Image Valence Modulates the Processing of Low-Resolution Affective Natural Scenes

In natural vision, noisy and distorted visual inputs often change our perceptual strategy in scene perception. However, it is unclear the extent to which the affective meaning embedded in the degraded natural scenes modulates our scene understanding and associated eye movements. In this eye-tracking experiment by presenting natural scene images with different categories and levels of emotional valence (high-positive, medium-positive, neutral/low-positive, medium-negative, and high-negative), we systematically investigated human participants’ perceptual sensitivity (image valence categorization and arousal rating) and image-viewing gaze behaviour to the changes of image resolution. Our analysis revealed that reducing image resolution led to decreased valence recognition and arousal rating, decreased number of fixations in image-viewing but increased individual fixation duration, and stronger central fixation bias. Furthermore, these distortion effects were modulated by the scene valence with less deterioration impact on the valence categorization of negatively valenced scenes and on the gaze behaviour in viewing of high emotionally charged (high-positive and high-negative) scenes. It seems that our visual system shows a valence-modulated susceptibility to the image distortions in scene perception.

Moods alter audiovisual integration

Multisensory integration depends on the temporal proximity of events in different modalities. Recent studies have shown that multisensory temporal binding may be related to individual traits (Foss-Feig et al., 2010; Stevenson et al., 2012). Here we show that positive moods in observers enhance the temporal binding of audiovisual multisensory integration. Twenty-five healthy participants observed two identical visual disks moving toward each other, coinciding, and moving away. The two disks were perceived as either streaming through or bouncing off each other (stream/bounce display), and a belief sound around the visual coincidence facilitated bouncing perception (Sekuler et al., 1997; Watanabe and Shimojo, 2001). We asked the participants to report whether the two disks appeared to stream through or bounce off while listening to either exhilarating music of their own choice or a neutral pink noise. The results showed that the participants listening to exhilarating music reported bouncing percept more frequently. The proportion of bouncing percepts was correlated with the valence rating rather than the arousal rating during the experiment. These results suggest that positive moods enhance the temporal binding process in audiovisual integration.

Effects of Experience in Cohabitation on Erotic Arousability

A sample of 275 men and 370 women were given the Sexual Arousability Inventory which requests an arousal rating of 28 sexually-related activities. Differences were obtained between those subjects defined as having low experience in cohabitation versus high experience. The role of novelty in sexual experience is discussed in relation to the results of the study.