Introducing the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS)

art.pics Database: An Open Access Database for Art Stimuli for Experimental Research

While art is omnipresent in human history, the neural mechanisms of how we perceive, value and differentiate art has only begun to be explored. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggested that art acts as secondary reward, involving brain activity in the ventral striatum and prefrontal cortices similar to primary rewards such as food. However, potential similarities or unique characteristics of art-related neuroscience (or neuroesthetics) remain elusive, also because of a lack of adequate experimental tools: the available collections of art stimuli often lack standard image definitions and normative ratings. Therefore, we here provide a large set of well-characterized, novel art images for use as visual stimuli in psychological and neuroimaging research. The stimuli were created using a deep learning algorithm that applied different styles of popular paintings (based on artists such as Klimt or Hundertwasser) on ordinary animal, plant and object images which were drawn from established visual stimuli databases. The novel stimuli represent mundane items with artistic properties with proposed reduced dimensionality and complexity compared to paintings. In total, 2,332 novel stimuli are available open access as “art.pics” database at https://osf.io/BTWNQ/ with standard image characteristics that are comparable to other common visual stimuli material in terms of size, variable color distribution, complexity, intensity and valence, measured by image software analysis and by ratings derived from a human experimental validation study [n = 1,296 (684f), age 30.2 ± 8.8 y.o.]. The experimental validation study further showed that the art.pics elicit a broad and significantly different variation in subjective value ratings (i.e., liking and wanting) as well as in recognizability, arousal and valence across different art styles and categories. Researchers are encouraged to study the perception, processing and valuation of art images based on the art.pics database which also enables real reward remuneration of the rated stimuli (as art prints) and a direct comparison to other rewards from e.g., food or money.

Key Messages: We provide an open access, validated and large set of novel stimuli (n = 2,332) of standardized art images including normative rating data to be used for experimental research. Reward remuneration in experimental settings can be easily implemented for the art.pics by e.g., handing out the stimuli to the participants (as print on premium paper or in a digital format), as done in the presented validation task. Experimental validation showed that the art.pics’ images elicit a broad and significantly different variation in subjective value ratings (i.e., liking, wanting) across different art styles and categories, while size, color and complexity characteristics remained comparable to other visual stimuli databases.

Affective evaluation of images influences personality judgments through gaze perception

Faces that consistently shifted the gaze to subsequent target locations in a gaze cueing task were chosen as being more trustworthy than faces that always looked away from the target, suggesting that the validity of a gaze cue influenced the viewers' judgments regarding the trustworthiness of human faces. We investigated whether the gaze cueing effect and judgments regarding the personality conveyed by a face would be affected by the valence of a target. A face image moved its eyes to the left or the right, and an emotional target image (positive, negative, or neutral) appeared to left or right of the face. Participants had to indicate the location of this target by pressing a key. The target image was preceded by a face that shifted its gaze to the target image (valid cue), a face that directed its gaze to the opposite side (invalid cue), or a face that did not move its eyes (no cue). The perceived trustworthiness of the face was evaluated after the gaze-cueing task. Results showed that faces that looked at positive targets were evaluated as more trustworthy than faces that looked at negative targets. However, the valence of the targets did not affect trustworthiness ratings in invalid and no-cue conditions. We suggest that integrated information about the predictability of the gaze cue and the valence of the gaze target modulates impressions about the personality of the face.

Their Economy and Our Health: Communicating Climate Change to the Divided American Public

Climate change poses severe economic and public health threats to societies around the world. However, little is known about how selectively emphasizing its impacts on different issues and in different locations influence public engagement in climate change mitigation. Utilizing an experimental survey with adult participants, this study investigates the effect of issue framing and distance framing on risk perception and policy support related to climate change. The impacts of political ideology, environmental value, and belief in climate science on message effect are also examined. Based on the results of ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) and OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression, we found that compared with the economy frame, the public health frame led to greater polarization in risk perception and policy support between liberals and conservatives, and these relationships were mediated by environmental value and belief in climate science. Similarly, distance framing also increased ideological polarization in risk perception and policy support.

The Reflection Effect in Memory-Based Decisions

Previous research has indicated a bias in memory-based decision-making, with people preferring options that they remember better. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this memory bias remain elusive. Here, we propose that choosing poorly remembered options is conceptually similar to choosing options with uncertain outcomes. We predicted that the memory bias would be reduced when options had negative subjective value, analogous to the reflection effect, according to which uncertainty aversion is stronger in gains than in losses. In two preregistered experiments ( N = 36 each), participants made memory-based decisions between appetitive and aversive stimuli. People preferred better-remembered options in the gain domain, but this behavioral pattern reversed in the loss domain. This effect was not related to participants’ ambiguity or risk attitudes, as measured in a separate task. Our results increase the understanding of memory-based decision-making and connect this emerging field to well-established research on decisions under uncertainty.

Shared Neural Representations of Cognitive Conflict and Negative Affect in the Medial Frontal Cortex

Influential theories of Medial Frontal Cortex (MFC) function suggest that the MFC registers cognitive conflict as an aversive signal, but no study directly tested this idea. Instead, recent studies suggested that nonoverlapping regions in the MFC process conflict and affect. In this preregistered human fMRI study (male and female), we used MVPAs to identify which regions respond similarly to conflict and aversive signals. The results reveal that, of all conflict- and value-related regions, only the ventral pre-supplementary motor area (or dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) showed a shared neural pattern response to different conflict and affect tasks. These findings challenge recent conclusions that conflict and affect are processed independently, and provide support for integrative views of MFC function.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Multiple theories propose that the MFC, and the dorsal ACC in particular, integrates information related to suboptimal outcomes from different psychological domains (e.g., cognitive control and negative affect) with the aim of adaptively steering behavior. In contrast to recent studies in the field, we provide evidence for the idea that cognitive control and negative affect are integrated in the MFC by showing that a classification algorithm trained on discerning cognitive control (conflict vs no conflict) can predict affect (negative vs positive) in the voxel pattern response of the dorsal ACC/pre-SMA.

