Salience of fear/threat in the affective modulation of the human startle blink

Balaban, Marie T.; Taussig, Heather N.

doi:10.1016/0301-0511(94)90033-7

Cited by 75 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The second difference was the majority of the stimuli (67%) in the Giargiari et al (2005) study were sexual, and no unpleasant or nonsexual pleasant stimuli were included. Other researchers who chose to exclude unpleasant stimuli (Balaban & Taussig, 1994) were unable to demonstrate affective modulation among other stimuli in their set, which they attributed to lacking the standard emotion-enhancing contrast of the unpleasant stimuli. However, others have documented emotion modulation of the startle eyeblink response when stimuli were presented in groups of the same valence (Bradley, Cuthbert, & Lang, 1996;Smith, Bradley, & Lang, 2005), suggesting that one might still expect modulation in these circumstances.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Second, some have suggested that SEM is sensitive only to specific emotions, questioning the dimensional model of emotion on which SEM is based (e.g., Balaban & Taussig, 1994;Zeelenberg, van Dijk, Manstead, & van der Pligt, 2000). This could mean that sexual stimuli do not vary sufficiently, or not consistently enough, in the emotion(s) indexed by the SEM method; however, several studies have failed to link SEM to specific emotions such as anger (Miller, Patrick, & Levenson, 2002) and disgust (Balaban & Taussig, 1994). Finally, later emotional processing, which may be subject to greater conscious control, might be a stronger predictor of sexual desire levels.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attention and Emotional Responses to Sexual Stimuli and Their Relationship to Sexual Desire

2007

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Little is known about why individuals vary in their levels of sexual desire. Information processing models, like Barlow's (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 54:140-148, 1986) model of sexual functioning, suggest that individuals with higher sexual desire attend more and respond with more pleasant emotions to sexual cues than individuals with lower levels of sexual desire. In this study, 69 participants (36 women, 33 men) completed a dot detection task measuring attention capture by sexual stimuli and a startle eyeblink modulation task indexing the valence of emotional response to affective stimuli. Participants with high levels of sexual desire were slower to detect targets in the dot detection task that replaced sexual images but did not differ in startle eyeblink responses to sexual stimuli. The results suggest that the amount of attention captured by sexual stimuli is a stronger predictor of a person's sexual desire level than the valence of the emotional responses elicited by such stimuli.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention and Emotional Responses to Sexual Stimuli and Their Relationship to Sexual Desire

2007

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“…Specifically, this coactivation of the two motivational states may occur in emotional stimuli not only expressing a certain quality of emotion but additionally possessing a specific social function (cf. Balaban and Taussig, 1994;Ito et al, 1998). By expressing negative emotions infants not only would signal their negative emotional state, which may contribute to an unpleasant feeling of the caregiver and, by activation of the aversive motivational system, to an augmentation of the startle response.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Parental perception and interpretation of infant emotions: psychological and physiological processes

Spangler¹,

Geserick

Wahlert

2005

Inf. Child Develop.

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To study parental experience and perception of infant emotional expressions parents' responses to infant pictures depicting positive, neutral and negative emotions were assessed on the level of affective judgments (perceived and experienced valence and arousal), of mimic responses (facial muscle activity) and of the eyelid reflex (using the startle paradigm). In general, while parents were able to appropriately perceive infant emotions and were clearly affected by them, they exhibited a bias for positive interpretation. This was obvious from their subjective evaluations which, e.g. were more positive for experienced than for perceived valence, as well as from their mimic responses indicating positive responses in general. In addition, infant pictures including the negative ones lead to an inhibition of the startle reflex, indicating a positive evaluation of infant emotions on the sub-cortical level. These effects were most prominent when parents were faced with pictures of their own infants as compared to unfamiliar ones. The way parents process information about infant emotions may facilitate appropriate responsiveness to infants' needs. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Key words: perception of emotion; startle reflex; mimic responses Infant emotional expression plays an important role for development, because during the first year before the onset of speech and even more during the first months before the up-coming of the first gestures, emotional expression and, most of all, negative emotional expression is the only way for an infant to communicate his/her needs to the caregiver. Thus, infant emotional expression as well as the caregivers' responses are substantial components of infantcaregiver relationship. Because infants are not capable of autonomous

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“…Balaban & Taussig, 1994;Ito, Cacioppo, & Lang, 1998). On the one hand, the expression of negative emotion in the infant may induce an unpleasant feeling in the caregiver and, by activation of the aversive motivational system, lead to startle augmentation.…”

Section: Attachment Representation and The Startle Response (Physiolomentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of attachment representation on parental perception and interpretation of infant emotions: A multilevel approach

Spangler

Maier

Geserick

et al. 2010

Developmental Psychobiology

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The aim of the study was to investigate parental perception and interpretation of infant emotional expression depending on their attachment representation. Forty-six parents' responses to infant pictures depicting positive, neutral, and negative emotions were assessed on the level of affective judgments (valence, arousal), mimic responses (facial muscle activity), and of the eyelid reflex (using the startle paradigm). Results revealed small differences between parents of different attachment representations with respect to their subjective evaluations. However, secure parents, as compared to insecure ones, showed a positive bias in their mimic responses to infant pictures. The modulation of the startle response indicated a negative evaluation of negative infant emotion expressions in dismissing parents, while an augmentation of the startle response to negative infant emotions could not be observed in secure and preoccupied parents. The findings highlight the role of attachment experiences for emotional information processing in parents and its consequences for parental behavior.

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Salience of fear/threat in the affective modulation of the human startle blink

Cited by 75 publications

References 26 publications

Attention and Emotional Responses to Sexual Stimuli and Their Relationship to Sexual Desire

Attention and Emotional Responses to Sexual Stimuli and Their Relationship to Sexual Desire

Parental perception and interpretation of infant emotions: psychological and physiological processes

The influence of attachment representation on parental perception and interpretation of infant emotions: A multilevel approach

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