Personalised Prediction of Self-Reported Emotion Responses to Music Stimuli

<p>In this thesis I develop a robust system and method for predicting individuals’ emotional responses to musical stimuli. Music has a powerful effect on human emotion, however the factors that create this emotional experience are poorly understood. Some of these factors are characteristics of the music itself, for example musical tempo, mode, harmony, and timbre are known to affect people's emotional responses. However, the same piece of music can produce different emotional responses in different people, so the ability to use music to induce emotion also depends on predicting the effect of individual differences. These individual differences might include factors such as people's moods, personalities, culture, and musical background amongst others. While many of the factors that contribute to emotional experience have been examined, it is understood that the research in this domain is far from both a) identifying and understanding the many factors that affect an individual’s emotional response to music, and b) using this understanding of factors to inform the selection of stimuli for emotion induction. This unfortunately results in wide variance in emotion induction results, inability to replicate emotional studies, and the inability to control for variables in research. The approach of this thesis is to therefore model the latent variable contributions to an individual’s emotional experience of music through the application of deep learning and modern recommender system techniques. With each study in this work, I iteratively develop a more reliable and effective system for predicting personalised emotion responses to music, while simultaneously adopting and developing strong and standardised methodology for stimulus selection. The work sees the introduction and validation of a) electronic and loop-based music as reliable stimuli for inducing emotional responses, b) modern recommender systems and deep learning as methods of more reliably predicting individuals' emotion responses, and c) novel understandings of how musical features map to individuals' emotional responses. The culmination of this research is the development of a personalised emotion prediction system that can better predict individuals emotional responses to music, and can select musical stimuli that are better catered to individual difference. This will allow researchers and practitioners to both more reliably and effectively a) select music stimuli for emotion induction, and b) induce and manipulate target emotional responses in individuals.</p>

Personalised Prediction of Self-Reported Emotion Responses to Music Stimuli

<p>In this thesis I develop a robust system and method for predicting individuals’ emotional responses to musical stimuli. Music has a powerful effect on human emotion, however the factors that create this emotional experience are poorly understood. Some of these factors are characteristics of the music itself, for example musical tempo, mode, harmony, and timbre are known to affect people's emotional responses. However, the same piece of music can produce different emotional responses in different people, so the ability to use music to induce emotion also depends on predicting the effect of individual differences. These individual differences might include factors such as people's moods, personalities, culture, and musical background amongst others. While many of the factors that contribute to emotional experience have been examined, it is understood that the research in this domain is far from both a) identifying and understanding the many factors that affect an individual’s emotional response to music, and b) using this understanding of factors to inform the selection of stimuli for emotion induction. This unfortunately results in wide variance in emotion induction results, inability to replicate emotional studies, and the inability to control for variables in research. The approach of this thesis is to therefore model the latent variable contributions to an individual’s emotional experience of music through the application of deep learning and modern recommender system techniques. With each study in this work, I iteratively develop a more reliable and effective system for predicting personalised emotion responses to music, while simultaneously adopting and developing strong and standardised methodology for stimulus selection. The work sees the introduction and validation of a) electronic and loop-based music as reliable stimuli for inducing emotional responses, b) modern recommender systems and deep learning as methods of more reliably predicting individuals' emotion responses, and c) novel understandings of how musical features map to individuals' emotional responses. The culmination of this research is the development of a personalised emotion prediction system that can better predict individuals emotional responses to music, and can select musical stimuli that are better catered to individual difference. This will allow researchers and practitioners to both more reliably and effectively a) select music stimuli for emotion induction, and b) induce and manipulate target emotional responses in individuals.</p>

Negative Emotion Reduces Visual Working Memory Recall Variability: A Meta-analytical Review

Negative emotion is often hypothesized to trigger a more deliberate processing mode.This effect can manifest as increased precision of information maintained in working memory (WM) captured by reduced WM recall variability. However, some recent evidence shows that WM representations are immune to any emotional influences. Here, we meta-analyze existing evidence based on data from 13 experiments across 491 participants who performed a delay estimation WM task under negative and neutral emotions. We find that negative emotion modestly reduces WM recall variability and increases recall failures relative to the neutral condition. These effects are moderated by participants’ self-report negative experiences during emotion induction. Collectively, these data suggest that negative emotion influences how muchand how well one can remember in WM.

The effects of subliminal or supraliminal sadness induction on the sense of body ownership and the role of dissociative symptoms

Previous research has shown that emotions can alter our sense of ownership. Whether this relationship is modulated by differences in emotion experience and awareness, however, remains unclear. We investigated this by comparing the susceptibility to the rubber hand illusion (RHI) between participants who were either exposed to a low-arousing emotion induction (sadness) or placed in a neutral control group. Several factors that might influence this relationship were considered: dissociative symptoms were included to observe if a sadness induction led to a higher RHI score in participants scoring high in dissociation, as a result of detached emotion experience. Whether the level of awareness of the emotion mattered was also tested, as subliminal processing was shown to require less focal attention. Therefore, our sample (N = 122) was divided into three experimental groups: Sad pictures were presented to two of the three groups differing in presentation mode (subliminal: n = 40, supraliminal: n = 41), neutral pictures were presented supraliminally to the control group (n = 41). Additionally, the effects of slow (3 cm/s) and fast (30 cm/s) stroking, applied either synchronously or asynchronously, were examined as the comforting effects of stroking might interfere with the emotion induction. Results showed that the supraliminal sadness induction was associated with a stronger subjective illusion, but not with a higher proprioceptive drift compared to the subliminal induction. In addition, a stronger subjective illusion after fast and synchronous stroking was found compared to slow and asynchronous stroking. A significant proprioceptive drift was detected independent of group and stroking style. Both slow and synchronous stroking were perceived as more comforting than their respective counterparts. Participants with higher dissociative symptoms were more susceptible to the subjective illusion, especially in the supraliminal group in the synchronous condition. We concluded that individual differences in emotion experience are likely to play a role in body ownership. However, we cannot clarify at this stage whether differences in proprioception and the subjective illusion depend on the type of emotion experienced (e.g. different levels of arousal) and on concomitant changes in multisensory integration processes.