Comparison Between Facilitating and Suppressing Facial Emotional Expressions Using Frontal EEG Asymmetry

The prefrontal cortex plays a key role in emotional state. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies have reported relationships between frontal asymmetry in the alpha band, emotional state, and emotion-related motivation. The current study investigated whether the positive or negative valence of emotional stimulation or the behavioral intention to either facilitate or suppress one’s facial expression in response to these stimuli is reflected in relevant changes in frontal EEG asymmetry. EEG was recorded while participants either produced a facial expression that was in accord with positive or negative feelings corresponding to image stimuli, or suppressed their facial expressions. The laterality index of frontal alpha power indicated greater relative right frontal activity while participants suppressed facial expression compared with facilitating facial expression during emotional stimulation. However, there was no difference in frontal asymmetry between the presentation of image stimuli showing facial expressions corresponding to positive vs. negative emotions. These results suggested that frontal asymmetry was related to the control of facial emotional expressions rather than the perception of positive vs. negative emotions. Moreover, microstate analysis revealed that the appearance rate of microstate class B with polarity in the left frontal area increased during the suppression of facial expressions. The present results suggested that frontal asymmetry reflects the control of facial emotional expressions, which supports the motivational direction model.

Now you feel it, now you don't: Motivated attention to emotional content is modulated by age and task demands

Several studies with younger adults have examined the degree to which emotion captures attention using the event-related potentials (ERP) technique, but it is unknown whether there are age-related differences on this issue. We examined ERP correlates of age-related differences in processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional material. Participants viewed emotional or neutral images, presented at fixation, flanked by two bars of either differing or matching orientation. In one set of trials, participants decided whether the pictures were presented in black-and-white or color; in another set of trials, they made a match/judgment on the flanking bars. Before the experiment proper, we determined each individual's threshold for line orientation (in the presence of neutral pictures at fixation); mismatch bar stimuli were constructed using this threshold, thus equating baseline performance on the bar tasks across individuals. When attention was focused on the images, ERPs provided evidence for emotion-based processing in the younger group, regardless of valence; older adults showed more differentiated valence-based processing as reflected by a positivity effect (in line with socioemotional selectivity theory). When the images were task-irrelevant, older adults showed no evidence of emotional processing whatsoever; younger adults showed a pattern of suppression in the form of reduced processing of emotional material relative to neutral images. These findings suggest that, once performance on a neutral baseline task is equated, older adults do not exhibit a specific age-related deficit in inhibiting emotional material; they also suggest qualitative differences in processing of to-be-ignored emotional material in younger and older adults.

Impact of emotionally negative information on attentional processes in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease

Impairments of emotional processing have been reported in Alzheimer's disease (AD), consistently with the existence of early amygdala atrophy in the pathology. In this study, we hypothesized that patients with AD might show a deficit of orientation toward emotional information under conditions of visual search. Eighteen patients with AD, 24 age-matched controls, and 35 young controls were eye-tracked while they performed a visual search task on a computer screen. The target was a vehicle with implicit (negative or neutral) emotional content, presented concurrently with one, three, or five non-vehicle neutral distractors. The task was to find the target and to report whether a break in the target frame was on the left or on the right side. Both control groups detected negative targets more efficiently than they detected neutral targets, showing facilitated engagement toward negative information. In contrast, patients with AD showed no influence of emotional information on engagement delays. However, all groups reported the frame break location more slowly for negative than for neutral targets (after accounting for the last fixation delay), showing a more difficult disengagement from negative information. These findings are the first to highlight a selective lack of emotional influence on engagement processes in patients with AD. The involvement of amygdala alterations in this behavioral impairment remains to be investigated.

Lift Charts-Based Binary Classification in Unsupervised Setting for Concept-Based Retrieval of Emotionally Annotated Images from Affective Multimedia Databases

Evaluation of document classification is straightforward if complete information on the documents’ true categories exists. In this case, the rank of each document can be accurately determined and evaluated. However, in an unsupervised setting, where the exact document category is not available, lift charts become an advantageous method for evaluation of the retrieval quality and categorization of ranked documents. We introduce lift charts as binary classifiers of ranked documents and explain how to apply them to the concept-based retrieval of emotionally annotated images as one of the possible retrieval methods for this application. Furthermore, we describe affective multimedia databases on a representative example of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) dataset, their applications, advantages, and deficiencies, and explain how lift charts may be used as a helpful method for document retrieval in this domain. Optimization of lift charts for recall and precision is also described. A typical scenario of document retrieval is presented on a set of 800 affective pictures labeled with an unsupervised glossary. In the lift charts-based retrieval using the approximate matching method, the highest attained accuracy, precision, and recall were 51.06%, 47.41%, 95.89%, and 81.83%, 99.70%, 33.56%, when optimized for recall and precision, respectively.

Attentional bias modification with a new paradigm: The effect of the Detection Engagement and Savoring Positivity (DESP) task on eye-tracking of attention

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

We tested the effect of a new Attentional Bias Modification (ABM) task - the Detection Engagement and Savoring Positivity (DESP) task - on attentional biases. The DESP is innovative in that it involves a procedure of savoring the positivity of various pictures.

METHODS

Participants were randomly assigned to the DESP or to a placebo control condition (experiment 1; n = 38) or a condition controlling for savoring (experiment 2; n = 54) in a pre-post/training experimental design. During one week, the participants completed the DESP or the control task once a day between three and six times. We assessed the effects of the DESP task on various attentional biases (i.e. positive, negative and threat) by computing dwell time from an eye-tracking technology before and after the training, and also one week after the post-training session in experiment 2.

RESULTS

In both experiments, the attentional bias toward positive stimuli between the pre- and the post-training increased significantly more in the DESP task condition than in the control conditions. Negative and threat attentional biases were not significantly affected by the experimental manipulations. Experiment 2 revealed that the DESP task - including the savoring instruction - increased significantly more the positive attentional bias than a task excluding this step and that this effect remained significant one week after the post-training session.

LIMITATIONS

Our samples were mainly composed of women participants. This prevents generalization of the findings.

CONCLUSIONS

The DESP task offers promising perspectives for sustainably improving attention to positive information.

