Bodily action penetrates affective perception

Attentional capture in emotion comparison is orientation independent

Recent findings on emotion comparison show a typical pattern of motor reactivity rising from attentional capture. When pairs of emotional faces are presented simultaneously, the most intense emotional face is recognized faster (Emotional Semantic Congruency-ESC effect). Furthermore, a global response speed advantage for emotional pairs with positive rather than negative average emotion intensity is observed (i.e., emotional size effect), with the choice for the happiest face resulting in a faster response than the choice for the angriest face within the pair (i.e., the happiness advantage). In two experiments, we asked whether these effects are orientation dependent, and thus linked to whether face processing is holistic or part-based. Participants were asked to choose the angriest/happiest face in emotional pairs displayed either in upright or inverted orientation and including (Experiment 1) or not including (Experiment 2) a neutral face. Beyond an overall facilitation for upright relative to inverted pairs, results showed orientation independent ESC and emotional size effects. Furthermore, the happiness advantage was present in emotional pairs of Experiment 2 but not in emotional pairs of Experiment 1, independently from face orientation. Together, results suggest that attentional capture in emotion comparison is immaterial on the type of face processing, being orientation invariant.

Large as being on top of the world and small as hitting the roof: a common magnitude representation for the comparison of emotions and numbers

Previous work on the direct speed-intensity association (SIA) on comparative judgement tasks involved spatially distributed responses over spatially distributed stimuli with high motivational significance like facial expressions of emotions. This raises the possibility that the inferred stimulus-driven regulation of lateralized motor reactivity described by SIA, which was against the one expected on the basis of a valence-specific lateral bias, was entirely due to attentional capture from motivational significance (beyond numerical cognition). In order to establish the relevance of numerical cognition on the regulation of attentional capture we ran two complementary experiments. These involved the same direct comparison task on stimulus pairs that were fully comparable in terms of their analog representation of intensity but with different representational domain and motivational significance: symbolic magnitudes with low motivational significance in experiment 1 vs. emotions with rather high motivational significance in experiment 2. The results reveal a general SIA and point to a general mechanism regulating comparative judgements. This is based on the way spatial attention is captured toward locations that contain the stimulus which is closest in term of relative intensity to the extremal values of the series, regardless from its representational domain being it symbolic or emotional.

Emotional Semantic Congruency based on stimulus driven comparative judgements

A common cognitive process in everyday life consists in the comparative judgements of emotions given a pair of facial expressions and the choice of the most positive/negative among them. Results from three experiments on complete-facial expressions (happy/angry) and mixed-facial expressions (neutral/happy-or-angry) pairs viewed with (Experiment 1 and 3) or without (Experiment 2) foveation and performed in conditions in which valence was either task relevant (Experiment 1 and 2) or task irrelevant (Experiment 3), show that comparative judgements of emotions are stimulus driven. Judgements' speed increased as the target absolute emotion intensity grew larger together with the average emotion of the pair, irrespective of the compatibility between the valence and the side of motor response: a semantic congruency effect in the domain of emotion. This result undermines previous interpretation of results in the context of comparative judgements based on the lateralization of emotions (e.g., SNARC-like instructional flexibility), and is fully consistent with our formalization of emotional semantic congruency: the direct Speed-Intensity Association model.

A biphasic effect of cross-modal priming on visual shape recognition

We used a cross-modal priming paradigm to evoke a biphasic effect in visual short-term memory. Participants were required to match the memorandum (a visual shape, either spiky or curvy) to a delayed probe (a shape belonging to the same category). In two-thirds of trials the sequence of shapes was accompanied by a task-irrelevant sound (either tzk or upo, cross-modally correspondent to spiky and curvy shape categories, respectively). The biphasic effect occurred when a congruent vs. incongruent sound was presented 200ms after the memorandum, while it did not occur when the sound was presented 200ms before or simultaneously with it. The biphasic pattern of recognition sensitivities was revealed by an interaction between cross-modal congruency and probe delay, such that sensitivity was higher for visual shapes paired with a congruent rather than incongruent sound with a 300-ms delay, while the opposite was true with a 1300-ms delay. We suggest that this biphasic pattern of recognition sensitivities was dependent on the task-irrelevant sound activating different levels of shape processing as a function of the relative timing of sound, memorandum, and probe.

Altered awareness of action in Parkinson's disease: evaluations by explicit and implicit measures

Deficits in the integration of motor prediction and its feedback have been reported in Parkinson’s disease. Conscious awareness of action is proposed to emerge under the integration of motor prediction and its feedback. Thus, it may lead to changes in the awareness of the authorship of action (in other words, the sense of agency) in Parkinson’s disease. We have employed both explicit and implicit measures to assess the awareness of action in Parkinson’s disease and matched controls. As an explicit measure, an action recognition task requiring explicit judgments was used. Patients showed less attribution of their movements to non-biased and angular-biased visual feedbacks. As an implicit measure, the temporal attraction between the perceived time of actions and their effects, which is known as intentional binding task, was used. While action-effect association was observed in the control group, actions were not experienced as having shifted towards their subsequent effects in the patient group. These tendencies were consistent regardless of the side of the asymmetrical motor symptoms. These results may reflect an underlying abnormality in the awareness of voluntary action in Parkinson’s disease.

A Heavy Heart: The Association between Weight and Emotional Words

People often express emotion in language using weight (e.g., a heavy heart, light-hearted, light humor, or heavy-handed), but the question remains whether these expressions of emotion are rooted in the body. Six experiments used a priming paradigm to explore the metaphoric relation between weight perception and emotional words. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the influence of weight perception on judgments of emotional words and the influence of emotional words on judgments of weight, respectively. A significant difference between the consistent condition (e.g., lightness corresponds to positive words and heaviness corresponds to negative words) and the inconsistent condition (e.g., lightness corresponds to negative words and heaviness corresponds to positive words) was found in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 were conducted to exclude potential confounds. Experiment 6 was a repeated-measures study that was conducted to verify the weight-emotion effect. The study confirmed that weight perception affected judgments of emotional words. The results contribute to the growing literature on conceptual metaphor theory and embodied cognition theory.

Action valence and affective perception

Respecting all constraints proposed by Firestone & Scholl (F&S), we have shown that perceived facial expressions of emotion depend on the congruency between bodily action (comfort/discomfort) and target emotion (happiness/anger) valence. Our studies challenge any bold claim against penetrability of perception and suggest that perceptual theory can benefit from demonstrations of how - under controlled circumstances - observer's states can mold expressive qualities.