Nencki Affective Picture System: Cross-Cultural Study in Europe and Iran

Database of Expressionist, Impressionist, and Post-Impressionist paintings: Affective norms for 60 art pieces

Modern painters' art is not only different from canvas created earlier, but also shows high internal variability. Being aware of the conditions arising from art history, we used paintings from three art movements-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Expressionism, to see if we are able to respond to claims made by art theorists by using methods specific to social sciences, and validate the paintings as stimuli which might evoke different emotional reaction based on the movement they were created in. We wanted to conduct an exploratory analysis comparing the mean assessment of valence, arousal, and dominance among the three art movements. A total of 60 different paintings were selected (20 for each art movement) showing figurative works and visible human figures. They were assessed on five different affective scales: valence, arousal, dominance, origin, and subjective significance with use of Self-Assessment Manikins. The results showed expected differences in affective reactions to Expressionist paintings compared with those of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist ones. Therefore, we provided the very first dataset of emotional stimuli with validated affective norms, categorised by the art movement that they were created in and ready to be used in future experimental studies.

The pictorial set of Emotional Social Interactive Scenarios between Chinese Adults (ESISCA): Development and validation

Affective picture databases with a single facial expression or body posture in one image have been widely applied to investigate emotion. However, to date, there was no standardized database containing the stimuli which involve multiple emotional signals in social interactive scenarios. The current study thus developed a pictorial set comprising 274 images depicting two Chinese adults' interactive scenarios conveying emotions of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and neutral. The data of the valence and arousal ratings of the scenes and the emotional categories of the scenes and the faces in the images were provided in the present study. Analyses of the data collected from 70 undergraduate students suggested high reliabilities of the valence and arousal ratings of the scenes and high judgmental agreements in categorizing the scene and facial emotions. The findings suggested that the present dataset is well constructed and could be useful for future studies to investigate the emotion recognition or empathy in social interactions in both healthy and clinical (e.g., ASD) populations.

Dose-Response Transcranial Electrical Stimulation Study Design: A Well-Controlled Adaptive Seamless Bayesian Method to Illuminate Negative Valence Role in Tinnitus Perception

The use of transcranial Electrical Stimulation (tES) in the modulation of cognitive brain functions to improve neuropsychiatric conditions has extensively increased over the decades. tES techniques have also raised new challenges associated with study design, stimulation protocol, functional specificity, and dose-response relationship. In this paper, we addressed challenges through the emerging methodology to investigate the dose-response relationship of High Definition-transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD tDCS), identifying the role of negative valence in tinnitus perception. In light of the neurofunctional testable framework and tES application, hypotheses were formulated to measure clinical and surrogate endpoints. We posited that conscious pairing adequately pleasant stimuli with tinnitus perception results in correction of the loudness misperception and would be reinforced by concurrent active HD-tDCS on the left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (dlPFC). The dose-response relationship between HD-tDCS specificity and the loudness perception is also modeled. We conducted a double-blind, randomized crossover pilot study with six recruited tinnitus patients. Accrued data was utilized to design a well-controlled adaptive seamless Bayesian dose-response study. The sample size (n = 47, for 90% power and 95% confidence) and optimum interims were anticipated for adaptive decision-making about efficacy, safety, and single session dose parameters. Furthermore, preliminary pilot study results were sufficient to show a significant difference (90% power, 99% confidence) within the longitudinally detected self-report tinnitus loudness between before and under positive emotion induction. This study demonstrated a research methodology used to improve emotion regulation in tinnitus patients. In the projected method, positive emotion induction is essential for promoting functional targeting under HD-tDCS anatomical specificity to indicate the efficacy and facilitate the dose-finding process. The continuous updating of prior knowledge about efficacy and dose during the exploratory stage adapts the anticipated dose-response model. Consequently, the effective dose range to make superiority neuromodulation in correcting loudness misperception of tinnitus will be redefined. Highly effective dose adapts the study to a standard randomized trial and transforms it into the confirmatory stage in which active HD-tDCS protocol is compared with a sham trial (placebo-like). Establishing the HD-tDCS intervention protocols relying on this novel method provides reliable evidence for regulatory agencies to approve or reject the efficacy and safety. Furthermore, this paper supports a technical report for designing multimodality data-driven complementary investigations in emotion regulation, including EEG-driven neuro markers, Stroop-driven attention biases, and neuroimaging-driven brain network dynamics.

Measuring Implicit Approach-Avoidance Tendencies towards Food Using a Mobile Phone outside the Lab

Implicit ('unconscious') approach-avoidance tendencies towards stimuli can be measured using the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT). We recently expanded a toolbox for analyzing the raw data of a novel, mobile version of the AAT (mAAT), that asks participants to move their phone towards their face (pull) or away (push) in response to images presented on the phone. We here tested the mAAT reaction time and the mAAT distance in a study with 71 Dutch participants that were recruited online and performed an experiment without coming to the laboratory. The participants used both the mAAT and (explicit) rating scales to respond to photographic images of food. As hypothesized, the rated wanting, rated valence and mAAT reaction time indicated a preference for palatable over unpalatable food, and for Dutch over Asian food. Additionally, as expected, arousal was rated higher for unpalatable than for palatable food, and higher for Dutch than for Asian food. The mAAT distance indicated that the unpalatable food images were moved across larger distances, regardless of the movement direction (pull or push), compared to the palatable food images; and the Dutch food images were moved across larger distances than the Asian food images. We conclude that the mAAT can be used to implicitly probe approach-avoidance motivation for complex images in the food domain. The new measure of mAAT distance may be used as an implicit measure of arousal. The ratings and the mAAT measures do not reflect the exact same information and may complement each other. Implicit measures, such as mAAT variables, are particularly valuable when response biases that can occur when using explicit ratings are expected.