Subjective ratings of emotive stimuli predict the impact of the COVID-19 quarantine on affective states

The COVID-19 crisis resulted in a large proportion of the world's population having to employ social distancing measures and self-quarantine. Given that limiting social interaction impacts mental health, we assessed the effects of quarantine on emotive perception as a proxy of affective states. To this end, we conducted an online experiment whereby 112 participants provided affective ratings for a set of normative images and reported on their well-being during COVID-19 self-isolation. We found that current valence ratings were significantly lower than the original ones from 2015. This negative shift correlated with key aspects of the personal situation during the confinement, including working and living status, and subjective well-being. These findings indicate that quarantine impacts mood negatively, resulting in a negatively biased perception of emotive stimuli. Moreover, our online assessment method shows its validity for large-scale population studies on the impact of COVID-19 related mitigation methods and well-being.

Effects of intensive care unit ambient sounds on healthcare professionals: results of an online survey and noise exposure in an experimental setting

BACKGROUND

Noise levels on intensive care units (ICUs) are typically elevated. While many studies reported negative effects of ICU ambient sounds on patients, only few investigated noise as a factor to influence well-being or performance in healthcare professionals.

METHODS

An online survey in the German-speaking part of Switzerland was conducted to assess how ICU soundscapes are subjectively perceived by healthcare professionals. The questionnaire was answered by 348 participants. Additionally, effects of noise on working memory performance were evaluated in an experimental noise exposure setting. Twenty-six healthcare professionals and 27 healthy controls performed a 2-back object-location task while being exposed to either ICU or pink noise.

RESULTS

Survey results demonstrate that a majority of participants was aware of heightened noise levels. Participants reported that mostly well-being, performance, and attention could be reduced, along with subjective annoyance and fatigue by ICU ambient sounds. Although no significant effects of noise exposure on working memory performance was observed, self-assessments revealed significantly higher stress levels, increased annoyance and distraction ratings as well as decreased confidence in performance after ICU-noise exposure.

CONCLUSION

Subjective assessments indicate that heightened noise levels on ICUs induce annoyance, with heightened stress levels, impaired well-being, and reduced performance being potential consequences. Empirical evidence with objective and physiological measures is warranted.

Attention please: ERP evidence for prime-target resource competition in the neutral-target variant of affective priming

Using event-related potentials we examined the mechanisms that underlie the influence of affective context information on evaluative judgments in affective priming (AP). Participants (N = 44) evaluated a priori neutral target ideographs that were preceded by 800-ms negative, neutral or positive prime pictures. We observed a significant AP effect (APE), with more positive target ratings for targets following positive versus negative primes, with neutral primes lying in between. A greater individual APE was associated with increased attention for the primes, indicated by larger amplitudes of parietal positive slow wave (PSW) and more pronounced prime affect discrimination mirrored in affect-specific variations of parieto-occipital prime P1 and parietal prime P2, P300, and PSW amplitudes. This confirms previous theoretical and empirical work suggesting that the size of the APE critically depends on the extent of prime-elicited affective activation. Furthermore, a greater individual APE was related to generally reduced depth of target processing as mirrored in smaller overall amplitudes of attention-sensitive target-related P1, P2, P300, and PSW. In addition, in the total sample P2, P300, and PSW were smaller for targets following AP eliciting, attention-capturing emotional, as compared to neutral primes. Based on the observed coincidence of increased processing of affective versus neutral primes, and specifically reduced processing of those targets that followed affective primes, we propose prime-target resource competition as an additional, not yet described process contributing to AP in the neutral-target paradigm.

Neural mechanisms supporting emotional and self-referential information processing and encoding in older and younger adults

Emotion and self-referential information can both enhance memory, but whether they do so via common mechanisms across the adult lifespan remains underexplored. To address this gap, the current study directly compared, within the same fMRI paradigm, the encoding of emotionally salient and self-referential information in older adults and younger adults. Behavioral results replicated the typical patterns of better memory for emotional than neutral information and for self-referential than non-self-referential materials; these memory enhancements were present for younger and older adults. In neural activity, young and older adults showed similar modulation by emotion, but there were substantial age differences in the way self-referential processing affected neural recruitment. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found little evidence for overlap in the neural mechanisms engaged for emotional and self-referential processing. These results reveal that-just as in cognitive domains-older adults can show similar performance to younger adults in socioemotional domains even though the two age groups engage distinct neural mechanisms. These findings demonstrate the need for future research delving into the neural mechanisms supporting older adults' memory benefits for socioemotional material.

The famous melodies stimulus set

Famous musical melodies, such as "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Hot Cross Buns," are frequently used in psychological research. Such melodies have been used to assess the degree of cognitive impairments in various neurological disorders, and to investigate differences between "naming" vs. "knowing." Despite their utility as an experimental stimulus, there is currently no standardized, openly available set of famous musical melodies based on a United States population, as prior work on the topic has primarily relied on creating stimuli in an ad hoc manner. Therefore, the goal of the present work was to create a set of famous musical melodies. Here, we describe the development of the Famous Melodies Stimulus Set, a set of 107 melodies. We provide normative data for the melodies on five dimensions: familiarity, age of acquisition, emotional valence, emotional arousal, and naming ability. Participants (N = 397) rated the melodies on these five variables, validating that most melodies were highly familiar and reliably named. While familiarity ratings were skewed, all other rating scales covered a relatively broad range, allowing for researchers to select melodies for future work based on particular attributes.

Global Image Properties Predict Ratings of Affective Pictures

Affective pictures are widely used in studies of human emotions. The objects or scenes shown in affective pictures play a pivotal role in eliciting particular emotions. However, affective processing can also be mediated by low-level perceptual features, such as local brightness contrast, color or the spatial frequency profile. In the present study, we asked whether image properties that reflect global image structure and image composition affect the rating of affective pictures. We focused on 13 global image properties that were previously associated with the esthetic evaluation of visual stimuli, and determined their predictive power for the ratings of five affective picture datasets (IAPS, GAPED, NAPS, DIRTI, and OASIS). First, we used an SVM-RBF classifier to predict high and low ratings for valence and arousal, respectively, and achieved a classification accuracy of 58–76% in this binary decision task. Second, a multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the individual image properties account for between 6 and 20% of the variance in the subjective ratings for valence and arousal. The predictive power of the image properties varies for the different datasets and type of ratings. Ratings tend to share similar sets of predictors if they correlate positively with each other. In conclusion, we obtained evidence from non-linear and linear analyses that affective pictures evoke emotions not only by what they show, but they also differ by how they show it. Whether the human visual system actually uses these perceptive cues for emotional processing remains to be investigated.

