Terms Of Pleasantness Research Articles

Implicit and Explicit Preferences for Golden Ratio

The golden ratio, also known as Phi (ϕ ≈ 1.618034), attracted the interest of mathematicians, artists, and intellectuals for many centuries, probably from when it was discovered in human anthropometry. Even in recent times, researchers found the presence of the golden ratio in Renaissance paintings and aesthetic preferences. The reasons behind the fascination with the golden ratio remain unclear, but it has been suggested that stimuli containing this proportion are often perceived as beautiful. However, evidence is conflicting, and the literature struggles to establish the existence of individual preferences for the golden ratio. To gain new insights into the nature of these preferences, one hundred participants completed an implicit association task, with either golden ratio or random stimuli presented with positive or negative words. Participants initially categorized the stimuli based on their assigned categories. Then, we assessed their explicit preferences by asking them to rate the stimuli in terms of pleasantness and by completing a line bisection task and the Ultimatum Game. The results revealed the typical effects observed in implicit association tasks, with improved response times and accuracy when golden ratio stimuli were associated with positive word categories. In contrast, explicit ratings yielded mixed results. We discuss our findings in relation to previous studies that have explored this issue, highlighting the ongoing debate surrounding preferences for the golden ratio.

Exploring Amico H impact: A promising tool to promote children's knowledge and adherence to medical procedures

mHealth (e.g., the use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets for delivering healthcare services) has become a crucial resource in pediatric healthcare, providing children with psychoeducation and distraction, and enhancing treatment compliance. Amico H, a newly developed application, is targeted at ameliorating children's and parents' experience of pediat-ric medical procedures and communication with healthcare professionals. With the virtual en-vironment of a castle, Amico H is a mHealth app for children, offering interactive games and psychoeducational support during medical treatments. The present experience explores the im-pact of the Amico H prototype on children, teens, and parents in terms of pleasantness, usabil-ity, and usefulness. Method: A total of 99 children and teens aged 4-19 years (10.53 ± 3.69 years; 73% female), both hospitalized (28%) or not and N=32 caregivers (72% mothers) re-sponded to an ad-hoc survey on the app's user experience. Descriptive analyses and group comparisons have been computed. Results: Findings highlight that children and caregivers were highly amused and satisfied by Amico H. Compared to teens, children needed more help from adults in the use of the app. Conclusion: All the results indicate that Amico H is a pow-erful tool to ameliorate pediatric hospitalization experience and to promote children's knowledge about health and medical procedures. The need for age-specific versions of Amico H emerged. Future directions and limits are discussed.

Effect of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness of Music on the Acceptable Noise Level

Background and Aim: Music can be a favorite, annoying, or even a distracting noise. It is known that the processing of brain hemispheres is affected by the pleasantness/unpleasantness of music, which could be utilized as a signal or noise in auditory neuroscience. By using the Acceptable Noise Level (ANL) test, which is the quantification of noise tolerance while listening to a running speech, we investigated whether the pleasantness/unpleasantness of music affects the ANL results under monotic-listening and dichotic-listening conditions. Methods: Based on the subjective scale scores, pleasant and unpleasant music (10 songs) were selected as alternatives to babble noise or running speech for testing 50 subjects for seven monotic and dichotic listening conditions. Results: While pleasant music changed the ANL significantly under monotic listening conditions, the higher level of babble noise was tolerated, and both characteristics of music pleasantness and unpleasantness changed ANL significantly for various dichotic conditions. The range of the ANL for dichotic conditions is wider than that for monotic conditions. Conclusion: Music can affect the ANL in terms of pleasantness and unpleasantness for both monotic and dichotic listening conditions, with a greater effect on dichotic conditions, indicating the role of hemispheric specification in emotional music processing. Keywords: Acceptable noise level; dichotic listening; monotic listening; noise; brain processing

The Semantic Organization of the English Odor Vocabulary.

The vocabulary for describing odors in English natural language is not well understood, as prior studies of odor descriptions have often relied on preselected descriptors and odor ratings. Here, we present a data-driven approach that automatically identifies English odor descriptors based on their degree of olfactory association, and derive their semantic organization from their distributions in natural texts, using a distributional-semantic language model. We identify 243 descriptors that are much more strongly associated with olfaction than English words in general. We then derive the semantic organization of these olfactory descriptors, and find that it is captured by four clusters that we name Offensive, Malodorous, Fragrant, and Edible. The semantic space derived from our model primarily differentiates descriptors in terms of pleasantness and edibility along which our four clusters are positioned, and is similar to a space derived from perceptual data. The semantic organization of odor vocabulary can thus be mapped using natural language data (e.g., online text), without the limitations of odor-perceptual data and preselected descriptors. Our method may thus facilitate research on olfaction, a sensory system known to often elude verbal description.

