Positive and negative mood states do not influence cross-modal auditory distraction in the serial-recall paradigm

The aim of this study was to examine whether positive and negative mood states affect auditory distraction in a serial-recall task. The duplex-mechanism account differentiates two types of auditory distraction. The changing-state effect is postulated to be rooted in interference-by-process and to be automatic. The auditory-deviant effect is attributed to attentional capture by the deviant distractors. Only the auditory-deviant effect, but not the changing-state effect, should be influenced by emotional mood states according to the duplex-mechanism account. Four experiments were conducted to test how auditory distraction is affected by emotional mood states. Mood was induced by autobiographical recall (Experiments 1 and 2) or the presentation of emotional pictures (Experiments 3 and 4). Even though the manipulations were successful in inducing changes in mood, neither positive mood (Experiments 1 and 3) nor negative mood (Experiments 2 and 4) had any effect on distraction despite large samples sizes (N = 851 in total). The results thus are not in line with the hypothesis that auditory distraction is affected by changes in mood state. The results support an automatic-capture account according to which the auditory-deviant effect and the changing-state effect are mainly stimulus-driven effects that are rooted in the automatic processing of the to-be-ignored auditory stream.

The Influence of Emotional Awareness on Time Perception: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials

Prior studies found that participants overestimated both negative and positive emotional stimuli, compared with neutral emotion. This phenomenon can be explained by the “arousal mechanism.” Participants demonstrated individual differences in emotion perception. In other words, high emotional awareness resulted in high emotional arousal, and vice versa. This study extended existing findings by exploring the influence of emotional awareness on time perception in a temporal generalization task, while recording electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. The findings revealed that in the positive emotion condition, the high emotional awareness group made more overestimations, compared with the low emotional awareness group. However, no difference was observed in the neutral or negative emotion conditions. Moreover, the event-related potential (ERP) results showed that in the positive emotion condition, the high awareness group elicited larger vertex positive potential (VPP) amplitudes, compared with that of the low awareness group. However, no such differences were observed in the neutral and negative emotion conditions. Moreover, the contingent negative variation (CNV) (200–300, 300–490 ms) component showed that in the positive emotion, the amplitudes of the high awareness group were larger than that of the low awareness group; however, they did not show differences in the neutral condition. The findings of this study suggest that high emotional awareness produces higher physiological arousal; moreover, when participants were required to estimate the time duration of emotional pictures, they tended to make higher time overestimation. Thus, our results support the relationship between emotional awareness and time perception.

Music-evoked emotions affect memory for emotional pictures

Music is widely known for its ability to induce emotions. However, to investigate music-evoked emotions, most studies rely on self-report questionnaires, which are vulnerable to bias. In the present study, we explored mood-congruency effects on memory as an indirect, nonverbal method to examine the experience of musical emotions. Participants listened to 15 music excerpts chosen to induce different emotions; after each excerpt, they were required to look at four different pictures, that could be either congruent with the emotion conveyed by the preceding music excerpt, incongruent, or neutral. After the presentation of the stimuli, participants completed a recognition task, including new pictures, already seen emotionally congruent pictures, and already seen emotionally incongruent pictures. Based on previous findings about mood-congruency effects, we hypothesized that if individuals had felt an emotion, this would facilitate memorization of emotionally congruent pictures. Results supported this prediction, as accuracy in the recognition task was higher for the emotionally congruent pictures than for the emotionally incongruent ones. This effect suggests that music-evoked emotions have an influence on subsequent cognitive processing of emotional stimuli, a result relevant for application in different psychology fields. Moreover, mood-congruency tasks may represent a source of evidence for the presence of music-evoked emotions.

EEG microstate analysis of emotion regulation reveals no sequential processing of valence and emotional arousal

In electroencephalography (EEG), microstates are distributions of activity across the scalp that persist for several tens of milliseconds before changing into a different pattern. Microstate analysis is a way of utilizing EEG as both temporal and spatial imaging tool, but has rarely been applied to task-based data. This study aimed to conceptually replicate microstate findings of valence and emotional arousal processing and investigate the effects of emotion regulation on microstates, using data of an EEG paradigm with 107 healthy adults who actively viewed emotional pictures, cognitively detached from them, or suppressed facial reactions. Within the first 600 ms after stimulus onset only the comparison of viewing positive and negative pictures yielded significant results, caused by different electrodes depending on the microstate. Since the microstates associated with more and less emotionally arousing pictures did not differ, sequential processing could not be replicated. When extending the analysis to 2000 ms after stimulus onset, differences were exclusive to the comparison of viewing and detaching from negative pictures. Intriguingly, we observed the novel phenomenon of a microstate difference that could not be attributed to single electrodes. This suggests that microstate analysis can detect differences beyond those detected by event-related potential analysis.