Foreign language effect in decision-making: How foreign is it?

It has been shown that decisions and moral judgments differ when made using native languages compared to foreign languages. Cross-linguistic differences appeared in foreign languages that monolinguals typically acquired in school and used neither routinely nor extensively. We replicated these differences with two populations of proficient, native bilinguals (Italian-Venetian; Italian-Bergamasque). Venetian and Bergamasque are spoken in households and informal circles, unlike Italian, which is also used in more formal contexts. The findings reported in foreign languages for the Asian Disease Problem and the Footbridge Dilemma were reproduced in Venetian and Bergamasque. Our results show that language effects on decision-making and moral judgments are not restricted to foreign languages. The explanation proposed for foreign languages of cross-linguistic differences in emotion responses does not apply to our proficient, native bilinguals, who showed emotion responses of equal intensity in their languages. We propose that the contexts in which bilinguals use a language - either native, regional or foreign - could affect decisions.

Comparing three models of arousal in the human brain

The bipolar valence-arousal model is assumed by many to be an underlying structure of conscious experience of core affect and emotion. In this work, we compare three versions of the bipolar valence-arousal model at the neural domain, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Specifically, we systematically contrast three models of arousal: model 1-'arousal as a separate quale from valence', model 2-'arousal as intensity of bipolar valence' and model 3-'arousal as a linear combination of unipolar pleasant and unpleasant'. Using parametric modulation analysis, we estimated the ability of each model to predict activation in arousal-related brain regions, in response to affective stimuli. The results suggest that arousal is not separable from valence in its ability to predict arousal-related neural activity. The relevance of the results to the theory of conscious affect is discussed.

When classical music relaxes the brain: An experimental study using Ultrasound Brain Tissue Pulsatility Imaging

INTRODUCTION

Recent evidence suggests that biomechanical parameters of the brain, such as Brain Tissue Pulsatility (BTP), could be involved in emotional reactivity. However, no study has investigated the impact of an emotional task on BTP. We used the ultrasound method of Tissue Pulsatility Imaging (TPI) to assess changes in BTP to exciting and relaxing classical music, in a musical perception task, as a validated paradigm to assess emotional reactivity.

METHODS

25 healthy volunteers were exposed via earphones to four 5-minute musical excerpts (two exciting and two relaxing musical excerpts) presented in a randomized order and intersected by 5 silence periods. Measures of BTP, Heart Rate (HR) and Skin Conductance (SC) were collected during the entire task.

RESULTS

The BTP significantly decreased with relaxing music compared to silence, and especially with the excerpt 'Entrance of the Shades' by Minkus. The HR and SC, but not Heart Rate Variability, were also decreased with relaxing music. We found no significant effect of exciting music.

DISCUSSION

We report, for the first time, that classical relaxing music decreases the amplitude of the brain pulsatile movements related to cerebral blood flow and mechanical properties of the brain parenchyma, which provides further evidence of the involvement of BTP in emotional reactivity. In addition, we validate the use of TPI as a non-invasive, portable and low cost tool for studies in psychophysiology, with the potential to be implemented as a biomarker in musicotherapy trials notably.

Tracking two pleasures

Can people track several pleasures? In everyday life, pleasing stimuli rarely appear in isolation. Yet, experiments on aesthetic pleasure usually present only one image at a time. Here, we ask whether people can reliably report the pleasure of either of two images seen in a single glimpse. Participants (N = 13 in the original; +25 in the preregistered replication) viewed 36 Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS) images that span the entire range of pleasure and beauty. On each trial, the observer saw two images, side by side, for 200 ms. An arrow cue pointed, randomly, left, right, or bidirectionally. Left or right indicated which image (the target) to rate while ignoring the other (the distractor); bidirectional requested rating the combined pleasure of both images. In half the blocks, the cue came before the images (precuing). Otherwise, it came after (postcuing). Precuing allowed the observer to ignore the distractor, while postcuing demanded tracking both images. Finally, we obtained single-pleasure ratings for each image shown alone. Our replication confirms the original study. People have unbiased access to their felt pleasure from each image and the average of both. Furthermore, the variance of the observer’s report is similar whether reporting the pleasure of one image or the average pleasure of two. The undiminished variance for reports of the average pleasure of two images indicates either that the underlying pleasure variances are highly correlated, or, more likely, that the variance arises in the common reporting process. In brief, observers can faithfully track at least two visual pleasures.

Intense Beauty Requires Intense Pleasure

At the beginning of psychology, Fechner (1876) claimed that beauty is immediate pleasure, and that an object’s pleasure determines its value. In our earlier work, we found that intense pleasure always results in intense beauty. Here, we focus on the inverse: Is intense pleasure necessary for intense beauty? If so, the inability to experience pleasure (anhedonia) should prevent the experience of intense beauty. We asked 757 online participants to rate how intensely they felt beauty from each image. We used 900 OASIS images along with their available valence (pleasure vs. displeasure) and arousal ratings. We then obtained self-reports of anhedonia (TEPS), mood, and depression (PHQ-9). Across images, beauty ratings were closely related to pleasure ratings (r = 0.75), yet unrelated to arousal ratings. Only images with an average pleasure rating above 4 (of a possible 7) often achieved (>10%) beauty averages exceeding the overall median beauty. For normally beautiful images (average rating > 4.5), the beauty ratings were correlated with anhedonia (r ∼−0.3) and mood (r ∼ 0.3), yet unrelated to depression. Comparing each participant’s average beauty rating to the overall median (5.0), none of the most anhedonic participants exceeded the median, whereas 50% of the remaining participants did. Thus, both general and anhedonic results support the claim that intense beauty requires intense pleasure. In addition, follow-up repeated measures showed that shared taste contributed 19% to beauty-rating variance, only one third as much as personal taste (58%). Addressing age-old questions, these results indicate that beauty is a kind of pleasure, and that beauty is more personal than universal, i.e., 1.7 times more correlated with individual than with shared taste.

