Task 4

Question 1

What do appraisal-based models say about affect?

Answer 1

experience of emotion is determined to a large extent by the way in which a situation is interpreted or appraised

Question 2

What do process-based models say about affect?

Answer 2

models propose that appraisals can occur in parallel at multiple levels ranging from very low-level action tendencies right up to high-level conscious decisions

Question 3

How are attention & perception influenced by affect?

Answer 3

• limitation in capacity leads to a high degree of selectivity in attention (selective attention)
• early vs late selection debate
• stimuli may acquire significance because of novelty of a stimulus, its intrinsic pleasantness, its certainty or predictability, the object’s general relevance to an individual’s goals, the situation’s compatibility with personal & social standards

-attentional bias for negative, especially threat-related, stimuli should be readily apparent
• Implicit, automatically
• can influence early or late

Question 4

Behavioural studies –> visual search task

Answer 4

-measures how quickly pp detect a particular class if stimuli –> faces: find angry face

Question 5

Behavioural studies –> visual search task ==> Treisman

Answer 5

single features ‘pop-out’ of a crowded display while conjunctions of features can only be detected by a slow serial search

Question 6

Behavioural studies –> visual search task ==> what is the threat superiority effect?

Answer 6

• people were faster to pick out angry faces relative to happy faces, indicating an allocation of attention towards the angry facial expressions

Question 7

Behavioural studies –> visual search task ==> What did Öhman et al. do & found in their experiment?

Answer 7

• initial visual search task counfounded
• created task & made sure that there are exactly the same number of visual feature differences between angry face & neutral face as there are between happy face & neutral face
• search for angry expressions is serial –> speed of attention shifts faster towards angry rather than happy expressions

==> sad faces did not lead to enhanced detection times, it was only angry expressions that resulted in faster detection

Question 8

Behavioural studies –> visual search task ==> which effect was supported by Öhman et al.’s study?

Answer 8

==> threat superiority effect

• since only angry expressions that resulted in faster detection
• broadly compatible with appraisal-based accounts (threat stimuli likely to be conistently appraised as highly relevant)

Question 9

Behavioural studies –> interference tasks

Answer 9

• stroop task –> emotional stroop task
• words varying in valence are presented in different coloured ink

–> name colour of ink while ignoring meaning of word

Question 10

Behavioural studies –> interference tasks: findings of emotional stroop task

Answer 10

took longer for pp to name colour of negative words

Question 11

Findings of study: perceptual sensitivity in the presence of negative stimuli

Answer 11

• pp were better able to see when emotional stimuli were present
• effects of emotion & attention interacted: emotion had a greater effect for the single-cue condition than for the multiple-cue condition& the highest sensitivity occurred when the cue was a single fearful face

Question 12

How exactly can negative stimuli can have both direct & indirect effects on perception?

Answer 12

• indirect effect: ability to influence perception by magnifying the impact of attention –> attention prioritizes salient stimuli
• mere presence of a negative stimulus can have an effect very basic perceptual processes –> faster detection of negative stimuli

Question 13

What can be concluded from fMRI studies about the influence of affect (or threat-related stimuli) on attention-perception or sensory processes?
–> amygdala

Answer 13

-evidence that neural representation of negative stimuli is boosted relative to neutral stimuli

–> studies: amygdala activity correlates with enhanced activity of neurons in the extrastriate cortex in the presence of emotional stimuli
-extrastriate cortex: involved in sensory processing
==> threat/danger: boosts sensory representations
==> amygdala increases activation in sensory cortex

Question 14

What can be concluded from fMRI studies about the influence of affect (or threat-related stimuli) on attention-perception or sensory processes?
–> study with fixating house or face

Answer 14

-fixating house or face –>more activity in fusiform face area (FFA) when faces were being attended BUT also active by fearful expressions (no matter whether face attended)

o similar pattern for amygdala –> increased activation when fearful expressions were attended but does not decrease when faces were unattended –> potential neural mechanism that would allow the visual system to prioritize the processing of stimuli with threat value

==> enhanced activity in sensory cortex to fearful relative to neutral stimuli allow these stimuli to be noticed before other ones

Question 15

What are two neural mechanisms in processing affective stimuli?

Answer 15

1. Threat-related stimuli may directly activate amygdala –>modulates sensory cortex (feedback loops)
2. Affective stimuli might directly activate parietal & frontal regions of brain that are involved with attentional control & these areas project to sensory processing areas

Question 16

What can be concluded from ERP studies about the influence of affect (or threat-related stimuli) on attention-perception or sensory processes?