Mental heartbeat tracking and rating of emotional pictures are not related

Our aim was to conceptually replicate the findings of previous empirical studies showing that people with higher cardiac interoceptive accuracy experience more intense emotions. Apart of the mental heartbeat tracking task of Schandry, Hungarian (n = 46, 76.0% female, mean age 22.28 ± 2.228) and Norwegian (n = 50, 60.0% female, mean age 24.66 ± 3.048) participants rated the arousal and valence evoked by positive, neutral and negative pictures. Multivariate repeated analysis of variance (applying both frequentist and Bayesian approaches) did not reveal any connection between heartbeat perception scores and the subjective ratings (i.e., arousal and valence) of the pictures in any of the two groups. The lack of the expected association between cardioceptive accuracy and arousal might partly be explained by the methodological differences between previous studies and this one; for example, we did not split or preselected the sample based on the performance on the Schandry task and applied a relatively strict instruction (i.e., by encouraging to count felt heartbeats only, and to report zero if no sensations were detected).

Can situations awaken emotions? The compilation and evaluation of the Emotional Situation Sentence System (ESSS)

We aimed to establish and evaluate a standardized emotional situation sentence system (ESSS) relevant to the lives of college students to supplement prior literature and adapt to the needs of emotional research. Two studies were designed for this research; study 1 examined the effect of words in the ESSS and study 2 involved the use of pictures. For Study 1, 778 items were selected by 607 college students and 15 experts. We then tested the scale with 80 undergraduate participants. The ESSS sentences were rated on their degree of valence, arousal, and dominance using a 9-point scale. Cronbach’s α (greater than 0.986) of the overall score as well as each sub-score in the three components confirmed the scale’s reliability. As seen on a scatter plot, the results suggest that negative emotions (fear, disgust, anger, sadness, anxiety) are convergent and different from the distribution of positive (happiness) and neutral emotions. Study 2 included 30 participants to compare the difference in valence and arousal between the ESSS and emotional pictures. The results indicate that the ESSS is a standardized, situational, and ecological emotional contextual text system, well-suited to invoke emotion in college students. The ESSS has significantly better arousal and potency than pictures; moreover, it can be applied to experimental studies of anxiety-related emotions. However, emotion pictures have shorter response times, and wider application ranges, and they can include more cross-cultural characteristics compared to words.

Musical strategies to improve children’s memory in an educational context

Music-based interventions and music lessons modulate cognitive functions, such as language or attention. However, the specific and differential effects of musical activities are a new focus of research. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of musical improvisation, a focal musical intervention, on the emotional memory of 4- and 5-year-old children. Each child individually looked at 24 neutral and emotional pictures and rated their valence and arousal. After that, the children were exposed to one of three interventions: musical improvisation (experimental intervention), musical reproduction (active control intervention), or rest (passive control intervention). Then, recall and recognition (immediate and deferred) were used to evaluate memory performance. The main results indicated that musical improvisation, compared with a reproduction music activity, improved memory. In addition, rest improved recognition compared with reproduction. Besides, children recalled more emotional than neutral images. Musical improvisation is a promising technique to be implemented in the educational field.

Effects of illuminance and correlated color temperature of indoor light on emotion perception

The acute non-image forming (NIF) effects of daytime light on momentary mood had been-although not always-established in the current literature. It still remains largely unknown whether short-time light exposure would modulate emotion perception in healthy adults. The current study (N = 48) was conducted to explore the effects of illuminance (100 lx vs. 1000 lx at eye level) and correlated color temperature (CCT, 2700 K vs. 6500 K) on explicit and implicit emotion perception that was assessed with emotional face judgment task and emotional oddball task respectively. Results showed that lower CCT significantly decreased negative response bias in the face judgment task, with labeling ambiguous faces less fearful under 2700 K vs. 6500 K condition. Moreover, participants responded slightly faster for emotional pictures under 6500 K vs. 2700 K condition, but no significant effect of illuminance or CCT on negativity bias was revealed in the emotional oddball task. These findings highlighted the differential role of illuminance and CCT in regulating instant emotion perception and suggested a task-dependent moderation of light spectrum on negativity bias.

Risk-Taking Behavior Under the Effect of Emotional Stimuli Among Children and Adults

Risk-taking has an important role in human’s life, either positive or negative. Thus, finding a method to control or drive this in a particular way could affect individuals and communities’ health by discouraging negative risks such as reckless driving or encouraging positive risks. Emotion induction is one of the methods that can enhance or reinforce risk-taking according to the perceived emotion. Among the studies which had taken, most of them focus on adolescents’ which is known as the peaked age of risk-taking behavior, while from a developmental learning point of view if there is a way to control or educate people’s behavior childhood could be the best time. Thus, this study along with the introduction of a new risk-taking task, aims to investigate two less studied groups (children and adults) risk-taking behavior, and also their behavioral response after they influence by positive or negative emotional pictures, to test whether these affect their risk-taking or not. 21 children and 20 adults participate in this experiment. Their risk-taking behavior is obtained using a new version of game of dice task combined with emotional stimuli. Results show that children have higher tendency to choose riskier options while they affected by positive emotion while adults are more risk-averse after primed by negative emotion. These findings could be helpful for policy makers and tutoring planners to control risk-taking behavior over different ages using priming effect of positive and negative emotions.