were perceived. Study 1 (N = 38) showed that all emotion combinations were accurately recognized from multimodal (facial/bodily/vocal) expressions, with significantly higher ratings on scales corresponding to intended vs. non-intended emotions. Study 2 (N = 51) showed that all emotion combinations were also accurately perceived when the recordings were presented in unimodal visual (facial/bodily) and auditory (vocal) conditions, although accuracy was lower in the auditory condition. To summarize, results suggest that blended emotions, including combinations of both same-valence and other-valence emotions, can be accurately recognized from dynamic facial/bodily and vocal expressions. The validated recordings of blended emotion expressions are freely available for research purposes.

Emotional citizens, detached interest groups? The use of emotional language in public policy consultations

In public consultations, policymakers give stakeholders access to the policymaking process in exchange for technical or political information. Our article proposes to analyze not only the policy positions, but the emotional content of consultation contributions. In our descriptive study, we explore two conjectures: First, citizens contributions to public consultations display more emotions than contributions by corporate actors, and second, contributions mentioning concrete policies display more emotions than contributions referring to the abstract policy framework. We use dictionary-based sentiment coding to analyze ~ 7300 contributions to the consultation of German electricity grid construction planning. Our analysis shows that citizens’ contributions contain more emotional terms, especially voicing fear. Moreover, if contributions refer to a specific power line, they contain less joy, but more fear and sadness. Thus, we show a way to conceptualize and measure the link between public policies and the emotions they trigger.

Current and lasting effects of affect labeling on late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes elicited by negative events.

Labeling the emotional aspect of self-unrelated stimuli (i.e., affect labeling) is a crucial strategy for implicit emotion regulation. However, it is uncertain whether affect labeling influences event-related potential (ERP) responses (e.g., the late positive potential, LPP) to negative stimuli in comparison with control conditions in which attention is shifted to the emotional content of the stimuli (e.g., affect matching). Additionally, it is unknown whether affect labeling has a lasting effect on the processing of negative stimuli. Participants were required to label the emotion (negative or neutral) of target pictures with two words, to match the emotion with alternative pictures or to merely view the target pictures. Target pictures were presented again immediately after the regulation task. After all the target pictures had been labeled, matched and viewed, the pictures were re-exposed for the third time. The results showed that negative pictures elicited larger late LPP responses during the affect labeling task than during other tasks. However, the LPP responses were smaller for negative pictures in the affect labeling condition than in the other conditions when target pictures were re-exposed immediately after the task. When target pictures were re-presented again long after the regulation tasks, the LPP responses were smaller for negative stimuli with a history of affect labeling than viewing, whereas this effect did not differ between the affect labeling and matching conditions. The current findings suggest that affect labeling has current effects and, to some extent, has lasting effects on negative stimulus processing.

Architecture of Books on Indian Topics by Mykola Pshinka

The purpose of the research: analysis of the architecture of Mykola Pshinka’s Indi- an-themed books as a harmonious unity of ar- tistic-graphic and structural-compositional ele- ments, the role of stylization tools in the design of children’s publications to achieve synergy of the text and the illustrative series (collections "Feather of the Pink Chakva", "Indian Folk Tales", "Myths of Ancient India"). Research methods: systematization of scientific sources, inter- views, empirical observations and their descrip- tion, artistic analysis, synthesis and generaliza- tion of the obtained results. The results of the research: the peculiarities of the architecture of M. Pshinka’s editions of Indian themes and the artistic interpretation of the ancient Indian epic as a synthesis of the features of the indi- vidual author’s style of the Ukrainian artist and the elements of Indian national color used by him are considered. Emphasis is placed on the importance of visual communication, achiev- ing empathy with the young reader, who is the most important participant in the creative pro- cess, conveying not only the ideological, but also the emotional content of the book through illustrative and constructive means. A compar- ative characterization of the means of artistic expression in the illustration and design-layout of books for readers of different ages was car- ried out: taking into account the psychological features of the perception of visual images by children and the criteria of the quality of the publication: ideological, aesthetic, socio-psy- chological, ergonomic qualities. Scientific nov- elty: books on Indian subjects by M. Pshinka as a syncretic artistic phenomenon, characterized by integral architecture, a synthesis of texts, il- lustrations, decorative elements, design-layout are for the first time comprehensively and multi- facetedly considered. On the basis of a compar- ative analysis of the artistic design of the books "Indian Folk Tales" and "Myths of Ancient India", the features of the design of publications for children of different ages, junior and senior high school, were commented.

Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Patient-Caregiver Dyad Perspectives on Participation in a Digital Storytelling Intervention: A Qualitative Approach

Storytelling has long been considered an effective means of communication, allowing the teller to process their emotions in light of particular life challenges. Effects on the listener also have been demonstrated to be beneficial, especially if the listener is faced with a similar life challenge. Less is known regarding the potential effects of storytelling on listening dyads and opportunities for joint processing following exposure to relevant stories. We sought to study these phenomena in the context of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), a demanding medical procedure requiring intensive informal caregiving and thus great patient-caregiver entwinement. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore participants' perceptions of a 4-week web-based digital storytelling (DST) intervention using both quantitative ratings of acceptability and qualitative coding of interviews conducted after intervention completion. A total of 202 participants (101 HCT patient-caregiver dyads) were recruited from the Mayo Clinic Arizona and randomized into either a DST arm or an Information Control (IC) arm. Participants in the DST arm rated the acceptability of the intervention and were asked to participate in a 30-minute phone interview to discuss their experience with the DST intervention. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim and imported into NVivo 12 for coding and analysis, using a combination of deductive and inductive approaches to organize the data, create categories, and develop themes and subthemes. A total of 38 participants (19 HCT patient-caregiver dyads) completed the post-intervention interviews. Patients were 63% male and 82% White, 68% received allogeneic HCT, and their mean age was 55 years. The median time from HCT was 25 days (range, 6 to 56 days). Caregivers were mostly patients' spouses (73%) and female (69%), with a mean age of 56 years. In general, the 4-week web-based DST intervention was well accepted and liked by both patients and caregivers regarding the duration, dyadic participation, and convenience of participating in the intervention at home. Patients and caregivers who completed the DST intervention indicated that they were satisfied with the intervention (mean score, 4.5 of 5), were likely to recommend it to others (mean score, 4.4), would watch more stories (mean score, 4.1), and that the experience was worth their time (mean score, 4.6). Major themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis included (1) building communal connection through engaging with the stories; (2) positive emotional growth after HCT; (3) value of gaining the other's perspective; and (4) impact of open communication on the patient-caregiver relationship. A web-based DST intervention provides an attractive format through which to deliver a nonpharmacologic psychosocial intervention to HCT patient-caregiver dyads. Watching the emotional content in digital stories may help patients and caregivers cope with psychoemotional challenges together and provide an opportunity for emotional disclosure. Further work on determining optimal paths to disclosure is warranted.

“But not the music”: psychopathic traits and difficulties recognising and resonating with the emotion in music

ABSTRACT Recognising and responding appropriately to emotions is critical to adaptive psychological functioning. Psychopathic traits (e.g. callous, manipulative, impulsive, antisocial) are related to differences in recognition and response when emotion is conveyed through facial expressions and language. Use of emotional music stimuli represents a promising approach to improve our understanding of the specific emotion processing difficulties underlying psychopathic traits because it decouples recognition of emotion from cues directly conveyed by other people (e.g. facial signals). In Experiment 1, participants listened to clips of emotional music and identified the emotional content (Sample 1, N = 196) or reported on their feelings elicited by the music (Sample 2, N = 197). Participants accurately recognised (t(195) = 32.78, p < .001, d = 4.69) and reported feelings consistent with (t(196) = 7.84, p < .001, d = 1.12) the emotion conveyed in the music. However, psychopathic traits were associated with reduced emotion recognition accuracy (F(1, 191) = 19.39, p < .001) and reduced likelihood of feeling the emotion (F(1, 193) = 35.45, p < .001), particularly for fearful music. In Experiment 2, we replicated findings for broad difficulties with emotion recognition (Sample 3, N = 179) and emotional resonance (Sample 4, N = 199) associated with psychopathic traits. Results offer new insight into emotion recognition and response difficulties that are associated with psychopathic traits.

A Pilot Study on Behavioural and Physiological Indicators of Emotions in Donkeys.

Recognizing animal emotions is critical to their welfare and can lead to a better relationship with humans and the environment, especially in a widespread species like the donkey, which is often prone to welfare issues. This study aims to assess the emotional response of donkeys through an operant conditioning task with two presumed different emotional contents. Specifically, a within-subject design including positive and negative conditions was conducted, collecting behavioural and physiological (heart rate variability and HRV) parameters. Facial expressions, postures, and movements were analysed by principal component analysis and behavioural diversity indexes (frequencies, activity budgets, richness, Shannon and Gini-Simpson). During the positive condition, both ears were held high and sideways (left: r = -0.793, p < 0.0001; right: r = -0.585, p = 0.011), while the ears were frontally erected (left: r = 0.924, p < 0.0001; right: r = 0.946, p < 0.0001) during the negative one. The latter was also associated with an increased tendency to walk (r = 0.709, p = 0.001), walk away (r = 0.578, p = 0.012), more frequent changes in the body position (VBody position = 0, p = 0.022), and greater behavioural complexity (VGini-Simpson Index = 4, p = 0.027). As for HRV analysis, the root mean square of successive beat-to-beat differences (rMSSD) was significantly lower after the negative condition. These non-invasive parameters could be considered as possible indicators of donkeys' emotional state.

