Mapping the mental space of emotional concepts through kinematic measures of decision uncertainty

Abstract

Emotional concepts and their mental representations have been extensively studied. Yet, some ecologically relevant aspects, such as how emotional concepts are processed in ambiguous contexts, are incompletely known. We employed a similarity judgment of emotional concepts and manipulated the contextual congruency along the two main affective dimensions of hedonic valence and physiological activation, respectively. Behavioral and kinematics (mouse-tracking) measures were combined to gather a novel ‘similarity index’ between concepts, to derive topographical maps of their mental representations. Self-report (interoceptive sensibility, positive-negative affectivity, depression) and physiological measures (heart rate variability) have been tested to shape the emotional maps. Results indicate that low arousal concepts profit by contextual congruency, with faster responses and reduced uncertainty when contextual ambiguity decreases. The emotional maps exhibit two almost orthogonal axes of valence and arousal, and the similarity measure captures the smooth boundaries between emotions. The emotional map of individuals with low positive affectivity reveals a narrower conceptual distribution, with variations on positive emotions and on emotions with reduced arousal (as individuals with reduced heart rate variability). In sum, our work introduces a novel methodology for delve conceptual representations, bringing the dynamics of decision-making processes and choice uncertainty into the affective domain.

Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences

“…Barca et al [38] introduce a novel methodology to study emotional concepts. The authors note that emotional concepts are not processed in the void but in the context of other emotional stimuli and factors characteristic of an individual (e.g.…”

“…In research on language use, cutting-edge approaches investigate dialogue as a form of joint action [30,31], and new tools allow researchers to explore the interactional dynamics underlying language use [32][33][34][35]. Studies show that interaction facilitates abstract thought and problem-solving [6,36,37] and reveal that emotions [38][39][40][41][42] and social interaction [43][44][45] are paramount for abstract concept acquisition and use.…”

“…Other papers focus more explicitly on language and its relationship with concepts, showing the importance of inner language, verbal labels and word associations for concrete and abstract concepts, and highlighting the role of language in enhancing cognition. Across the various sections, the theme issue offers many insights into the differences between kinds of concepts, from the significant distinction between concrete and abstract ones [2,8,9,56,57], to specific concepts like the religious [58], the social [59,60], the olfactory [61] and the emotional ones [38,42].…”

“…[64]), new sophisticated data analysis techniques, including cross-linguistic analyses (e.g. [8,38,42]), new constructs and ways to investigate abstractness (e.g. [2,65]), and new neuroscience methodologies, including dual-person neuroscience (e.g.…”