Controlled emotional tactile stimulation during functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography

BACKGROUND

Tactile stimulation used to induce emotional responses is often not well-controlled. Replicating the same tactile stimulations across studies is difficult, compared to replicating visual and auditory modalities, which have standardized stimulus sets. Standardizing a stimulation method by replicating stimuli across studies is necessary to further elucidate emotional responses in neuroscience research using tactile stimulation.

THE NEW METHOD

We developed a tactile stimulation device. The device's ultrasonic motor and optical force sensor have the following criteria: (1) controls the physical property of stimuli, pressure, and stroking speed; (2) measures actual touch timing; (3) is safe to use in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner; and (4) produces low noise in electroencephalography (EEG) and MRI.

RESULTS

The noise level of the device's drive was sufficiently low. For the EEG experiment, we successfully used signal processing to diminish the commercial power supply noise. For functional MRI (fMRI) scans, we found <5% signal loss occurred during device rotation.

COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHOD(S)

We found no previous report about the noise level of a tactile stimulation device used to induce emotional responses during EEG and fMRI recordings. The signal loss rate was comparable with that of other robotic devices used in MRI scanners. Emotional feelings induced by this stimulation method were comparable with those elicited in other sensory modalities.

CONCLUSIONS

The developed device could be used for cognitive-affective neuroscience research when conducting EEG and fMRI scans. The device should aid in standardizing affective tactile stimulation for research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Reliability of crowdsourcing as a method for collecting emotions labels on pictures

Objective

In this paper we study if and under what conditions crowdsourcing can be used as a reliable method for collecting high-quality emotion labels on pictures. To this end, we run a set of crowdsourcing experiments on the widely used IAPS dataset, using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) emotion collection instrument, in order to rate pictures on valence, arousal and dominance, and explore the consistency of crowdsourced results across multiple runs (reliability) and the level of agreement with the gold labels (quality). In doing so, we explored the impact of targeting populations of different level of reputation (and cost) and collecting varying numbers of ratings per picture.

Results

The results tell us that crowdsourcing can be a reliable method, reaching excellent levels of reliability and agreement with only 3 ratings per picture for valence and 8 per arousal, with only marginal difference between target populations. Results for dominance were very poor, echoing previous studies on the data collection instrument used. We also observed that specific types of content generate diverging opinions in participants (leading to higher variability or multimodal distributions), which remain consistent across pictures of the same theme. These can inform the data collection and exploitation of crowdsourced emotion datasets.

The combination of multiple affective experiences and their impact on valuation judgments

People's affective experiences can be influenced by multiple informational inputs. It remains unclear however how this occurs? In this paper, we investigate the construction of affective experiences dependent on the varying number of previously presented, affectively-charged, informational inputs. In addition, because affect is often used as a cue in judgment and decision-making, we probe whether the resulting affective experience is mapped onto people's valuation judgments (how much people are willing-to-pay for target rewards and experiences). In three studies, we show that people's overall affective experience is constructed by averaging the affect of the previously presented, affectively-charged inputs. Subsequently, we find that people rely on the resulting affective experience as a cue for their judgments, as willingness-to-pay valuations were predicted by the combined affective experience. We measured integral, expected, as well as momentary affect - using both self-report and physiological measures. We discuss the potential for studying further how multiple inputs change affect as well as the implications for judgment and decision making.

The online-VAAST: A short and online tool to measure spontaneous approach and avoidance tendencies

Among the great variety of approach/avoidance tasks, the Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (VAAST, Rougier et al., 2018) appears to be a promising tool. Previous work showed that the VAAST leads to large and replicable compatibility effects (e.g., faster response time to approach positive stimuli and avoid negative stimuli than the reverse). In the present contribution, we provide an online and easy-to-use version of the VAAST (namely, the online-VAAST). Across four experiments, we show that the online-VAAST produces effects that are of similar magnitude to those of the lab version of this task. Specifically, we obtained compatibility effects when using positive/negative words (Experiment 1), positive/negative images (Experiment 2), French/North-African first names (Experiment 3), and European American/African American first names (Experiment 4). Moreover, these effects emerged with culturally different populations (i.e., Americans in Experiments 1, 2, and 4, French in Experiment 3). Overall, the online-VAAST could be of great interest for all researchers interested in measuring approach/avoidance tendencies: Its specificities allow reaching large samples both offline and online with no accessibility constraints regarding programming abilities or program copyright.

Opponent Effects of Hyperarousal and Re-experiencing on Affective Habituation in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

BACKGROUND

Aberrant emotion processing is a hallmark of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with neurobiological models suggesting both heightened neural reactivity and diminished habituation to aversive stimuli. However, empirical work suggests that these response patterns may be specific to subsets of those with PTSD. This study investigates the unique contributions of PTSD symptom clusters (re-experiencing, avoidance and numbing, and hyperarousal) to neural reactivity and habituation to negative stimuli in combat-exposed veterans.

METHODS

Ninety-five combat-exposed veterans (46 with PTSD) and 53 community volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while viewing emotional images. This study examined the relationship between symptom cluster severity and hemodynamic responses to negative compared with neutral images (NEG>NEU).

RESULTS

Veterans exhibited comparable mean and habituation-related responses for NEG>NEU, relative to civilians. However, among veterans, habituation, but not mean response, was differentially related to PTSD symptom severity. Hyperarousal symptoms were related to decreased habituation for NEG>NEU in a network of regions, including superior and inferior frontal gyri, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, superior and middle temporal gyri, and anterior insula. In contrast, re-experiencing symptoms were associated with increased habituation in a similar network. Furthermore, re-experiencing severity was positively related to amygdalar functional connectivity with the left inferior frontal gyrus and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex for NEG>NEU.

CONCLUSIONS

These results indicate that hyperarousal symptoms in combat-related PTSD are associated with decreased neural habituation to aversive stimuli. These impairments are partially mitigated in the presence of re-experiencing symptoms, such that during exposure to negative stimuli, re-experiencing symptoms are positively associated with amygdalar connectivity to prefrontal regions implicated in affective suppression.