Is there an emotionality effect in older adults’ source memory?

ABSTRACT The goal of our research was to investigate whether older adults show a source memory enhancement for emotionally valenced sources. Additionally, building on research on the socioemotional selectivity theory and the age-related positivity effect, we tested whether older adults show a larger enhancement for positive compared to negative (and neutral) sources than younger adults. In Experiment 1 (nold = 25, nyoung = 27), we used one positive, one negative, and one neutral picture to manipulate source valence (many-to-one mapping of items to sources), whereas, in Experiment 2 (nold = 62, nyoung = 62), we used multiple pictures per source valence category (one-to-one mapping of items to sources) to counteract potential habituation effects. In both experiments, sources had medium and matching arousal levels. Items were neutral words superimposed on the source pictures. To support an implicit, natural information processing, participants rated the words in terms of pleasantness. We analyzed memory data with a multinomial processing tree model to disentangle memory processes from guessing bias. Across both experiments, an age-related positivity effect occurred in participants’ pleasantness ratings. This effect, however, did not carry over to older adults’ source memory. That is, in source memory, we found a general emotionality effect for younger but not for older adults and no age-related positivity effect. We propose that due to older adults’ pronounced difficulties in remembering the item-to-source link (i.e., associative deficit), even a greater focus on an inherently emotional source might be insufficient to boost source memory.

A mobile app for home-based exercise in spinal cord injured persons: Proposal and pilot study.

Background and ObjectiveTo preserve cardiovascular health in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI), it is important to promote physical activity programs adapted to them. Home-based exercise programs allow patients to perform clinician-prescribed physical activity without going to a hospital. However, they make it difficult for the clinician to guide and monitor the patient. To face this issue, this paper proposes a novel smartphone-based mobile application (Fisiofriend), and evaluates its feasibility with a pilot study in a real clinical intervention.MethodsFourteen SCI male subjects were involved in a 6-weeks home-based intervention, based on upper limbs exercises: 7 subjects (APP group) used Fisiofriend, and 7 subjects used traditional pictorial instructions on paper (PAPER group). At the beginning (t1) and end (t2) of the study period, we measured: (i) biceps and triceps brachii strength and endurance parameters with an isokinetic dynamometer (Biodex System 4), (ii) O2 maximal consumption with a crank ergometer stress test (VO2000, Medgraphics). Moreover, we collected subjective data about subjects’ perception of the support (app or paper) in the home-based program.ResultsPhysiological results were encouraging for both groups. Questionnaire data suggests a possible advantage of the app in terms of pleasantness, engagement and perception of positive effects. Practical clinical experience with the subjects and their informal reports highlighted which features of the app could be of particular benefit in real interventions, as we discuss in the paper.ConclusionsThe study showed the feasibility of using a mobile app in home-based exercise programs involving SCI patients. We discuss implications of introducing such kind of apps into clinical practice.

Identificação de aspectos comunicativos na locução de repórteres de televisão

Objetivo: Identificar a possibilidade de indivíduos leigos diferenciarem repórteres e não repórteres por meio de aspectos comunicativos em tarefa de leitura de texto. Métodos: Participaram da pesquisa 24 sujeitos falantes e 12 sujeitos ouvintes, sendo 12 repórteres em exercício profissional e 12 não repórteres e não profissionais de nenhuma categoria da voz falada. Todos realizaram uma leitura de um trecho de noticia padrão para análise auditiva. Os ouvintes eram 12 indivíduos leigos não repórteres, que avaliaram as 24 amostras de fala quanto à agradabilidade, credibilidade e clareza da articulação da fala por meio de uma escala numérica de 11 pontos, além de assinalar se o trecho ouvido era de repórter ou não repórter. Resultados: Houve elevado nível de confiabilidade intra e inter-avaliadores para os três aspectos em questão: agradabilidade, clareza da dicção e credibilidade. Repórteres obtiveram maiores escores médios para os três parâmetros avaliados, quando comparados aos não repórteres. A credibilidade diferenciou perfeitamente (100%) repórteres de não repórteres; em relação à agradabilidade e clareza da dicção, a identificação correta dos indivíduos caiu para 83%. Conclusão: Os indivíduos leigos conseguiram diferenciar repórteres e não repórteres pelos aspectos comunicativos de agradabilidade, credibilidade e clareza da dicção na tarefa de leitura de texto. A credibilidade foi o parâmetro que permitiu que todos os ouvintes leigos realizassem a identificação correta de repórteres e não repórteres.

