Pictures as prepulse: Attention and emotion in startle modification

Bradley, Margaret M.; Cuthbert, Bruce N.; Lang, Peter

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1993.tb02079.x

Cited by 226 publications

(209 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Sokolov (1963) first described a shift from an orienting to a defense response when a tone of increasing intensity was presented. Recent studies used the startle reflex paradigm to examine both attentional and valence motivational mechanisms during presentation of emotional slides (Bradley, Cuthbert, & Lang, 1993). Consistent with our results, Cuthbert et al (1996) showed that low-arousal negative slides elicited a smaller startle response (indicating a larger attentional activity because startle reflex is proportionally inhibited by attentional engagement) than did positive slides.…”

Section: Physiological Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

The influence of affective factors on time perception

Angrilli

Cherubini

Pavese

et al. 1997

Perception & Psychophysics

406

391

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Several studies have suggested that both affective valence and arousal affect the perception of time. However, in previous experiments, the two affective dimensions have not been systematically controlled. In this study, standardized photographic slides rated for emotional valence and arousal were projected to two groups of subjects for 2, 4, and 6 sec. One group of subjects estimated the projection duration on an analog scale, whereas the second group of subjects reproduced the intervals by pushing a button. Heart rate and skin conductance responses were also recorded during stimulus presentation as indices of attention and arousal. Time estimation results showed neither a main effect of valence nor a main effect of arousal. A highly significant valence X arousal interaction affected duration judgments. For low-arousal stimuli, the duration of negative slides was judged relatively shorter than the duration of positive slides. For high-arousal stimuli, the duration of negative slides was judged longer than the duration of positive slides. The same interaction pattern was observed across judgment modalities. These results are interpreted in terms of a model of action tendency, in which the level of arousal controls two different motivational mechanisms, one emotional and the other attentional.In everyday life, human beings are continually engaged in emotionally driven behaviors. Such behaviors are so highly pervasive that the recent psychological literature has pointed out the centrality ofemotional factors in cognitive processes such as learning a second language (Schumann, 1990(Schumann, , 1994. Damasio (1994) has recently documented a remarkable body of neuropsychological evidence supporting the assumption that emotions are involved in most, if not all, cognitive processes.Although an increasing number of studies have investigated the role of emotions in cognitive activity, only a limited number of studies have analyzed the relationship between emotional states and estimation of time durations. Furthermore, these studies have typically yielded inconclusive results regarding the precise nature of the relationship between emotions and time perception. These inconsistent findings may originate from the use of nonstandardized emotional manipulations that make the quantification and replication of the results rather problematic.A leading theoretical approach in the current literature involves the dimensional analysis of emotions. Dimensional theories of emotion differ from basic emotions theories (Argyle, 1975;Chance, 1980;Plutchik, 1962) in that they do not classify emotions on the basis ofthe presence or absence of independent and specific emotional states (e.g., fear, anger, or joy). Instead, they assume that emotions can be represented in a multidimensional space We wish to thank G. B. Vicario, P. 1. Lang, L. Stegagno, D. Palomba, P. Bressan, R. Mucha, and L. Krueger (associate editor), and the referees for their helpful suggestions and comments. Correspondence should be addressed to Alessandro Angrilli, Antone...

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Section: Physiological Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

The influence of affective factors on time perception

Angrilli

Cherubini

Pavese

et al. 1997

Perception & Psychophysics

406

391

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These mechanisms confer evolutionary advantages, as unattended fearrelevant stimuli may be partially processed to prepare the organism for the occurrence of a potentially aversive situation. A number of behavioural and psychophysiological studies showing encoding biases for threat-related information are likely to reflect the operation of such initially preattentive processes [4,13,31,37,47,53]. Recently, a behavioural study by Holmes and colleagues [37] showed that rapid attentional responses to fearful versus neutral faces were driven by LSF rather than HSF visual cues, in line with the role of amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in the mediation of attention towards threatening faces.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression

Holmes

Winston

Eimer

2005

Cognitive Brain Research

120

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(2005). The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression. Cognitive Brain Research 25 (2): 508-520. This is an author-produced version of a paper published in Cognitive BrainResearch . This version has been peer-reviewed, but it does not include the final publisher proof corrections, published layout or pagination. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any component of this work in other works, must be obtained from the copyright holder. Copyright © 2005 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.All articles available through Birkbeck ePrints are protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. ABSTRACTTo investigate the impact of spatial frequency on emotional facial expression analysis, ERPs were recorded in response to low spatial frequency (LSF), high spatial frequency (HSF), and unfiltered broad spatial frequency (BSF) faces with fearful or neutral expressions, houses, and chairs. In line with previous findings, BSF fearful facial expressions elicited a greater frontal positivity than BSF neutral facial expressions, starting at about 150 ms after stimulus onset. In contrast, this emotional expression effect was absent for HSF and LSF faces. Given that some brain regions involved in emotion processing, such as amygdala and connected structures, are selectively tuned to LSF visual inputs, these data suggest that ERP effects of emotional facial expression do not directly reflect activity in these regions. It is argued that higher order neocortical brain systems are involved in the generation of emotion-specific waveform modulations. The face-sensitive N170 component was neither affected by emotional facial expression nor by spatial frequency information.Theme: Neural Basis of Behaviour Topic: Cognition

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“…In particular, we expected the high arousal pleasant and unpleasant conditions to elicit greater SCR amplitude than the corresponding low arousal conditions (Bradley et al, 1993;Lang et al, 1993a). SCRs were recorded with two Ag/Cl electrodes on the left palm.…”

Section: Skin Conductance Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association between trait emotional awareness and dorsal anterior cingulate activity during emotion is arousal-dependent

et al. 2008

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The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is commonly thought to subserve primarily cognitive functions, but has been strongly implicated in the allocation of attention to emotional information. In a previous positron emission tomography (PET) study, we observed that women with higher emotional awareness as measured by the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) showed greater changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in dACC induced by emotional films and recall. In the current study, we tested whether these effects were due to the processing of any nonneutral stimulus, or were specific to conditions of high emotional arousal. Our results extend the previous finding by demonstrating a positive correlation between emotional awareness and dACC activity only in the context of viewing highly arousing pictures. No such relationship was observed when comparing pleasant or unpleasant pictures to neutral or to each other. We also observed that the relationship between LEAS and dACC activity was present in both sexes but stronger in women than men. These results reinforce the concept that greater trait awareness of one's own emotional experiences is associated with greater engagement of the dACC during emotional arousal, which we suggest may reflect greater attentional processing of emotional information.

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Pictures as prepulse: Attention and emotion in startle modification

Cited by 226 publications

References 11 publications

The influence of affective factors on time perception

The influence of affective factors on time perception

The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression

Association between trait emotional awareness and dorsal anterior cingulate activity during emotion is arousal-dependent

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