Binocular rivalry and emotion: Implications for neural correlates of consciousness and emotional biases in conscious perception

Studies of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) combining MEG/EEG with behavioral data have described two main time ranges relating to conscious perception: 130-320 (the visual awareness negativity; VAN) and 300-500 (P3a) ms after stimulus onset. At the same time, two event-related potential (ERP) peaks have shown an emotional modulation of endogenous attention: the early posterior negativity (EPN; peaking around 250 msec) and the late positive potential (LPP, peaking around 600 msec). Furthermore, an emotional bias on conscious perception has been reported in Binocular Rivalry (BR) studies. Here, we combined an intermittent BR paradigm with neutral and emotional stimuli while recording the behavioral subjective perception and ERPs with two aims: i) to explore the NCCs of emotional content in the time ranges previously described, and ii) to study the emotional bias in conscious perception as first percept when neutral and emotional images rival against each other. First, results revealed a specific ERP emotional modulation (emotional content awareness modulation; ECAM) at the VAN time range. This was the first time window sensitive to the emotional information and showing the strongest modulation in conscious emotional content. Second, results revealed an emotional bias in conscious perception towards the positive valence. This work shows how conscious perception pertaining to emotional content relates to perceptual areas at the VAN latency, which supports the claim of the 130-320 msec time window as the earliest NCC and extends the claim to apply to more than visual perceptual features. Additionally, our findings show that positive and negative content modulates the conscious perception differently.

Skin Conductance Responses Indicate Children are Physiologically Aroused by Their Favourite Branded Food and Drink Products

Children's favourite food and beverage brands use various tactics to foster positive associations and loyalty. This brand-consumer dynamic is frequently influenced by the use of implicit techniques and emotional appeals. Few studies have used physiological methods to examine the connections that brands build with children and the influence this has on their automatic responses. These techniques are potentially less prone to bias than behavioural or cognitive methods. This is the first study to explore the implicit response that children have to images of their favourite food and beverage brands using skin conductance responses as a marker of arousal. Australian children aged 8-11 years (n = 48) were recruited. Images of the participants' favourite branded food and beverage products, alongside images of the same products unpackaged, their family and friends, and neutral objects were presented in a randomised order with a standard timed interval between images. Children were significantly more aroused by branded images of their favourite food and beverage products than by their unpackaged counterparts (p < 0.042, d = 0.4). The physiological response to the branded products was similar to the response to the children's family and friends (p = 0.900, d = -0.02). These findings suggest that children may have an implicit connection to their favourite branded products.

Animal Images Database: Validation of 120 Images for Human-Animal Studies

Simple Summary

With the general goal of increasing knowledge about how individuals perceive and evaluate different animals, we provide normative data on an extensive set of open-source animal images, spanning a total of 12 biological categories (e.g., mammals, insects, reptiles, arachnids), on 11 evaluative dimensions (e.g., valence, cuteness, capacity to think, acceptability to kill for human consumption). We found that animal evaluations were affected by individual characteristics of the perceiver, particularly gender, diet and companion animal ownership. Moral attitudes towards animals were predominantly predicted by ratings of cuteness, edibility, capacity to feel and familiarity. We hope this free resource may help advance research into the many different ways we relate to animals.

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in the study of human-animal relations. This contrasts with the lack of normative resources and materials for research purposes. We present subjective norms for a set of 120 open-source colour images of animals spanning a total of 12 biological categories (e.g., mammals, insects, reptiles, arachnids). Participants (N = 509, 55.2% female, M_Age = 28.05, SD = 9.84) were asked to evaluate a randomly selected sub-set of 12 animals on valence, arousal, familiarity, cuteness, dangerousness, edibility, similarity to humans, capacity to think, capacity to feel, acceptability to kill for human consumption and feelings of care and protection. Animal evaluations were affected by individual characteristics of the perceiver, particularly gender, diet and companion animal ownership. Moral attitudes towards animals were predominantly predicted by ratings of cuteness, edibility, capacity to feel and familiarity. The Animal Images Database (Animal.ID) is the largest open-source database of rated images of animals; the stimuli set and item-level data are freely available online.

Emotion schemas are embedded in the human visual system

Theorists have suggested that emotions are canonical responses to situations ancestrally linked to survival. If so, then emotions may be afforded by features of the sensory environment. However, few computational models describe how combinations of stimulus features evoke different emotions. Here, we develop a convolutional neural network that accurately decodes images into 11 distinct emotion categories. We validate the model using more than 25,000 images and movies and show that image content is sufficient to predict the category and valence of human emotion ratings. In two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, we demonstrate that patterns of human visual cortex activity encode emotion category-related model output and can decode multiple categories of emotional experience. These results suggest that rich, category-specific visual features can be reliably mapped to distinct emotions, and they are coded in distributed representations within the human visual system.

Age-Related Differences in the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) Valence and Arousal Ratings among Japanese Individuals

Study Context: The question of whether relationships between valence and arousal might differ among older and younger adults has not yet been totally clarified. Previous studies focused on only age-related mean-differences, but in the current study mean differences and variance in emotional ratings for the International Affective Picture Systems (IAPS) were both examined in Japanese older and younger adults.

METHODS

Participants were 31 older adults (69 ± 5.17 years) and 31 younger adults (19 ± 0.77 years). Each picture was projected on the screen for about 5 s in random order and participants subsequently rated its valence from "unhappy" to "happy" and its arousal from "calm" to "exciting," using 9-point scales.

RESULTS

Pearson's correlation analysis showed that positive and negative valence tended to be negatively correlated with arousal in both age groups. The 95% Confidence Intervals for positive arousal in older adults included those of younger adults. Arousal ratings for negative pictures were higher than those for neutral pictures, and those for neutral pictures were higher than those for positive pictures in older adults. There were no significant differences between arousal ratings for neutral pictures and positive pictures in younger adults.

CONCLUSION

Older adults tended to rate the pictures as more arousing, with higher arousal ratings for negative pictures than for positive pictures, and the variance of positive arousal in older adults was the highest variance for all conditions. The results of this study suggest that older adults may be sensitive to harmful negative experiences in order to make them less aversive.