Making a difference in medical trainees' attitudes toward Latino patients: A pilot study of an intervention to modify implicit and explicit attitudes

Negative attitudes and discrimination against Latinos exist in the dominant U.S. culture and in healthcare systems, contributing to ongoing health disparities.This article provides findings of a pilot test of Yo Veo Salud (I See Health), an intervention designed to positively modify attitudes toward Latinos among medical trainees. The research question was: Compared to the comparison group, did the intervention group show lower levels of implicit bias against Latinos versus Whites, and higher levels of ethnocultural empathy, healthcare empathy, and patient-centeredness?We used a sequential cohort, post-test design to evaluate Yo Veo Salud with a sample of 69 medical trainees. The intervention setting was an academic medical institution in a Southeastern U.S. state with a fast-growing Latino population. The intervention was delivered, and data were collected online, between July and December of 2014.Participants in the intervention group showed greater ethnocultural empathy, healthcare empathy, and patient-centeredness, compared to the comparison group. The implicit measure assessed four attitudinal dimensions (pleasantness, responsibility, compliance, and safety). Comparisons between our intervention and comparison groups did not find any average differences in implicit anti-Latino bias between the groups. However, in a subset analysis of White participants, White participants in the intervention group demonstrated a significantly decreased level of implicit bias in terms of pleasantness. A dose response was also founded indicating that participants involved in more parts of the intervention showed more change on all measures.Our findings, while modest in size, provide proof of concept for Yo Veo Salud as a means for increasing ethno-cultural and physician empathy, and patient-centeredness among medical residents and decreasing implicit provider bias toward Latinos.

Gaze leading is associated with liking

Gaze plays a pivotal role in human communication, especially for coordinating attention. The ability to guide the gaze orientation of others forms the backbone of joint attention. Recent research has raised the possibility that gaze following behaviors could induce liking. The present study seeks to investigate this hypothesis. We designed two physically different human avatars that could follow the gaze of users via eye-tracking technology. In a preliminary experiment, 20 participants assessed the baseline appeal of the two avatars and confirmed that the avatars differed in this respect. In the main experiment, we compared how 19 participants rated the two avatars in terms of pleasantness, trustworthiness and closeness when the avatars were following their gaze versus when the avatar generated gaze movements autonomously. Although the same avatar as in the preliminary experiment was rated more favorably, the pleasantness attributed to the two avatars increased when they followed the gaze of the participants. This outcome provides evidence that gaze following fosters liking independently of the baseline appeal of the individual.

Priming effect of computer game violence on children's aggression levels

We investigated how aggression resulting from playing violent computer games varies by gender and trait aggressiveness level. In Study 1, 220 children rated 2 video games in terms of pleasantness, excitement, violent content, violent images, fear, interest, and reality. Results indicated that Virtual Cop2 and Fight Landlord games were perceived as violent and nonviolent, respectively. In Study 2, 240 different children responded to the Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire, played either Virtual Cop2 or Fight Landlord, and completed a semantic classification task involving rating whether 60 words were aggressive or nonaggressive. Results showed that boys, but not girls, displayed stronger aggression after playing Virtual Cop2, compared to Fight Landlord. Further, children with high trait aggressiveness exhibited strong aggression after playing Virtual Cop2, whereas those with moderate or low trait aggressiveness did not. Overall, our results indicate that gender and trait aggressiveness both affect aggression among children who play violent video games.

Adaptive false memory: Imagining future scenarios increases false memories in the DRM paradigm.

Previous research has shown that rating words for their relevance to a future scenario enhances memory for those words. The current study investigated the effect of future thinking on false memory using the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) procedure. In Experiment 1, participants rated words from 6 DRM lists for relevance to a past or future event (with or without planning) or in terms of pleasantness. In a surprise recall test, levels of correct recall did not vary between the rating tasks, but the future rating conditions led to significantly higher levels of false recall than the past and pleasantness conditions did. Experiment 2 found that future rating led to higher levels of false recognition than did past and pleasantness ratings but did not affect correct recognition. The effect in false recognition was, however, eliminated when DRM items were presented in random order. Participants in Experiment 3 were presented with both DRM lists and lists of unrelated words. Future rating increased levels of false recognition for DRM lures but did not affect correct recognition for DRM or unrelated lists. The findings are discussed in terms of the view that false memories can be associated with adaptive memory functions.

"What's Your Taste in Music?" A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Various Soundscapes in Evoking Specific Tastes.

