The shapes of stories: A “resonator” model of plot structure

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Steven Brown ◽  
Carmen Tu
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Sound Waves ◽  
Happy Ending ◽  
Basic Tenet ◽  
Resonator Model ◽  
Plot Structure

Abstract Plots have been described as having shapes based on the changes in tension that occur across a story. We present here a model of plot shape that is predicated on the alternating rises and falls in the protagonist’s emotional state. The basic tenet of the model is that, once the emotional valence of the beginning and ending of a story has been specified, then the internal phases of the story are constrained to connect these endpoints by oscillating between emotional rises and falls in a wavelike manner. This makes plot structure akin to a musical resonator – such as a flute – which can only conduct sound waves of certain discrete shapes depending on the structure of the tube’s endpoints. Using this metaphor, we describe four fundamental plot-shapes based on a 2 x 2 crossing of the emotional valence of a story’s beginning (happy beginning vs. sad beginning) and ending (happy ending vs. sad ending).

scholarly journals Presence Effects in Virtual Reality Based on User Characteristics: Attention, Enjoyment, and Memory

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1051
Author(s):  
Si Jung Kim ◽  
Teemu H. Laine ◽  
Hae Jung Suk
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Eye Tracker ◽  
User Characteristics ◽  
Head Mounted Display ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Different Levels

Presence refers to the emotional state of users where their motivation for thinking and acting arises based on the perception of the entities in a virtual world. The immersion level of users can vary when they interact with different media content, which may result in different levels of presence especially in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This study investigates how user characteristics, such as gender, immersion level, and emotional valence on VR, are related to the three elements of presence effects (attention, enjoyment, and memory). A VR story was created and used as an immersive stimulus in an experiment, which was presented through a head-mounted display (HMD) equipped with an eye tracker that collected the participants’ eye gaze data during the experiment. A total of 53 university students (26 females, 27 males), with an age range from 20 to 29 years old (mean 23.8), participated in the experiment. A set of pre- and post-questionnaires were used as a subjective measure to support the evidence of relationships among the presence effects and user characteristics. The results showed that user characteristics, such as gender, immersion level, and emotional valence, affected their level of presence, however, there is no evidence that attention is associated with enjoyment or memory.

scholarly journals Emotional state dependence facilitates automatic imitation of visual speech

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (12) ◽  
pp. 2833-2847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Virhia ◽  
Sonja A Kotz ◽  
Patti Adank
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Response Times ◽  
State Dependence ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Visual Speech ◽  
Automatic Imitation ◽  
Speech Stimuli ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
State Dependent

Observing someone speak automatically triggers cognitive and neural mechanisms required to produce speech, a phenomenon known as automatic imitation. Automatic imitation of speech can be measured using the Stimulus Response Compatibility (SRC) paradigm that shows facilitated response times (RTs) when responding to a prompt (e.g., say aa) in the presence of a congruent distracter (a video of someone saying aa), compared with responding in the presence of an incongruent distracter (a video of someone saying oo). Current models of the relation between emotion and cognitive control suggest that automatic imitation can be modulated by varying the stimulus-driven task aspects, that is, the distracter’s emotional valence. It is unclear how the emotional state of the observer affects automatic imitation. The current study explored independent effects of emotional valence of the distracter (Stimulus-driven Dependence) and the observer’s emotional state (State Dependence) on automatic imitation of speech. Participants completed an SRC paradigm for visual speech stimuli. They produced a prompt superimposed over a neutral or emotional (happy or angry) distracter video. State Dependence was manipulated by asking participants to speak the prompt in a neutral or emotional (happy or angry) voice. Automatic imitation was facilitated for emotional prompts, but not for emotional distracters, thus implying a facilitating effect of State Dependence. The results are interpreted in the context of theories of automatic imitation and cognitive control, and we suggest that models of automatic imitation are to be modified to accommodate for state-dependent and stimulus-driven dependent effects.

scholarly journals Using Eye and Nasal Temperatures to Measure Positive Emotions in Free-Range Hamdani Sheep

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-30
Author(s):  
Niarz J. Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Temperature Data ◽  
Free Range ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Eye Temperature