A Narrative Review of Speech and EEG Features for Schizophrenia Detection: Progress and Challenges.

Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects an estimated 21 million people worldwide. The literature establishes that electroencephalography (EEG) is a well-implemented means of studying and diagnosing mental disorders. However, it is known that speech and language provide unique and essential information about human thought. Semantic and emotional content, semantic coherence, syntactic structure, and complexity can thus be combined in a machine learning process to detect schizophrenia. Several studies show that early identification is crucial to prevent the onset of illness or mitigate possible complications. Therefore, it is necessary to identify disease-specific biomarkers for an early diagnosis support system. This work contributes to improving our knowledge about schizophrenia and the features that can identify this mental illness via speech and EEG. The emotional state is a specific characteristic of schizophrenia that can be identified with speech emotion analysis. The most used features of speech found in the literature review are fundamental frequency (F0), intensity/loudness (I), frequency formants (F1, F2, and F3), Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC's), the duration of pauses and sentences (SD), and the duration of silence between words. Combining at least two feature categories achieved high accuracy in the schizophrenia classification. Prosodic and spectral or temporal features achieved the highest accuracy. The work with higher accuracy used the prosodic and spectral features QEVA, SDVV, and SSDL, which were derived from the F0 and spectrogram. The emotional state can be identified with most of the features previously mentioned (F0, I, F1, F2, F3, MFCCs, and SD), linear prediction cepstral coefficients (LPCC), linear spectral features (LSF), and the pause rate. Using the event-related potentials (ERP), the most promissory features found in the literature are mismatch negativity (MMN), P2, P3, P50, N1, and N2. The EEG features with higher accuracy in schizophrenia classification subjects are the nonlinear features, such as Cx, HFD, and Lya.

The neurophysiological basis of leadership: a machine learning approach

PurposeThis research employed two neurophysiological techniques (electroencephalograms (EEG) and galvanic skin response (GSR)) and machine learning algorithms to capture and analyze relationship-oriented leadership (ROL) and task-oriented leadership (TOL). By grounding the study in the theoretical perspectives of transformational leadership and embodied leadership, the study draws connections to the human body's role in activating ROL and TOL styles.Design/methodology/approachEEG and GSR signals were recorded during resting state and event-related brain activity for 52 study participants. Both leadership styles were assessed independently using a standard questionnaire, and brain activity was captured by presenting subjects with emotional stimuli.FindingsROL revealed differences in EEG baseline over the frontal lobes during emotional stimuli, but no differences were found in GSR signals. TOL style, on the other hand, did not present significant differences in either EEG or GSR responses, as no biomarkers showed differences. Hence, it was concluded that EEG measures were better at recognizing brain activity associated with ROL than TOL. EEG signals were also strongest when individuals were presented with stimuli containing positive (specifically, happy) emotional content. A subsequent machine learning model developed using EEG and GSR data to recognize high/low levels of ROL and TOL predicted ROL with 81% accuracy.Originality/valueThe current research integrates psychophysiological techniques like EEG with machine learning to capture and analyze study variables. In doing so, the study addresses biases associated with self-reported surveys that are conventionally used in management research. This rigorous and interdisciplinary research advances leadership literature by striking a balance between neurological data and the theoretical underpinnings of transformational and embodied leadership.

Sentiment analysis of the Twitter response to Netflix's Our Planet documentary.

The role of nature documentaries in shaping public attitudes and behavior toward conservation and wildlife issues is unclear. We analyzed the emotional content of over 2 million tweets related to Our Planet, a major nature documentary released on Netflix, with dictionary and rule-based automatic sentiment analysis. We also compared the sentiment associated with species mentioned in Our Planet and a set of control species with similar features but not mentioned in the documentary. Tweets were largely negative in sentiment at the time of release of the series. This effect was primarily linked to the highly skewed distributions of retweets and, in particular, to a single negatively valenced and massively retweeted tweet (>150,000 retweets). Species mentioned in Our Planet were associated with more negative sentiment than the control species, and this effect coincided with a short period following the airing of the series. Our results are consistent with a general negativity bias in cultural transmission and document the difficulty of evoking positive sentiment, on social media and elsewhere, in response to environmental problems.

IntraPsychic Activation Model (IPAM)

Our experience of reality is comprised of data from both the external and the internal environments. These inputs are mediated, structured, and reframed via constructs which activate introjects to produce automatic thoughts. These thoughts affect behaviors intended to modify the environment to conform to a self-state, buttress, and validate it. Constructs also select memories in order to prevent dissonance and anxiety between recall and self-state. They dissociate memories, alter their emotional content and correlates via attribution and reframing, and impose selectivity. The construct organizes the output from the introjects according to an algorithm (“identity”) which provides, for each specific environment, selection criteria of self-states and corresponding introjects.