Thesis title Keep your head up: The vertical representation of affect
Bachelor Thesis by Christopher B. Germann (Ph.D., M.Sc., B.Sc. / Marie Curie Fellow)
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Abstract We examined whether experimentally induced affective states (positive vs. negative mood induced by film clips) bias subsequent performance in a series of visual target detection tasks. Because affective conceptual metaphors consistently indicate that positive affect is associated with high spatial positions (e.g. feeling “high”) and negative affect with low spatial positions, we predicted that positive mood facilitates target detection in the upper visual field relative to target detection in the lower visual field. Consequently, we expected that negative mood facilitates target detection in the lower visual field as compared to target detection in the upper visual field (Experiment 1 and 2). In addition, Experiment 1 empirically investigated the idea that affective states exert significant effects on perceptual judgments related to horizontality. We hypothesised that positive mood facilitates target detection in the right visual field compared to target detection in the left visual field. Vice versa, an orthogonal perceptual bias was postulated for the right visual field. This last hypothesis was, inter alia, motivated by the neuropsychological valence model of hemispherically latealised (asymetric) processing of emotion perception. Results are discussed within the generic theoretical framework of embodied cognition.
References
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“This study is part of an effort to map neural systems involved in the processing of emotion, and it focuses on the possible cortical components of the process of recognizing facial expressions. we hypothesized that the cortical systems most responsible for the recognition of emotional facial expressions would draw on discrete regions of right higher-order sensory cortices and that the recognition of specific emotions would depend on partially distinct system subsets of such cortical regions. we tested these hypotheses using lesion analysis in 37 subjects with focal brain damage. subjects were asked to recognize facial expressions of six basic emotions: happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. data were analyzed with a novel technique, based on three-dimensional reconstruction of brain images, in which anatomical description of surface lesions and task performance scores were jointly mapped onto a standard brain-space. we found that all subjects recognized happy expressions normally but that some subjects were impaired in recognizing negative emotions, especially fear and sadness. the cortical surface regions that best correlated with impaired recognition of emotion were in the right inferior parietal cortex and in the right mesial anterior infracalcarine cortex. we did not find impairments in recognizing any emotion in subjects with lesions restricted to the left hemisphere. these data provide evidence for a neural system important to processing facial expressions of some emotions, involving discrete visual and somatosensory cortical sectors in right hemisphere.”
Adolphs, R., Jansari, A., & Tranel, D.. (2001). Hemispheric perception of emotional valence from facial expressions.. Neuropsychology, 15(4), 516–524.
“The authors previously reported that normal subjects are better at discriminating happy from neutral faces when the happy face is located to the viewer’s right of the neutral face; conversely, discrimination of sad from neutral faces is better when the sad face is shown to the left, supporting a role for the left hemisphere in processing positive valence and for the right hemisphere in processing negative valence. here, the authors extend this same task to subjects with unilateral cerebral damage (31 right, 28 left). subjects with right damage performed worse when discriminating sad faces shown on the left, consistent with the prior findings. however, subjects with either left or right damage actually performed superior to normal controls when discriminating happy faces shown on the left. the authors suggest that perception of negative valence relies preferentially on the right hemisphere, whereas perception of positive valence relies on both left and right hemispheres.”
Aitken, R. C.. (1969). Measurement of feelings using visual analogue scales.. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 62(10), 989–93. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4899510
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“Feelings are states of the self, and incorporate moods and sensations. although a person may appreciate precisely his state on a selected dimension, words may fail to describe the exactness of the subjective experience. the paucity of suitable quantitative terms in common speech limits the amount of information which can be transferred. continuous phenomena have to be graded in artificial categories. a digital system is imposed on the observer, when the freedom of an analogue system would be welcome. an understanding of many problems in clinical research presupposes that it is possible to communicate the desired information from patient to clinician in a way amenable to measurement. a working party of the british association defined measurement as ‘the assignment of numerals to things so as to represent facts and conventions about them’ (stevens 1946). for the measurement of feelings, communication based on a simple visual analogue seems appropriate. lines, with their boundaries clearly defined as the extremes of the feeling, serve well for marking (hayes & paterson 1921).”
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“Nine experiments of timed odd–even judgments examined how parity and number magnitude are accessed from arabic and verbal numerals. with arabic numerals, ss used the rightmost digit to access a store of semantic number knowledge. verbal numerals went through an additional stage of transcoding to base 10. magnitude information was automatically accessed from arabic numerals. large numbers preferentially elicited a rightward response, and small numbers a leftward response. the spatial–numerical association of response codes effect depended only on relative number magnitude and was weaker or absent with letters or verbal numerals. direction did not vary with handedness or hemispheric dominance but was linked to the direction of writing, as it faded or even reversed in right-to-left writing iranian ss. the results supported a modular architecture for number processing, with distinct but interconnected arabic, verbal, and magnitude representations.”