Classifying major depression patients and healthy controls using EEG, eye tracking and galvanic skin response data

OBJECTIVE

Major depression disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent mental disorders worldwide. Diagnosing depression in the early stage is crucial to treatment process. However, due to depression's comorbid nature and the subjectivity in diagnosis, an early diagnosis could be challenging. Recently, machine learning approaches have been used to process Electroencephalography (EEG) and neuroimaging data to facilitate the diagnosis. In the present study, we used a multimodal machine learning approach involving EEG, eye tracking and galvanic skin response data as input to classify depression patients and healthy controls.

METHODS

One hundred and forty-four MDD depression patients and 204 matched healthy controls were recruited. They were required to watch a series of affective and neutral stimuli while EEG, eye tracking information and galvanic skin response were recorded via a set of low-cost, portable devices. Three machine learning algorithms including Random Forests, Logistic Regression and Support Vector Machine (SVM) were trained to build dichotomous classification model.

RESULTS

The results showed that the highest classification f1 score was obtained by Logistic Regression algorithms, with accuracy = 79.63%, precision = 76.67%, recall = 85.19% and f1 score = 80.70% LIMITATIONS: No hospitalized patients were available; only outpatients were included in the present study. The sample consisted mostly of young adult, and no elder patients were included.

CONCLUSIONS

The machine learning approach can be a useful tool for classifying MDD patients and healthy controls and may help for diagnostic processes.

The role of low-level image features in the affective categorization of rapidly presented scenes

It remains unclear how the visual system is able to extract affective content from complex scenes even with extremely brief (< 100 millisecond) exposures. One possibility, suggested by findings in machine vision, is that low-level features such as unlocalized, two-dimensional (2-D) Fourier spectra can be diagnostic of scene content. To determine whether Fourier image amplitude carries any information about the affective quality of scenes, we first validated the existence of image category differences through a support vector machine (SVM) model that was able to discriminate our intact aversive and neutral images with ~ 70% accuracy using amplitude-only features as inputs. This model allowed us to confirm that scenes belonging to different affective categories could be mathematically distinguished on the basis of amplitude spectra alone. The next question is whether these same features are also exploited by the human visual system. Subsequently, we tested observers' rapid classification of affective and neutral naturalistic scenes, presented briefly (~33.3 ms) and backward masked with synthetic textures. We tested categorization accuracy across three distinct experimental conditions, using: (i) original images, (ii) images having their amplitude spectra swapped within a single affective image category (e.g., an aversive image whose amplitude spectrum has been swapped with another aversive image) or (iii) images having their amplitude spectra swapped between affective categories (e.g., an aversive image containing the amplitude spectrum of a neutral image). Despite its discriminative potential, the human visual system does not seem to use Fourier amplitude differences as the chief strategy for affectively categorizing scenes at a glance. The contribution of image amplitude to affective categorization is largely dependent on interactions with the phase spectrum, although it is impossible to completely rule out a residual role for unlocalized 2-D amplitude measures.

What drives prioritized visual processing? A motivational relevance account

Emotion is fundamental to our being, and an essential aspect guiding behavior when rapid responding is required. This includes whether we approach or avoid a stimulus, and the accompanying physiological responses. A common tenet is that threat-related content drives stimulus processing and biases visual attention, so that rapid responding can be initiated. In this paper, it will be argued instead that prioritization of threatening stimuli should be encompassed within a motivational relevance framework. To more fully understand what is, or is not, prioritized for visual processing one must, however, additionally consider: (i) stimulus ambiguity and perceptual saliency; (ii) task demands, including both perceptual load and cognitive load; and (iii) endogenous/affective states of the individual. Combined with motivational relevance, this then leads to a multifactorial approach to understanding the drivers of prioritized visual processing. This accords with current recognition that the brain basis allowing for visual prioritization is also multifactorial, including transient, dynamic and overlapping networks. Taken together, the paper provides a reconceptualization of how "emotional" information prioritizes visual processing.

The Complex Affective Scene Set (COMPASS): Solving the Social Content Problem in Affective Visual Stimulus Sets

Social information, including faces and human bodies, holds special status in visual perception generally, and in visual processing of complex arrays such as real-world scenes specifically. To date, unbalanced representation of social compared with nonsocial information in affective stimulus sets has limited the clear determination of effects as attributable to, or independent of, social content. We present the Complex Affective Scene Set (COMPASS), a set of 150 social and 150 nonsocial naturalistic affective scenes that are balanced across valence and arousal dimensions. Participants (n = 847) rated valence and arousal for each scene. The normative ratings for the 300 images together, and separately by social content, show the canonical boomerang shape that confirms coverage of much of the affective circumplex. COMPASS adds uniquely to existing visual stimulus sets by balancing social content across affect dimensions, thereby eliminating a potentially major confound across affect categories (i.e., combinations of valence and arousal). The robust special status of social information persisted even after balancing of affect categories and was observed in slower rating response times for social versus nonsocial stimuli. The COMPASS images also match the complexity of real-world environments by incorporating stimulus competition within each scene. Together, these attributes facilitate the use of the stimulus set in particular for disambiguating the effects of affect and social content for a range of research questions and populations.

Examining the impact of distance as a contextual cue in evaluative conditioning

According to a symbolic perspective on EC, pairings constitute a relational contextual cue in the environment. It is the relationship between stimuli as cued by the pairing (i.e., pairings = similar) that determines the observed change in liking. Across five pre-registered studies (N = 747) we manipulated the absolute or relative distance between different pairs of conditioned (CS) and unconditioned stimuli (US) under the assumption that this would influence the type of relation that the pairings would cue (i.e., close = similar; far = different). In all five studies we obtained repeated and strong evidence that stimulus pairings led to changes in implicit and explicit evaluations. Although we found that these effects were moderated by absolute distance manipulations, evidence did not emerge indicating that those same effects were moderated by relative distance manipulations. These findings fail to provide strong support for a symbolic perspective on EC. We discuss the implications of our findings as well as future research in this area.

