Emotion and Cognition

Question 1

What are appraisals?

Answer 1

The process of evaluating the importance of environmental changes for one’s wellbeing, can be

• physiological
• expressive
• behavioural
• other

Question 2

What framework of cognition was established by Smith & Kirby 2001?

Answer 2

3 parallel mechanisms:

1. Processing involving activating memories
2. Reasoning
3. Continuous monitoring of appraisal information from associative and reasoning processes

Question 3

How can cognition influence emotion?

Answer 3

Evidence that emotions can result from different combinations of appraisals, with positive appraisals reducing negative emotions and GSR

Question 4

What did Ohman and Soares (1994) find?

Answer 4

Greater arousal levels across all participants towards potentially dangerous animals (snakes and spiders)

Question 5

What are the limitations of the relationship of appraisals to emotion?

Answer 5

• While appraisals often lead to emotional experience it is also likely that emotional experiences can influence our appraisals.
• Appraisal theories focus on emotion arising only from current situation
• Real-life appraisal processes are not passive but interactive

Question 6

What is emotional regulation? Name 5 strategies

Answer 6

Effortful process endevours to override spontaneous emotional processes, can be adaptive or maladaptive
Controlled breathing, muscle relaxation, meditation, distraction and stress induced eating/exercise

Question 7

What is the difference between the a) attentional development stage and the b) cognitive change stage?

Answer 7

a) distraction, short term

b) change in meaning of emotional information, longer lasting

Question 8

Describe distraction

Answer 8

• Redirecting attention away from negative stimuli using the limited capacity of the WM (Van Dillen & Kode 2007)

Question 9

Describe the process of cognitive reappraisal

Answer 9

• Reinterpretation and distancing of a situation
• Involves prefrontal cortex and decreased amygdala activity
• Reduces depression & anxiety

Question 10

What did Troy et al (2013) find?

Answer 10

• That when stress was uncontrollable, participants with high appraisal were less depressed
• WHen stress was controllable, participants with high appraisal ability were more depressed

Question 11

What schemata did Beck develop to explain anxiety and depression?

Answer 11

Cognitive structures influence a person’s perceptions, interpretations and memories
depression - global negativity
anxiety - exaggerated vunerability and danger to self

Question 12

What is Bower’s network theory?

Answer 12

• Based on Anderson & Bower’s 1973 Human Associative Memory Network
• Each emotion has specific node in memory joining other aspects of emotion by associative pointers
• Depressed people have a greater retrieval of negative information