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 they are processed in ambiguous contexts (e.g., in relation to other emotional stimuli that share similar characteristics), are incompletely known. We employed a similarity judgement of emotional concepts and manipulated the contextual congruency of the responses along the two main affective dimensions of hedonic valence and physiological activation, respectively. Behavioural and kinematics (mouse-tracking) measures were combined to gather a novel ‘similarity index’ between emotional concepts, to derive topographical maps of their mental representations. Self-report (interoceptive sensibility, positive–negative affectivity, depression) and physiological measures (heart rate variability, HRV) have been collected to explore their possible association with emotional conceptual representation. Results indicate that emotional concepts typically associated with low arousal profit by contextual congruency, with faster responses and reduced uncertainty when contextual ambiguity decreases. The emotional maps recreate two almost orthogonal axes of valence and arousal, and the similarity measure captures the smooth boundaries between emotions. The emotional map of a subgroup of individuals with low positive affectivity reveals a narrower conceptual distribution, with variations in positive emotions and in individuals with reduced arousal (such as those with reduced HRV). Our work introduces a novel methodology to study emotional conceptual representations, bringing the behavioural dynamics of decision-making processes and choice uncertainty into the affective domain. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences’.

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.…”

“…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.…”

“…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.…”

Reconciling universalistic and relativistic perspectives on abstract and concrete concepts: a cross-cultural study

“…Notably, a growing body of evidence has now shown that the more general category of abstract concepts encompasses diverse sub-categories, from numbers to emotions to social abstract concepts, each evoking specific experiences (Conca et al, 2021;Desai et al, 2018;Fini et al, 2023;Fischer & Shaki, 2018;Harpaintner et al, 2018;Mazzuca et al, 2022;Pexman et al, 2019;. For example, compared to other abstract concepts, emotional concepts evoke more interoceptive and emotional experiences (Barca et al, 2023;Connell et al, 2018;Vigliocco et al, 2014;Winter, 2022). In addition, in a recent study on 41 languages, Thompson and colleagues (Thompson et al, 2020) found that meanings that aligned the most belonged to semantic domains that have a high internal structure -for example, a progressive or a hierarchical structure (e.g., numbers, quantity, kinship).…”