effects of emotion on cognition

Question 1

What is the ‘priming procedure’ and how has it been studied?

Answer 1

Emotional faces are unconsciously processed when we are unaware- ppts did this and then were asked to pour and rate a drink- those primed w happy faces drank and poured more but this did not influence their mood however those primed to the angry face poured less, but the effect was only seen in people who were thirsty.

Question 2

What did Bargh et al investigate about unconscious/subliminal priming?

Answer 2

Priming of hot drinks (making interviewer hold a hot drink in comparison to a cold one) made a person more likely to get hired- temperature in cognitive biases.

Question 3

What is attention?

Answer 3

A process by which specific stimuli within the environment are selected for further processing

Question 4

What can be used to test attentional bias?

Answer 4

Paradigms e.g. selective allocation of attention to disorder related stimuli in detection tasks. Visual search tasks can also be used e.h. asking a ppt if there is a sad face in an array of faces as this is dependent on the distractors that surround it.

Question 5

What is the Emotional Stroop Task?

Answer 5

Reading the colour in which the words are printed but other words instead of other colours- comparing the reaction time when the word content is neutral compared to when it is emotional. Disorder relevant words may induce an emotional reaction that slows response.

Question 6

What is the dot/attentional probe task?

Answer 6

Seeing if the ppt is quicker to locate the dot when it is a neutral word compared to a negative word. Measure attentional bias by subtracting emotional RT from neutral RT.

Question 7

What is an attentional bias?

Answer 7

A systematic tendency to attend to a particular type of stimulus over others.

Question 8

How does attentional bias differ in anxiety and depression?

Answer 8

Anxiety- Seems to be increased engagement (attention is grabbed rapidly) but a slower disengagement

Depression- more bias and lingering involving negative stimuli and maintenance of gaze

Question 9

What effect can emotional stimuli have on structures in the brain?

Answer 9

Can cause early neuronal responses prior to identification to do with structural decoding of the face. Can caused increase functional connectivity between the amygdala and the visual cortex.

Question 10

What is the flashbulb memory response?

Answer 10

Autobiographical response - where we tend to have vivid memories of shocking events that caused an elevated emotional response, resulting in increased amygdala activity when remembered

Question 11

What did LeDoux find in relation to PTSD and the amygdala response?

Answer 11

Fear memory replacement through exposure training and manipulation of memory- use of propranalol (anaesthetic) can lessen the negative emotional impact of some memories.

Question 12

What is mood congruent memory?

Answer 12

A form of selective memory that involves selective encoding or retrieval that occurs when individuals are in a mood state consistent with the affective value, hypothesised to be a factor in the maintenance of depression.

Question 13

What is mood state dependent memory and thought congruity?

Answer 13

The content of thoughts and judgement are congruent with mood state

Question 14

What are the three cognitive biases associated with anxiety and depression? (Eyseneck and Keane)

Answer 14

Attentional bias- tendency to attend to neg over neutral stimuli
Interpretive bias- tendency to interpret ambiguous situations in a threatening manner
Memory bias- better retrieval of relatively neg vs. pos/neutral info

Question 15

Why is memory bias often associated with depression?

Answer 15

Function of replacing failed goals with new ones- slowing down and disengaging so may be more important to have a memory of negative events in this case

Question 16

What is cognitive bias modification?

Answer 16

Patients are trained to attend away from neg stimuli which can lead to a reduction of symptoms- it has also been used in the context of addiction

Question 17

What is the appraisal process?

Answer 17

As soon as the stimulus is prsented, you process what relevance it has to your survival

Question 18

What do appraisal theories focus on?

Answer 18

Appraisals start the emotion process which can occur automatically or consciously, consisting of different levels of appraisal e.g. primary, secondary and reappraisal

Question 19

What does emotion regulation describe?

Answer 19

The management and control of emotional states via various processes such as selective attention and appraisal

Question 20

What strategies can be used to regulate emotion in cognition?

Answer 20

Attentional control (distraction)- thought to be a pos regulation strategy
Cognitive change (reappraisal)- can change how stimuli is interpreted in the enviro

Question 21

What areas of the brain are involved in emotional regulation?

Answer 21

DLPFC, DMPFC, hippocampus and dorsal ACG

Question 22

What did Van Dillen et al find about reappraisal in attention tasks?

Answer 22

People had to reappraise or were distracted when faced with a neg stimulus (had to do a maths equation) and then rate emotions at the end of each trial. Found that compared to just viewing the emotional pictures, people who did a distraction or reappraisal- these mood states were reduced. Suggests both stratagies were effective- both strategies reduced amygdala response to the emotional picture. The prefrontal cortex dampens the amygdala response.

Question 23

What did Siegle et al investigate about emotional regulation in depression?

Answer 23

word flashed up- have to say if this word was pos neg or neutral. Followed by a distraction/displacement task. Found that there was a sustained amygdala response to negative emotional words in depression.

Question 24

What relationship does depression have to emotional regulation in the brain?

Answer 24

Inverse relationship between DLPFC and amygdala response towards negative words, consistent with the idea that more activity in the prefrontal cortex dampens amygdala response

Question 25

What can brain imaging lead to in response to depression?

Answer 25

New treatment e.g. TMS or deep brain stimulation, targeting area 25 in the brain which is often overactive in depression

Question 26

What does the vMPFC stand for?

Answer 26

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Question 27

What do lesions in the vMPFC result in?

Answer 27

Widespread impairment of emotional expression identification (visual and auditory), disinhibition, impulsiveness and impaired decision making- example of Gage

Question 28

What is the Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara et al) and how do people with lesions in the vMPFC differ in their response?

Answer 28

decks A and B- net loss but you win bigger amounts initially, C and D- gain win but lower amounts initially. People tend to gravitate towards A and B initially but then learn to go towards C and D (safe decks).
People w lesions to vMPFC do the opposite and go towards the risky decks over time.

Question 29

How does brain activation differ in risky and safe choices in people with and without lesions?

Answer 29

activation in vMPFC- if lesioned then it does not activate and tend to make worse decisions. More activation tends to be associated with better outcomes.

Question 30

What did Niedenthal et al find about comprehending emotional language (pencil and teeth study)?

Answer 30

Argues that language comprehension relies in part on embodied conceptualisations of the situations language describes. Ppts held a pencil between their front teeth while rating the funniness of cartoons- holding the pen this way covertly led individuals to smile. Other ppts were instructed to hold it between their lips which prevented them from smiling as it activated different muscles. Results showed ppts who were led to smile evaluated the cartoons as funnier.

Question 31

What can embodied cognition be defined as?

Answer 31

a high level cognitive processes (such as thought, language) that use partial reactivations of states in sensory, motor and affective systems to do their jobs. It implies that retrieving emotional memories reactivates the same or similar neural processes to those activated during experiencing an emotion or perceiving an emotional stimulus.

Question 32

How do mirror neurons provide an embodied representation?

Answer 32

They map the correspondences between observed and performed actions and fire both when an individual performs an action and observes another undertaking it. By activating the same neurons when observing as when doing

Question 33

How can emotional embodiment contribute to observational learning?

Answer 33

feeling another person’s pain allows you to learn neg and post outcomes so that you can reactivate it in the future without direct exposure