The present study was designed to measure both eye and nasal temperatures by stroking the animals’ body to determine positive emotional state in free-range Hamdani ewes. Twenty Hamdani ewes, aging 2-4 years, were used in this study. Focal sampling was used to collect data. Data were collected from both nose and eyes of animals. A total of 1680 temperature data, an average of 84 data from each ewe, were collected from all twenty ewes throughout the study. Ewes were stroked at the forehead, withers and neck for five minutes, temperature data were collected twice before, twice during and twice after stroking for both eyes and nose. Results revealed that there was a significant difference in eye temperature (P<0.01) as well as nasal temperature (P<0.05) between the three stages. Both eye and nasal temperatures were decreasing over time. In addition, the mean eye and nasal temperatures for all stopwatches were highly correlated (r = 0.94). From this study it could be concluded that peripheral (eye and nose) temperatures offer a useful understanding of changes in emotional valence in ewes.

scholarly journals Predicting emotional state using behavioural markers derived from passively sensed data (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emese Sukei ◽  
Agnes Norbury ◽  
Mercedes Perez-Rodriguez ◽  
Pablo M. Olmos ◽  
Antonio Artés Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Machine Learning ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Psychological Symptoms ◽  
Area Under The Curve ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Heterogeneous Data ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Missing Observations

BACKGROUND Mental health disorders affect multiple aspects of patients' lives, including mood, cognition, and behaviour. The advent of eHealth and mHealth technologies enables rich sets of information to be collected from individuals in a non-invasive way presenting a promising opportunity for the construction of behavioural markers of mental health. Importantly, combining such data with self-reported information about psychological symptoms may provide a more comprehensive and contextualised view of a patient's mental state than questionnaire data alone. However, in the real world, this kind of data is usually noisy and incomplete - with significant numbers of missing observations. Realising the clinical potential of mHealth tools, therefore depends critically upon the development of methods to cope with such data. OBJECTIVE Here, we present a machine learning-based approach for emotional valence (mood) analysis using passively-collected data from mobile phones and wearable devices. METHODS Passively-sensed behaviour and self-reported emotional state data from an international cohort of N=943 individuals (psychiatric outpatients recruited from community clinics) were available for analysis. All study participants had at least 30 days worth of observations of naturally-occurring behaviour, which included information about physical activity, geolocation, sleep, and smartphone app usage. These regularly sampled, but frequently missing and heterogeneous time series data were analysed using a semi-supervised Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for data averaging and feature extraction, which was then combined with a classifier to provide emotional valence predictions. We examined the performance of both a variety of classical machine learning methods and recurrent neural networks. RESULTS The best-performing models achieved greater than 0.80 Area Under the Curve of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (AUC-ROC) and 0.75 Area Under the Precision-Recall Curve (AUC-PRC) when predicting self-reported emotional valence from behaviour in held-out test data. Models which took into account the posterior probabilities of latent states identified by the HMM analysis outperformed those which did not - suggesting that the underlying behavioural patterns identified were meaningful with respect to individuals' overall emotional state. CONCLUSIONS These findings demonstrate the feasibility of designing machine learning models for predicting emotional state from mobile sensing data that are capable of dealing with heterogeneous data with large numbers of missing observations. Such models may represent a valuable tool for clinicians in the monitoring of mood states of their patients.

Emotion-Related Traits Moderate the Impact of Emotional State on Creative Performances

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franck Zenasni ◽  
Todd I. Lubart
Keyword(s):  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Creative Cognition ◽  
Undergraduate University Students ◽  
Valence And Arousal ◽  
Affective Intensity ◽  
The Impact

The present study shows that the impact of emotional states on creativity depends on individual emotional characteristics as well as the type of task used. The results found during the last 30 years diverge concerning relationships between emotion and creative cognition. For this reason, we conducted a study to explore whether the impact of emotional states on creative potential is moderated by individuals’ emotional traits. Using a multivariate approach, we measured (1) emotional valence and arousal level of participants after an emotional induction, (2) emotional traits (e.g., alexithymia, emotional expressivity, affective intensity, emotional idiosyncrasy), and (3) quantity, originality, and valence of generated ideas in two distinct divergent thinking tasks. Participants were 107 undergraduate university students. Regression analyses confirm our hypothesis showing that the impact of emotional states on creative performance is not uniform, but depends on participants’ emotional state and emotion-related traits. For example, we observed that the more individuals had difficulty with emotional information and the higher their level of arousal, the less they generated pleasant ideas. Several processes such as arousal regulation may explain the observed results.