The OpenLAV video database for affect induction: Analyzing the uniformity of video stimuli effects

The Open Library for Affective Videos (OpenLAV) is a new video database for experimental emotion induction. The 188 videos (mean duration: 40 s; range: 12–71 s) have a CC-BY license. Ratings for valence, arousal, several appraisals, and emotion labels were assessed from 434 US-American participants in an online study (on average 70 ratings per video), along with personality traits from the raters (Big 5 personality dimensions and several motive dispositions). The OpenLAV is able to induce a large variety of different emotions, but the videos vary in uniformity of emotion induction. Based on different variability metrics, we recommend videos for the most uniform induction of different emotions. Moreover, the predictive power of personality traits on emotion ratings was analyzed using a machine-learning approach. In contrast to previous research, no effects of personality on the emotional experience were found.

Autonomic factors do not underlie the elevated self-disgust levels in Parkinson’s disease

Introduction Parkinson’s disease (PD) is manifested along with non-motor symptoms such as impairments in basic emotion regulation, recognition and expression. Yet, self-conscious emotion (SCEs) such as self-disgust, guilt and shame are under-investigated. Our previous research indicated that Parkinson patients have elevated levels of self-reported and induced self-disgust. However, the cause of that elevation–whether lower level biophysiological factors, or higher level cognitive factors, is unknown. Methods To explore the former, we analysed Skin Conductance Response (SCR, measuring sympathetic activity) amplitude and high frequency Heart Rate Variability (HRV, measuring parasympathetic activity) across two emotion induction paradigms, one involving narrations of personal experiences of self-disgust, shame and guilt, and one targeting self-disgust selectively via images of the self. Both paradigms had a neutral condition. Results Photo paradigm elicited significant changes in physiological responses in patients relative to controls—higher percentages of HRV in the high frequency range but lower SCR amplitudes, with patients to present lower responses compared to controls. In the narration paradigm, only guilt condition elicited significant SCR differences between groups. Conclusions Consequently, lower level biophysiological factors are unlikely to cause elevated self-disgust levels in Parkinson’s disease, which by implication suggests that higher level cognitive factors may be responsible.

Emotional Distraction by Constant Finger Tapping

This study examined the effects of emotional distraction in the context of recalling stressful interpersonal events in daily life. Previous studies have revealed that distraction decreases unpleasant emotions. In this study, we examined whether distraction tasks decrease unpleasant task-related thoughts in addition to unpleasant emotions. Furthermore, to investigate the implicit effects of emotional changes, we examined changes in pupil size in relation to unpleasant emotions and task-unrelated thoughts (TUT). The behavioral tasks were administered to 21 university students ( Mage = 21.24 ± 2.93 years; range: 18–30 years). After excluding participants for poor data quality, 16 (21.31 ± 3.34 years; 18–30 years) were included for further pupil data analysis. As an emotion induction procedure, participants were asked to freely recall memories of stressful interpersonal events in their daily lives and were given a series of questions about their recalled memories, which were presented on the monitor. In the following distraction experiment, questions during the emotion induction procedure were represented as emotional stimulation; a distraction task (non-constant or constant finger tapping) or rest condition was then performed; subsequently, ratings were given for attentional state, thought types conceived during the tasks, and emotional state. Upon analysis, differences in the ratings for unpleasant emotion and TUT were non-significant between all conditions. Nevertheless, pupil dilation in the non-constant and constant conditions was associated with decreased unpleasant emotions ( p < .05; p < .05 to .01). More importantly, pupil dilation was associated with decreased unpleasant TUT ( p < .05) only in the constant condition. Although the observed effects were subtle, we found that constant finger tapping decreased unpleasant emotions and TUT. It is expected for a future emotion regulation study to further investigate the effects in the relationships among emotions, thoughts, and physiological states, which can help in coping with unpleasant emotions.

The Effects of Emotional Design on Multimedia Learning and Appreciation of Chinese Poetry

Painting, music, literature, and other art forms embody the essence of human wisdom and induce esthetic experience, among which poetry is inherently creative, because it contains a wealth of symbols, imageries, insights, and so forth. The appreciation and learning of Chinese poetry is an important part of the curriculum in secondary schools. However, studies have mainly focused on textual characters of poetry, with little literature focusing on esthetic appreciation and in-depth learning of poetry. In this vein, we ask whether emotional designs will promote the appreciation and learning of Chinese poetry. To answer this question, we explored the influence of the combination of external emotion induction (positive and neutral movie clips) and internal colorful design (chromatic and achromatic) on esthetic preference and learning of poetry. One hundred and sixty-six participants (14–15 years old) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions created by two factors (external emotion induction and internal colorful design). The results showed that the combination of external emotion induction and internal colorful design promoted positive emotions, retention, and transfer performances of learners. Furthermore, perceived difficulty of learners decreased significantly when external emotional induction and internal colorful design were both positive. Consequently, these findings indicated that emotional designs in multimedia facilitated the learning performance of middle school students in Chinese poetry, and supported the cognitive-affective theory of learning with media. This research was a preliminary exploration of emotional design in humanities.

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.