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“Glucksberg and keysar (1990) have proposed a class-inclusion model of metaphor comprehension. this theory suggests that metaphors are not understood as implicit similes but are seen as class-inclusion statements in which the topic of a metaphor is assigned to a diagnostic, ad hoc category, whereas the metaphor’s vehicle is a prototypical member of that category. the author claims that verbal metaphors are not simply instantiations of temporary, ad hoc categories but reflect preexisting conceptual mappings in long-term memory that are metaphorically structured. various evidence from cognitive linguistics, philosophy, and psychology are described in support of this claim. evidence is also presented that supports, contrary to glucksberg and keysar’s position, the role of tacit conceptual metaphors in the comprehension of verbal metaphors in discourse.”
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“An implicit association test (iat) measures differential association of 2 target concepts with an attribute. the 2 concepts appear in a 2-choice task (2-choice task (e.g., flower vs. insect names), and the attribute in a 2nd task (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant words for an evaluation attribute). when instructions oblige highly associated categories (e.g., flower + pleasant) to share a response key, performance is faster than when less associated categories (e.g., insect & pleasant) share a key. this performance difference implicitly measures differential association of the 2 concepts with the attribute. in 3 experiments, the iat was sensitive to (a) near-universal evaluative differences (e.g., flower vs. insect), (b) expected individual differences in evaluative associations (japanese + pleasant vs. korean + pleasant for japanese vs. korean subjects), and (c) consciously disavowed evaluative differences (black + pleasant vs. white + pleasant for self-described unprejudiced white subjects).”
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“It is argued that lakoff and johnson’s (1980) contemporary theory of metaphor conflates the structure of the target-concept before the metaphoric process has taken place with the structure of the target-conceptafter the process. a revision of the theory is suggested. a consequence of this revision is that conventional conceptual meta- phors are propositional in nature-namely, as propositions expressing identity. the revision hereby reinforces the connection between conceptual metaphor and linguistic metaphor”
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“Affect is a somewhat abstract concept that is frequently linked to physical metaphor. for example, good is often depicted as light (rather than dark), up (rather than down), and moving forward (rather than backward). the purpose of our studies was to examine whether the association between stimulus brightness and affect is optional or obligatory. in a series of three studies, participants categorized words as negative or positive. the valence of the words and the brightness of the letters were varied orthogonally. in studies 1, 2, and 3, we found that categorization was inhibited when there was a mismatch between stimulus brightness (e.g., light) and word valence (e.g., negative). studies 4 and 5 reveal boundary conditions for the effect. the studies suggest that, when making evaluations, people automatically assume that bright objects are good, whereas dark objects are bad.”
Niedenthal, P. M., Barsalou, L. W., Winkielman, P., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F.. (2005). Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(3), 184–211.
“Findings in the social psychology literatures on attitudes, social perception, and emotion demonstrate that social information processing involves embodiment, where embodiment refers both to actual bodily states and to simulations of experience in the brain’s modality-specific systems for perception, action, and introspection. we show that embodiment underlies social information processing when the perceiver inter- acts with actual social objects (online cognition) and when the perceiver represents social objects in their absence (offline cognition). although many empirical demon- strations of social embodiment exist, no particularly compelling account of them has been offered. we propose that theories of embodied cognition, such as the perceptual symbol systems (pss) account (barsalou, 1999), explain and integrate these find- ings, and that they also suggest exciting new directions for research. we compare the pss account to a variety of related proposals and show how it addresses criticisms that have previously posed problems for the general embodiment approach.”
Sato, W., Kochiyama, T., Yoshikawa, S., Naito, E., & Matsumura, M.. (2004). Enhanced neural activity in response to dynamic facial expressions of emotion: an fMRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 20(1), 81–91.
“In this article i try to trace the origin of spatialization metaphors to basic spatial concepts assimilated during the first year of life. these concepts are the up-down dimension and the near-far dimension. numerous metaphoric expressions are organized around these early concepts. examples are considered against the background of developmental stages from the lying position at birth to the erect posture at about 1 year. in the introduction, i discuss differing views of the roots of spatialization metaphors on the basis of binswanger’s position. [abstract from author] copyright of metaphor & symbolic activity is the property of taylor & francis ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. however, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. this abstract may be abridged. no warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (copyright applies to all abstracts.)”
WESTERMANN, R., SPIES, K., STAHL, G., & HESSE, F. W.. (1996). Relative effectiveness and validity of mood induction procedures: a meta-analysis. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26(4), 557–580.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199607)26:4<557::AID-EJSP769>3.0.CO;2-4 DOI URL directSciHub download
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“The effectiveness and validity of i i important mood induction procedures (mips) were comparatively evaluated by meta-analyticalprocedures. two hundred andfifty effects of the experimental induction ofpositive, elated and negative, depressed mood in adult, non- clinical samples were integrated. effect sizes were generally larger for negative than for positive mood inductions. thepresentation of afilm or story turnedout to be most effective in inducing both positive and negative mood states. the effects are especially large when subjects are explicitly instructed to enter the specified mood state. for elated mood, all other mips yielded considerably lower effectiveness scores. for the induction of negative mood states, imagination, velten, music. social interaction and feedback mips were about as effective as the film/story mip without instruction. induction effects covaried with several study characteristics. effects tend to be smaller when demand characteristics are controlled or subjects are not informed about the purpose of the experiment. for behavioural measures, effects are smaller than for self-reports but still larger than zero. hence, the effects of mips can be partly, but not fully due to &mand effects.”
