Delplanque S, N'diaye K, Scherer K, Grandjean D.
Journal of Neuroscience Methods, in press
The influence of the emotional attributes of a visual scene on early perception processes remains a key question in contemporary affective neurosciences. The International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang et al., 2005) was developed to provide a set of standardized stimuli for experimental investigations of emotional processes. These stimuli have been widely used in brain activity investigations to study the influence of valence and/or arousal on visual processing. However, visual perception is strongly influenced by the physical properties of the images shown, especially their spatial frequency content, an aspect that has been unexpectedly neglected at large. In this study, we examine the complete set of IAPS with a discrete wavelet transform to highlight relations between the energy in different spatial frequencies and the emotional features of the pictures. Our results showed that these associations are weak when the complete dataset is considered, but for selected subsets of pictures, clear differences are present in both affective and spatial frequency content. The IAPS remains a powerful tool to explore emotional processing, but we strongly suggest that researchers use subsets of images that are controlled for the energy of their spatial frequencies when investigating emotional influence on visual processing.
Showing posts with label perception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perception. Show all posts
Friday, July 20, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
ARTICLE UPDATE - The Emotion Recognition Task: a paradigm to measure the perception of facial emotional expressions at different intensities.
Montagne B, Kessels RP, De Haan EH, Perrett DI.
Perceptual & Motor Skills, 104, 589-598
The Emotion Recognition Task is a computer-generated paradigm for measuring the recognition of six basic facial emotional expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Video clips of increasing length were presented, starting with a neutral face that changes into a facial expression of different intensities (20%-100%). The present study describes methodological aspects of the paradigm and its applicability in healthy participants (N=58; 34 men; ages between 22 and 75), specifically focusing on differences in recognition performance between the six emotion types and age-related change. The results showed that happiness was the easiest emotion to recognize, while fear was the most difficult. Moreover, older adults performed worse than young adults on anger, sadness, fear, and happiness, but not on disgust and surprise. These findings indicate that this paradigm is probably more sensitive than emotion perception tasks using static images, suggesting it is a useful tool in the assessment of subtle impairments in emotion perception.
Perceptual & Motor Skills, 104, 589-598
The Emotion Recognition Task is a computer-generated paradigm for measuring the recognition of six basic facial emotional expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Video clips of increasing length were presented, starting with a neutral face that changes into a facial expression of different intensities (20%-100%). The present study describes methodological aspects of the paradigm and its applicability in healthy participants (N=58; 34 men; ages between 22 and 75), specifically focusing on differences in recognition performance between the six emotion types and age-related change. The results showed that happiness was the easiest emotion to recognize, while fear was the most difficult. Moreover, older adults performed worse than young adults on anger, sadness, fear, and happiness, but not on disgust and surprise. These findings indicate that this paradigm is probably more sensitive than emotion perception tasks using static images, suggesting it is a useful tool in the assessment of subtle impairments in emotion perception.
Friday, April 20, 2007
ARTICLE UPDATE - Affective stimulus properties influence size perception and the Ebbinghaus illusion.
van Ulzen NR, Semin GR, Oudejans RR, Beek PJ.
Psychological Research, in press
In the New Look literature of the 1950s, it has been suggested that size judgments are dependent on the affective content of stimuli. This suggestion, however, has been 'discredited' due to contradictory findings and methodological problems. In the present study, we revisited this forgotten issue in two experiments. The first experiment investigated the influence of affective content on size perception by examining judgments of the size of target circles with and without affectively loaded (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. Circles with a picture were estimated to be smaller than circles without a picture, and circles with a negative picture were estimated to be larger than circles with a positive or a neutral picture confirming the suggestion from the 1950s that size perception is influenced by affective content, an effect notably confined to negatively loaded stimuli. In a second experiment, we examined whether affective content influenced the Ebbinghaus illusion. Participants judged the size of a target circle whereby target and flanker circles differed in affective loading. The results replicated the first experiment. Additionally, the Ebbinghaus illusion was shown to be weakest for a negatively loaded target with positively loaded and blank flankers. A plausible explanation for both sets of experimental findings is that negatively loaded stimuli are more attention demanding than positively loaded or neutral stimuli.
Psychological Research, in press
In the New Look literature of the 1950s, it has been suggested that size judgments are dependent on the affective content of stimuli. This suggestion, however, has been 'discredited' due to contradictory findings and methodological problems. In the present study, we revisited this forgotten issue in two experiments. The first experiment investigated the influence of affective content on size perception by examining judgments of the size of target circles with and without affectively loaded (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. Circles with a picture were estimated to be smaller than circles without a picture, and circles with a negative picture were estimated to be larger than circles with a positive or a neutral picture confirming the suggestion from the 1950s that size perception is influenced by affective content, an effect notably confined to negatively loaded stimuli. In a second experiment, we examined whether affective content influenced the Ebbinghaus illusion. Participants judged the size of a target circle whereby target and flanker circles differed in affective loading. The results replicated the first experiment. Additionally, the Ebbinghaus illusion was shown to be weakest for a negatively loaded target with positively loaded and blank flankers. A plausible explanation for both sets of experimental findings is that negatively loaded stimuli are more attention demanding than positively loaded or neutral stimuli.
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