• -> P100
• -> C1

Answer 16

-P100 component: produced by neural activity in the striate cortex & is known to reflect changes in the allocation of attention
-study: P100 larger for negative than for positive pictures
-C1 (negative, 60-90 msec after stimulus onset):
• Earliest response of primary visual cortex
• Enhanced for negative stimuli that had been learned
• C1: measured for stimuli that were first affectively neutral; then fear conditioning

Question 17

Do you remember high emotional situations much better or not?
–> Autobiographical memories

Answer 17

o Flashbulb memories e.g., Diana’s death, 9/11

o Study: high correlation (0.71) between participants’ ratings of the vividness of their memories & their ratings of how emotional the original event had been ==> high for traumatic as well very positive events
–> while memory for affective events might be very clear & vivid, the accuracy of these memories may not actually be any better than for more neutral events (not more accurate)

Question 18

Do you remember high emotional situations much better or not?
–> Lab studies

Answer 18

-Remember/know paradigm:
• affectively negative stimuli were consistently remembered more accurately relative to either positive or neutral stimuli
• highly arousing pictures (both negative & positive) were better remembered than neutral pictures
• correct recognition of negative stimuli was more likely to be accompanied by a conscious recollection whereas feelings of familiarity did not increase for negative stimuli
-Study: affective quality of a stimulus can enhance the feeling of remembering & suggests that this occurs because of enhanced activity in amygdala
–> accuracy from negative vs neutral pictures did not differ
–> but negative pictures were characterized by primarily ‘remember’ judgements than ‘know’
–> due to higher activity in amygdala during ‘remember’ judgments for affective pictures
–> higher activity in parahippocampal cortex during ‘remember’ judgements for neutral pictures

Question 19

Does affect influence only parts and/or certain details of a situation?

Answer 19

• research: affect may enhance the accuracy of memories for their central aspects/ gist of the scene (but not periphery)

o ‘weapon focus’ effect (Loftus) –> better at details, but worse at periphery

o Study: memory for peripheral details was inversely correlated with degree of arousal –> the more aroused people were by the sight of the needle, the less likely to identify the nurse who gave them injection

o ‘Narrowing of attention’ (Easterbrook) when emotionally aroused –>central part: detailed & periphery: little or no attention
–> Whether accuracy can be improved depends on central vs peripheral part of a scene

–> Subjective sense of remembering & the vividness of memory are clearly enhanced by affective significance of a scene or situation

–> Maybe due to extra rehearsal, enhanced encoding —> affective events may be better remembered because of indirect effects of affect on initial encoding & rehearsal or because they’re usually distinctive & unusual

Question 20

By what processes or factors does affect influences things we can remember?
–> effect of arousal

Answer 20

• arousal –> activates amygdala –> modulates activity of hippocampus –> enhanced consolidation
• study: amygdala damage impairs memory for central aspects of scene, but not for peripheral ones

–> activity in amygdala during encoding of aversive emotional event is strongly correlated with subsequent recall of that event

–> activity in amygdala during encoding of non-emotional events did not correlate with subsequent recall

–> amygdala activation during encoding improves memory for emotional stimuli & hippocampal region activation for recall of neutral stimuli

Question 21

By what processes or factors does affect influences things we can remember?

• -> effect of valence
• brain areas

Answer 21

• amygdala activity & correlation between amygdala & hippocampus–> related to subsequent memory for arousing words
• PFC & correlation between PFC & hippocampus activation –> subsequent memory for negative, but non-arousing words

Question 22

By what processes or factors does affect influences things we can remember?

• -> effect of valence
• lab studies & flashbulb memories

Answer 22

• Lab conditions: no difference in accuracy of memory for positive & negative stimuli when equally arousing

–> consistent with flashbulb memories: highly arousing positive & negative events seem to be equally memorable

Question 23

By what processes or factors does affect influences things we can remember?

• -> effect of valence
• biases

Answer 23

• Positivity bias –> our recollections of past events are biased towards positive rather than negative events
• Fading affect bias –> when reminisce, people perceive their lives as more positive than negative

Question 24

By what processes or factors does affect influences things we can remember?

