Affective visual event-related potentials: Arousal, valence, and repetition effects for normal and distorted pictures

Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to assess arousal (low, high), valence (negative, positive), and stimulus repetition effects for normal and distorted images from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS). Distorted stimuli were constructed by dividing each image into 108 one cm squares and rearranging the segments randomly to produce a "scrambled" picture. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were elicited by presenting the normal and scrambled images as target stimuli, with a repeated visual pattern used as the standard stimulus. Participants (N=32) were instructed to press a button to the targets and ignore the standard. Stimulus repetition effects were assessed by presenting each stimulus twice in the normal and scrambled condition. High arousal stimuli yielded larger late positive components for both the normal and scrambled pictures. No overall valence effects were obtained, but arousal and valence influenced component amplitudes for middle-latency ERPs from the scrambled stimuli. For the normal pictures, stimulus repetition was associated with increased component amplitudes for all potentials and decreased RTs of all affective categories. For the scrambled pictures, no repetition changes were obtained. The findings suggest that stimulus arousal level contributes more than valence to affective ERP measures for normal as well as perceptually distorted pictures. Stimulus repetition engages memory for previous normal picture items but is not influenced by affective category [jo1] . Theoretical implications are discussed. KeywordsInternational Affective Picture System; IAPS; event-related potentials (ERPs); P300; arousal; valence; repetition IntroductionThe perceptual system utilizes information gained through previous exposure to affective events thereby facilitating subsequent processing of similar stimuli. As event-related potentials Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. (ERPs) can provide fine-grain temporal resolution of the underlying mechanisms, this neuroimaging method has become highly useful for assessing affective neural processing (Bradley et al., 1992;Dolcos and Cabeza, 2002;Ito et al., 1998;Lang et al., 1993Lang et al., , 1999. Although affective ERPs can be generated automatically by motivationally relevant picture motifs (appetitive, fearful, sexual), emotional stimuli also modulate ERPs even if the image content is not readily perceived (Codispoti et al., 2006;Schupp et al., 2006). The present study employs a stimulus repetition paradigm to characterize these issues by comparing affective pictures with "scrambled" image c...

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