We report on the results of two online experiments designed to compare different soundtracks that had been composed (by various researchers and sound designers) in order to evoke/match different basic tastes. In Experiment 1, 100 participants listened to samples from 24 soundtracks and chose the taste (sweet, sour, salty, or bitter) that best matched each sample. Overall, the sweet soundtracks most effectively evoked the taste intended by the composer (participants chose sweet 56.9% of the time for the sweet soundtracks), whereas the bitter soundtracks were the least effective (participants chose bitter 31.4% of the time for the bitter soundtracks), compared with chance (choosing any specific taste 25% of the time). In Experiment 2, 50 participants rated their emotional responses (in terms of pleasantness and arousal) to the same 24 soundtrack samples and also to imaginary sweet/sour/salty/bitter-tasting foods. Associations between soundtracks and tastes were partly mediated by pleasantness for the sweet and bitter tastes and partly by arousal for the sour tastes. These results demonstrate how emotion mediation may be an additional mechanism behind sound-taste correspondences.

Do ambient urban odors evoke basic emotions?

Fragrances, such as plant odors, have been shown to evoke autonomic response patterns associated with Ekman's (Ekman et al., 1983) basic emotions happiness, surprise, anger, fear, sadness, and disgust. Inducing positive emotions by odors in highly frequented public spaces could serve to improve the quality of life in urban environments. Thus, the present study evaluated the potency of ambient odors connoted with an urban environment to evoke basic emotions on an autonomic and cognitive response level. Synthetic mixtures representing the odors of disinfectant, candles/bees wax, summer air, burnt smell, vomit and musty smell as well as odorless water as a control were presented five times in random order to 30 healthy, non-smoking human subjects with intact sense of smell. Skin temperature, skin conductance, breathing rate, forearm muscle activity, blink rate, and heart rate were recorded simultaneously. Subjects rated the odors in terms of pleasantness, intensity and familiarity and gave verbal labels to each odor as well as cognitive associations with the basic emotions. The results showed that the amplitude of the skin conductance response (SCR) varied as a function of odor presentation. Burnt smell and vomit elicited significantly higher electrodermal responses than summer air. Also, a negative correlation was revealed between the amplitude of the SCR and hedonic odor valence indicating that the magnitude of the electrodermal response increased with odor unpleasantness. The analysis of the cognitive associations between odors and basic emotions showed that candles/bees wax and summer air were specifically associated with happiness whereas burnt smell and vomit were uniquely associated with disgust. Our findings suggest that city odors may evoke specific cognitive associations of basic emotions and that autonomic activity elicited by such odors is related to odor hedonics.

Collaborative creativity: The Music Room

In this paper, we reflect on our experience of designing, developing and evaluating interactive spaces for collaborative creativity. In particular, we are interested in designing spaces which allow everybody to compose and play original music. The Music Room is an interactive installation where couples can compose original music by moving in the space. Following the metaphor of love, the music is automatically generated and modulated in terms of pleasantness and intensity, according to the proxemics cues extracted from the visual tracking algorithm. The Music Room was exhibited during the EU Researchers' Night in Trento, Italy.

Mood and the market: can press reports of investors' mood predict stock prices?

We examined whether press reports on the collective mood of investors can predict changes in stock prices. We collected data on the use of emotion words in newspaper reports on traders' affect, coded these emotion words according to their location on an affective circumplex in terms of pleasantness and activation level, and created indices of collective mood for each trading day. Then, by using time series analyses, we examined whether these mood indices, depicting investors' emotion on a given trading day, could predict the next day's opening price of the stock market. The strongest findings showed that activated pleasant mood predicted increases in NASDAQ prices, while activated unpleasant mood predicted decreases in NASDAQ prices. We conclude that both valence and activation levels of collective mood are important in predicting trend continuation in stock prices.

BIS and BAS correlates with psychophysiological and cortical response systems during aversive and appetitive emotional stimuli processing

The present research intended first to confirm psychophysiological and cortical responses to valence- and arousal-manipulated stimuli and second to show how the BIS and BAS (Behavioural Inhibition and Activation System) personality characteristics correlated with these psychophysiological and cortical responses. Multiple measures were recorded, such as psychophysiological (skin conductance response, heart rate, and electromyography) and ERPs (event-related potentials) responses, during viewing IAPS figures, that varied in terms of pleasantness (appetitive vs. aversive) and arousing power (high vs. low intensity). Autonomic variables and two ERP positive deflections (P3 and LPP ERP effects) were found to be modulated by valence and arousal rating, with an increased response for high arousing and negative or positive stimuli in comparison with low arousing and neutral stimuli. Moreover, high BAS subjects were more responsive to positive than negative emotions, whereas high BIS subjects responded in greater measure to negative and arousing emotions. Findings were discussed in light of biphasic model of emotion comprehension.