Lack of Privileged Access to Awareness for Rewarding Social Scenes in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Reduced social motivation is hypothesised to underlie social behavioural symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The extent to which rewarding social stimuli are granted privileged access to awareness in ASD is currently unknown. We use continuous flash suppression to investigate whether individuals with and without ASD show privileged access to awareness for social over nonsocial rewarding scenes that are closely matched for stimulus features. Strong evidence for a privileged access to awareness for rewarding social over nonsocial scenes was observed in neurotypical adults. No such privileged access was seen in ASD individuals, and moderate support for the null model was noted. These results suggest that the purported deficits in social motivation in ASD may extend to early processing mechanisms.

Design for an Art Therapy Robot: An Explorative Review of the Theoretical Foundations for Engaging in Emotional and Creative Painting with a Robot

Social robots are being designed to help support people’s well-being in domestic and public environments. To address increasing incidences of psychological and emotional difficulties such as loneliness, and a shortage of human healthcare workers, we believe that robots will also play a useful role in engaging with people in therapy, on an emotional and creative level, e.g., in music, drama, playing, and art therapy. Here, we focus on the latter case, on an autonomous robot capable of painting with a person. A challenge is that the theoretical foundations are highly complex; we are only just beginning ourselves to understand emotions and creativity in human science, which have been described as highly important challenges in artificial intelligence. To gain insight, we review some of the literature on robots used for therapy and art, potential strategies for interacting, and mechanisms for expressing emotions and creativity. In doing so, we also suggest the usefulness of the responsive art approach as a starting point for art therapy robots, describe a perceived gap between our understanding of emotions in human science and what is currently typically being addressed in engineering studies, and identify some potential ethical pitfalls and solutions for avoiding them. Based on our arguments, we propose a design for an art therapy robot, also discussing a simplified prototype implementation, toward informing future work in the area.

A Mathematical Model Captures the Structure of Subjective Affect

Although it is possible to observe when another person is having an emotional moment, we also derive information about the affective states of others from what they tell us they are feeling. In an effort to distill the complexity of affective experience, psychologists routinely focus on a simplified subset of subjective rating scales (i.e., dimensions) that capture considerable variability in reported affect: reported valence (i.e., how good or bad?) and reported arousal (e.g., how strong is the emotion you are feeling?). Still, existing theoretical approaches address the basic organization and measurement of these affective dimensions differently. Some approaches organize affect around the dimensions of bipolar valence and arousal (e.g., the circumplex model), whereas alternative approaches organize affect around the dimensions of unipolar positivity and unipolar negativity (e.g., the bivariate evaluative model). In this report, we (a) replicate the data structure observed when collected according to the two approaches described above, and reinterpret these data to suggest that the relationship between each pair of affective dimensions is conditional on valence ambiguity, and (b) formalize this structure with a mathematical model depicting a valence ambiguity dimension that decreases in range as arousal decreases (a triangle). This model captures variability in affective ratings better than alternative approaches, increasing variance explained from ~60% to over 90% without adding parameters.

Line-Drawn Scenes Provide Sufficient Information for Discrimination of Threat and Mere Negativity

Previous work using color photographic scenes has shown that human observers are keenly sensitive to different types of threatening and negative stimuli and reliably classify them by the presence, and spatial and temporal directions of threat. To test whether such distinctions can be extracted from impoverished visual information, we used 500 line drawings made by hand-tracing the original set of photographic scenes. Sixty participants rated the scenes on spatial and temporal dimensions of threat. Based on these ratings, trend analysis revealed five scene categories that were comparable to those identified for the matching color photographic scenes. Another 61 participants were randomly assigned to rate the valence or arousal evoked by the line drawings. The line drawings perceived to be the most negative were also perceived to be the most arousing, replicating the finding for color photographic scenes. We demonstrate here that humans are very sensitive to the spatial and temporal directions of threat even when they must extract this information from simple line drawings, and rate the line drawings very similarly to matched color photographs. The set of 500 hand-traced line-drawing scenes has been made freely available to the research community: http://www.kveragalab.org/threat.html.

The Socio-Moral Image Database (SMID): A novel stimulus set for the study of social, moral and affective processes

A major obstacle for the design of rigorous, reproducible studies in moral psychology is the lack of suitable stimulus sets. Here, we present the Socio-Moral Image Database (SMID), the largest standardized moral stimulus set assembled to date, containing 2,941 freely available photographic images, representing a wide range of morally (and affectively) positive, negative and neutral content. The SMID was validated with over 820,525 individual judgments from 2,716 participants, with normative ratings currently available for all images on affective valence and arousal, moral wrongness, and relevance to each of the five moral values posited by Moral Foundations Theory. We present a thorough analysis of the SMID regarding (1) inter-rater consensus, (2) rating precision, and (3) breadth and variability of moral content. Additionally, we provide recommendations for use aimed at efficient study design and reproducibility, and outline planned extensions to the database. We anticipate that the SMID will serve as a useful resource for psychological, neuroscientific and computational (e.g., natural language processing or computer vision) investigations of social, moral and affective processes. The SMID images, along with associated normative data and additional resources are available at https://osf.io/2rqad/.

Understanding approach and avoidance in verbal descriptions of everyday actions: An ERP study

Understanding verbal descriptions of everyday actions could involve the neural representation of action direction (avoidance and approach) toward persons and things. We recorded the electrophysiological activity of participants while they were reading approach/avoidance action sentences that were directed toward a target: a thing/a person (i.e., "Petra accepted/rejected Ramón in her group"/ "Petra accepted/rejected the receipt of the bank"). We measured brain potentials time locked to the target word. In the case of things, we found a N400-like component with right frontal distribution modulated by approach/avoidance action. This component was more negative in avoidance than in approach sentences. In the case of persons, a later negative event-related potential (545-750 ms) with left frontal distribution was sensitive to verb direction, showing more negative amplitude for approach than avoidance actions. In addition, more negativity in approach-person sentences was associated with fear avoidance trait, whereas less negativity in avoidance-person sentences was associated with a greater approach trait. Our results support that verbal descriptions of approach/avoidance actions are encoded differently depending on whether the target is a thing or a person. Implications of these results for a social, emotional and motivational understanding of action language are discussed.