• -> effect of valence
• difference self-relevant vs other-relevant

Answer 24

maybe difference between self-relevant vs other-relevant –> positive self info more processed & negative info more processed relating to others

Question 25

How might a person’s intrinsic (positive vs negative) mood state influences memory & on what stage of memory processing does it have a positive or negative influence?
–> encoding

Answer 25

amygdala activity during encoding correlated with subsequent memory

Question 26

How might a person’s intrinsic (positive vs negative) mood state influences memory & on what stage of memory processing does it have a positive or negative influence?
–> consolidation

Answer 26

• arousing events more likely to be consolidated in long term memory
• amygdala- hippocampal network influences consolidation & improves long-term memory (better connectivity)

Question 27

How might a person’s intrinsic (positive vs negative) mood state influences memory & on what stage of memory processing does it have a positive or negative influence?
–> retrieval

-brain areas

Answer 27

• amygdala & anterior temporal pole –> involved in retrieval of affective information
• during retrieval: amygdala, OFC & ACC significantly activated for those pictures that had been encoded in affective backgrounds

Question 28

How might a person’s intrinsic (positive vs negative) mood state influences memory ?
–> Mood congruency effects

Answer 28

when we recall primarily negative events from our past when we are in a depressed mood or when we recall primarily positive events from our past when we are in a happy mood ==> what we remember is congruent with our current mood state (mood of event & mood of current state have to be same)

Question 29

How might a person’s intrinsic (positive vs negative) mood state influences memory?
==> Mood dependent memory

Answer 29

when material that was learned while in a particular mood is more likely to be recalled when you are again in that mood –> if we hear (neutral) story while sad, we should be more likely to remember details of that story some time later when we are once again in a sad mood (mood of encoding & mood of recall must be same but stimuli itself neutral)

Question 30

Which kind of consistency is important for mood dependent memory?

Answer 30

consistency between mood at encoding & mood at retrieval is important

Question 31

Are positive & negative moods associated with different memory information processing strategies?

• assimilation vs accommodation
• happy vs negative moods

Answer 31

• positive affective states –> assimilation (involves active cognitive elaboration of stimuli using interal schemata & knowledge structures)
• negative affective states –> accommodation (organism focuses on demands of external world)
• happy moods: more creative & more likely to use top-down processing styles
• negative moods: more systematic evaluation & less likely to commit memory errors

Question 32

Do you think that memory is mood-congruent during encoding and retrieval?

–> evidence for mood congruent memory

Answer 32

• study: increased recall for items that were congruent with mood at encoding
• associative network model: info congruent with mood should be more salient & processed at a deeper level
• well established & probably occur both at encoding & retrieval

Question 33

Is there something like ‘mood dependent memory’?

–> evidence

Answer 33

• consistency between mood at encoding & mood at retrieval is important
• more likely to occur with real-life events rather than in the lab –> stronger moods

—> effect consistent as long as moods experienced were strong & stable

Question 34

What does the Associative Network Model say?

Answer 34

• nodes: all our concepts & facts are stored in our long-term memory as nodes within a complex network

o connected together via semantic relationships
o activation spreads out around the network –> activating more closely related ones
o can explain semantic priming effects –> our perception of a word can be speeded & improved if a semantically related concept has just been processed

o Bower: mood states can also be stored as nodes & other ‘cognitive’ concepts

Question 35

What does the Affect Infusion Model (AIM) say?

Answer 35

• based on assumption that mood-congruent predictions of associative network models should occur only under conditions that allow an open & unbiased search & processing strategy to operate

o 4 processing strategies in which differing degrees of affect infusion may occur

o Affect infusion= process by which affectively salient info becomes incorporated into cognitive & behavioural processes & exerts a congruent influence

-More likely to occur when one of the high infusion strategies are used; when overall situation promotes an open, elaborate & constructive info processing style

o AIM assumes that:

(a) extent of affect infusion & hence mood congruity effects depends on the type of information processing style that is adopted
(b) all other things being equal, people should adopt the simplest processing strategy that requires the least effort

o 4 different processing strategies:

1. Direct access strategy –> little influenced by emotions
2. Motivated strategy –> little influenced by emotions
3. Heuristic strategy –> much influenced by emotions
4. Substantive processing strategy –> much influenced by emotions

• positive affective states –> generally induce a more top-down & heuristic processing style
• more negative mood stares –> more bottom-up, derailed & vigilant processing strategies

Question 36

What is the key prediction of the AIM model?

Answer 36

presence of mood congruity effects when heuristic & substantive processing strategics are adopted & absence of affect infusion when direct access or motivated processing is used

Question 37

Brosch et al.: What are the different routes in the brain by which threat-related stimuli become prioritized for further processing (including amygdala, sensory-cortices & parietal cortices)?

Answer 37

-amygdala: center; widespread connections w/ many cortical regions (V1 & IT) –> perceptual pathway

-hippocampus: memory-related
-OFC& PFC: prefrontal regions
==> enables amygdala to relay input to regions involved in decision making

• V1 & IT: enables amygdala to receive sensory input & strenghtens neural representations of emotional stimuli

==> both emotions & cognition important

• cognition: to feel emotions
• emotions: to make decision making/to be adaptive to environment (e.g., sensory-specific satiety)