scholarly journals Negative emotional contagion and cognitive bias in common ravens (Corvus corax)

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (23) ◽  
pp. 11547-11552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie E. C. Adriaense ◽  
Jordan S. Martin ◽  
Martina Schiestl ◽  
Claus Lamm ◽  
Thomas Bugnyar
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Emotional Contagion ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Judgment Bias ◽  
Negative State ◽  
Negative Condition ◽  
Negative Affective States ◽  
Communication And Coordination

Emotional contagion is described as an emotional state matching between subjects, and has been suggested to facilitate communication and coordination in complex social groups. Empirical studies typically focus on the measurement of behavioral contagion and emotional arousal, yet, while highly important, such an approach often disregards an additional evaluation of the underlying emotional valence. Here, we studied emotional contagion in ravens by applying a judgment bias paradigm to assess emotional valence. We experimentally manipulated positive and negative affective states in demonstrator ravens, to which they responded with increased attention and interest in the positive condition, as well as increased redirected behavior and a left-eye lateralization in the negative condition. During this emotion manipulation, another raven observed the demonstrator’s behavior, and we used a bias paradigm to assess the emotional valence of the observer to determine whether emotional contagion had occurred. Observers showed a pessimism bias toward the presented ambiguous stimuli after perceiving demonstrators in a negative state, indicating emotional state matching based on the demonstrators’ behavioral cues and confirming our prediction of negative emotional contagion. We did not find any judgment bias in the positive condition. This result critically expands upon observational studies of contagious play in ravens, providing experimental evidence that emotional contagion is present not only in mammalian but also in avian species. Importantly, this finding also acts as a stepping stone toward understanding the evolution of empathy, as this essential social skill may have emerged across these taxa in response to similar socioecological challenges.

Emotional Response Categorization in Adolescents and Young Adults

2018 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 1349-1371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Herry ◽  
Célia Maintenant ◽  
Isabelle Blanchette ◽  
Elodie Tricard ◽  
Guillaume Gimenes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Mood Induction ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Adolescents And Young Adults ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Emotional Dimension ◽  
Emotional Concepts

Categorization is based on cognitive mechanisms allowing the development of internal representations of the environment that guide behavior. This study tests the influence of emotions on categorization in adolescents and young adults. After a mood induction (negative, positive, or neutral), we compared how 68 adolescents aged 13 to 15 and 57 young adults aged 21 to 29 categorized emotional concepts using a lexical emotional categorization task. Participants had to choose which of three associates, of different emotional valence (positive, negative or neutral), was more similar to a target concept. The aim of this study was to determine if adolescents rely on the emotional dimension in categorization more than adults. The results show that the emotional state can influence the cognitive process of categorization in adolescence, particularly in the negative mood.

scholarly journals Emotion Modulation through Music after Sadness Induction—The Iso Principle in a Controlled Experimental Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (23) ◽  
pp. 12486
Author(s):  
Katrin Starcke ◽  
Johanna Mayr ◽  
Richard von Georgi
Keyword(s):  
Negative Affect ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Specific Sequence ◽  
Movie Clip ◽  
Sad Music ◽  
Therapy Intervention

Music therapy intervention manuals suggest that individuals who suffer from affective disorders benefit from listening to music according to the iso principle. The iso principle comprises listening to music that matches the current mood of patients at first, and then to gradually shift to music that represents a desired mood. Within the current study, we investigate whether the sequence of music with different emotional valence can modulate the emotional state. All participants were healthy adults who underwent a sadness induction via a movie clip. They were subsequently divided into four experimental groups. Each was asked to listen to two pieces of music according to a specific sequence: sad-sad; sad-happy; happy-happy; happy-sad. Participants were prompt to rate their current emotional state at different stages of the experiment: prior to and after the movie clip, as well as after each of the two pieces of music. The frame used for the assessment was the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and the Self-Assessment Manikin. The results indicate that the movie clip induced sadness. The group of participants who listened to the sad music first and the happy music afterwards ultimately reported a higher positive affect, a higher emotional valence, and a lower negative affect compared with the other groups. However, not all the between-group differences reached significance. We conclude that the sequence of music with different emotional valence affects the current emotional state. The results are generally in line with the iso principle. Directions for future research are presented.