An empirical study on sustainable walkability indices for transit-oriented development by using the analytic network process approach

The moving spaces for pedestrians are facilities that have very important functions for urbanities’ comfortable traffic and resting areas. Although research on transit-oriented development (TOD) has recently emerged as an issue, most domestic studies have not addressed comprehensive analysis or concrete inducement techniques when it comes to the effects of TOD. Therefore, a decision support system is needed which assists in policy making systems by analysing quantitative effects concerning major planning factors of TOD, such as transit mode, level of service (LOS), density, diversity of land use and pedestrian-friendly urban design. In this respect, this study is intended to seek ways to consider developing Walkability Indicators that simplify pedestrian environment elements around areas adjacent to subway stations, depending on the types of walking space, with a quantitative index, and evaluating and visualizing the overall degree (in terms of pleasantness and aesthetics) of pedestrian friendliness of the environment, as well as pedestrians’ convenience and accessibility. Accordingly, we measured distribution of the traffic facilities and amenities as well as connectivity of the pedestrian networks quantitatively in order to perform a comprehensive evaluation of the pedestrian environments. To develop a pedestrian environment index, quantifiable parameters such as mobility, safety, convenience, pleasantness and environment-friendliness were organized. As a result, parameters were selected and they are viewed to have the potential to be used as indexes for the development of Geographic Information System (GIS). Twenty-one route segment parameters related to pleasantness and safety, and nine intersection-related parameters were classified into five areas. For setting the weight values of the evaluation criteria obtained from the survey, we employed an analytic network process (ANP). The computed scores using these criteria are classified and normalized according to the levels of pedestrian dependency and, finally, displayed on a map. The proposed system is expected to be applicable in the visualization of pedestrian movements and the evaluation of convenience levels of the pedestrian environments.

Explaining Inconsistencies in Shakespeare's Character Henry V on the Basis of the Emotional Undertones of His Speeches

Shakespeare's character Henry V is infamous, among 20th-century analysts of drama, for his inconsistent disposition. Some analysts highlight this character's reformation and others his Machiavellian tendency to moderate his disposition in tune with changing situations. The Dictionary of Affect in Language (Whissell, 2009) was used to score the emotional undertones of words in Henry V's dialogue. Analyses of these undertones, described in terms of Pleasantness and Activation, demonstrated that the character Henry V was, in overall terms, emotionally average, that there was minimal evidence of growth or reform in him across time, and that situational factors (e.g., revelry, kingship, courtship, battle) were associated with the dramatic changes in his speeches. The character employed more passive language in private and personal situations and more active language in his (public) royal role. Four categories of Henry V's speeches (Condescension, Control, Self-definition, and the Courtship of Good Opinion), represented in both public and private discourse, reflected increasing pleasantness in emotional undertones.

An exploratory evaluation of perceptual, psychoacoustic and acoustical properties of urban soundscapes

The present study reports an exploration of the multi-dimensional space involved in listening to soundscape recordings made in different city-based settings. A range of perceptual, psychoacoustic and acoustical properties were examined using a range of statistical methods including principal components analysis and multiple regression. Just as the affective responses to individual sound sources have often been described in terms of pleasantness and arousal (or vibrancy), so could the acoustic scenarios of urban life. However, different from previous research, the acoustic and psychoacoustic variables contributed very little to judgements about pleasantness and vibrancy. We surmise that the perceived quality of the soundscape is very much an individual subjective experience that is likely to be embedded within contextual domain and that it probably relates to personal preference, past history and other social and cultural factors.

The Influence of Essential Oils on Human Vigilance

Olfactory stimuli are used in aromatherapy to enhance mood, well-being and work efficiency. Nevertheless, the impact of fragrances on cognitive performance in humans is not well understood. The present investigation aimed to evaluate the effects of 1,8-cineol, jasmine absolute ether, linalyl acetate and peppermint essential oil on human vigilance performance. The odorants were administered by means of inhalation and, except for peppermint essential oil, were tested at 2 different dosages. Performance in a standard visual vigilance task was measured in terms of speed and accuracy and subjective ratings of the odorants were assessed in terms of pleasantness, intensity, arousal and stress. We hypothesized that 1,8-cineol, jasmine absolute ether and peppermint essential oil would improve vigilance performance, whereas linalyl acetate would impair such performance. Comparison of the performances of the seven independent experimental groups with that of a control group did not show any of the expected effects. In contrast, inhalation of linalyl acetate decreased reaction times. Within-group analyses, however, revealed significant interactions between subjective ratings of the odorants and task performance. The results of the present investigation emphasize the high impact of subjective factors on the modulation of attentional functions by olfactory stimuli in humans.