The dynamics of negative stereotypes as revealed by tweeting behavior in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack

We describe the evolution of a stereotype as it emerged in tweets about the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris in early 2015. Our focus is on terms associated with the Muslim community and the Islamic world. The data (400k tweets) were collected via Twitter streaming API and consisted of tweets that contained at least one of 16 hashtags associated with the Charlie Hebdo attack (e.g., #JeSuisCharlie, #IAmCharlie, #ParisAttacks), collected between January 14th and February 9th. From these data, we generated pairwise co-occurrence frequencies between key words such as “Islam”, “Muslim(s)”, “Arab(s)”, and “The Prophet” and possible associates such as: “terrorism”, “terror”, “terrorist(s)”, “kill(ed)”, “free”, “freedom” and “love”. We use changes in frequency of co-occurring words to define ways in which acute negative and positive stereotypes towards Muslims and Islam arise and evolve in three phases during the period of interest. We identify a positively-valenced backlash in a subset of tweets associated with the “origins of Islam”. Results depict the emergence and transformation of implicit online stereotypes related to Islam from naturally occurring social media data and how pro-as well as anti-Islam online small-world networks evolve in response to a terrorist attack.

The EmojiGrid as a Tool to Assess Experienced and Perceived Emotions

In a recent study on food-evoked emotions, we observed that people often misunderstood the currently available affective self-report tools. We, therefore, developed a new intuitive and language-independent self-report instrument called the EmojiGrid: a rectangular response grid labeled with facial icons (emoji) that express different degrees of valence and arousal. We found that participants intuitively and reliably reported their affective appraisal of food by clicking on the EmojiGrid, even without verbal instructions. In this study, we investigated whether the EmojiGrid can also serve as a tool to assess one’s own (experienced) emotions and perceived emotions of others. In the first experiment, participants (N = 90) used the EmojiGrid to report their own emotions, evoked by affective images from a database with corresponding normative ratings (obtained with a 9-point self-assessment mannikin scale). In the second experiment, participants (N = 61) used the EmojiGrid to report the perceived emotional state of persons shown in different affective situations, in pictures from a database with corresponding normative ratings (obtained with a 7-point Likert scale). For both experiments, the affective (valence and arousal) ratings obtained with the EmojiGrid show excellent agreement with the data provided in the literature (intraclass correlations of at least 0.90). Also, the relation between valence and arousal shows the classic U-shape at the group level. Thus, the EmojiGrid appears to be a useful graphical self-report instrument for the assessment of evoked and perceived emotions.

A Case Study of Facial Emotion Classification Using Affdex

This paper focuses on the analysis of reactions captured by the face analysis system. The experiment was conducted on a sample of 50 university students. Each student was shown 100 random images and the student´s reaction to every image was recorded. The recorded reactions were subsequently compared to the reaction of the image that was expected. The results of the experiment have shown several imperfections of the face analysis system. The system has difficulties classifying expressions and cannot detect and identify inner emotions that a person may experience when shown the image. Face analysis systems can only detect emotions that are expressed externally on a face by physiological changes in certain parts of the face.

EmojiGrid: A 2D Pictorial Scale for the Assessment of Food Elicited Emotions

Research on food experience is typically challenged by the way questions are worded. We therefore developed the EmojiGrid: a graphical (language-independent) intuitive self-report tool to measure food-related valence and arousal. In a first experiment participants rated the valence and the arousing quality of 60 food images, using either the EmojiGrid or two independent visual analog scales (VAS). The valence ratings obtained with both tools strongly agree. However, the arousal ratings only agree for pleasant food items, but not for unpleasant ones. Furthermore, the results obtained with the EmojiGrid show the typical universal U-shaped relation between the mean valence and arousal that is commonly observed for a wide range of (visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory) affective stimuli, while the VAS tool yields a positive linear association between valence and arousal. We hypothesized that this disagreement reflects a lack of proper understanding of the arousal concept in the VAS condition. In a second experiment we attempted to clarify the arousal concept by asking participants to rate the valence and intensity of the taste associated with the perceived food items. After this adjustment the VAS and EmojiGrid yielded similar valence and arousal ratings (both showing the universal U-shaped relation between the valence and arousal). A comparison with the results from the first experiment showed that VAS arousal ratings strongly depended on the actual wording used, while EmojiGrid ratings were not affected by the framing of the associated question. This suggests that the EmojiGrid is largely self-explaining and intuitive. To test this hypothesis, we performed a third experiment in which participants rated food images using the EmojiGrid without an associated question, and we compared the results to those of the first two experiments. The EmojiGrid ratings obtained in all three experiments closely agree. We conclude that the EmojiGrid appears to be a valid and intuitive affective self-report tool that does not rely on written instructions and that can efficiently be used to measure food-related emotions.