scholarly journals Negative emotional state slows down movement speed: behavioral and neural evidence

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiawen Li ◽  
Guanghui Zhang ◽  
Chenglin Zhou ◽  
Xiaochun Wang
Keyword(s):  
Athletic Performance ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Neutral Condition ◽  
Movement Speed ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Emotional Condition

Background Athletic performance is affected by emotional state. Athletes may underperform in competition due to poor emotion regulation. Movement speed plays an important role in many competition events. Flexible control of movement speed is critical for effective athletic performance. Although behavioral evidence showed that negative emotion can influence movement speed, the nature of the relationship remains controversial. Thus, the present study investigated how negative emotion affects movement speed and the neural mechanism underlying the interaction between emotion processing and movement control. Methods The present study combined electroencephalography (EEG) technology with a cued-action task to investigate the effect of negative emotion on movement speed. In total, 21 undergraduate students were recruited for this study. Participants were asked to perform six consecutive action tasks after viewing an emotional picture. Pictures were presented in two blocks (one negative and one neutral). After the participants completed a set of tasks (neutral of negative), they were subjected to complete a 9-point self-assessment manikin scale. Participants underwent EEG while performing the tasks. Results At the behavior level, there was a significant main effect of emotional valence on movement speed, with participants exhibiting significantly slower movements in the negative emotional condition than in the neutral condition. EEG data showed increased theta oscillation and larger P1 amplitude in response to negative than to neural images suggesting that more cognitive resources were required to process negative than neutral images. EEG data also showed a larger late CNV area in the neutral condition than in the negative condition, which suggested that there was a significant decrease in brain activation during action tasks in negative emotional condition than in the neural. While the early CNV did not reveal a significant main effect of emotional valence. Conclusion The present results indicate that a negative emotion can slow movement, which is largely due to negative emotional processing consuming more resources than non-emotional processing and this interference effect mainly occurred in the late movement preparation phase.

scholarly journals Non-Verbal Means of Communication in the Representation of the Emotional State of Joy in Modern English Fictional Discourse

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Kyseliuk ◽  
Alla Hubina ◽  
Alla Martyniuk ◽  
Valentyna Tryndiuk
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Valence

Non-Verbal Means of Communication in the Representation of the Emotional State of Joy in Modern English Fictional DiscourseThis article concerns the study of the non-verbal means of communication designating the emotional state of joy which are present in fictional discourse. The functional peculiarities of non-verbal means designating the emotional state of joy are specified. It is proved that the register of non-verbal components indicating joy includes facial expressions, gestures, phonation, and the like. The subsystems of kinesic and phonatory non-verbal components are the dominant ones. Fictional discourse including representations of joy contains both verbal and non-verbal means of designating the emotional state, functioning either separately or in interaction. This interaction is based on the concept of emotional valence and is represented in repetition, contradiction, substitution, complementation, emphasis and regulation. In an utterance, non-verbal means can occur in the initial, medial, and final positions. The most common models of the occurrence of non-verbal components denoting joy in utterances are revealed. Niewerbalne środki komunikacji w przedstawieniu emocjonalnego stanu radości we współczesnym angielskim dyskursie fikcyjnymArtykuł dotyczy badań niewerbalnych środków komunikacji na oznaczenie emocjonalnego stanu radości, które są obecne w dyskursie nienaukowym. Określono osobliwości funkcjonalne środków niewerbalnych, oznaczających stan emocjonalny radości. Udowodniono, że rejestr niewerbalnych elementów wskazujących na radość obejmuje mimikę, gesty, fonację i tym podobne. Podsystemy kinestetyczne i fonatory są w pozycji dominującej. Dyskurs fikcyjny, w tym reprezentacje radości zawierają zarówno werbalne, jak i niewerbalne środki na określenie stanu emocjonalnego, funkcjonującego oddzielnie lub w interakcji. Ta interakcja opiera się na koncepcji wartościowości emocjonalnej i jest reprezentowana przez powtórzenie, zaprzeczenie, zastąpienie, uzupełnienie, uwydatnienie i regulację. W wypowiedzi niewerbalne środki mogą występować w pozycjach początkowych, środkowych i końcowych.  Są ujawniane najbardziej powszechne modele występowania elementów niewerbalnych oznaczających radość w wypowiedziach.

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