Identification facilitation for emotionally arousing verbs during the attentional blink

The present study aimed to examine affective modulation of the "attentional blink" effect during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). Pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant written verbs were used as a 2nd target (T2) in an 8.6-Hz RSVP paradigm. Pronounced effects of 1st target (T1)-T2 stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were found, showing reduced report accuracy for 232- and 464-ms SOAs. Affectively arousing (pleasant and unpleasant) T2s were associated with enhanced accuracy compared with neutral T2s specifically during short (232 ms) SOAs. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant T2s rated low in terms of emotional arousal did not show this enhancement. These results suggest that affectively arousing information is selected preferentially from a temporal stream, facilitating processes such as working memory consolidation and action.     

Adaptive changes between cue abstraction and exemplar memory in a multiple-cue judgment task with continuous cues

The majority of previous studies on multiple-cue judgment with continuous cues have involved comparisons between judgments and multiple linear regression models that integrated cues into a judgment. The authors present an experiment indicating that in a judgment task withadditive combination of multiple continuous cues, people indeed displayed abstract knowledge of the cue criterion relations that was mentally integrated into a judgment, but in a task withmultiplicative combination of continuous cues, people instead relied on retrieval of memory traces of similar judgment cases (exemplars). These results suggest that people may adopt qualitatively distinct forms of knowledge, depending on the structure of a multiple-cue judgment task. The authors discuss implications for theories of multiple-cue judgment.     

Looking for foes and friends: perceptual and emotional factors when finding a face in the crowd

In a face-in-the-crowd setting, the authors examined visual search for photographically reproduced happy, angry, and fearful target faces among neutral distractor faces in 3 separate experiments. Contrary to the hypothesis, happy targets were consistently detected more quickly and accurately than angry and fearful targets, as were directed compared with averted targets. There was no consistent effect of social anxiety. A facial emotion recognition experiment suggested that the happy search advantage could be due to the ease of processing happy faces. In the final experiment with perceptually controlled schematic faces, the authors reported more effective detection of angry than happy faces. This angry advantage was most obvious for highly socially anxious individuals when their social fear was experimentally enhanced.     

Relationships between hostility, affective ratings of pictures, and state affects during task-induced stress

The authors examined the relationship of hostility with (a) affective ratings of pictures and (b) state affects evoked by task-induced stress in 95 healthy men and women 22-37 years of age. Pictures were from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; P. J. Lang, M. M. Bradley, & B. N. Cuthbert, 1999). Stressors included a startle task, mental arithmetic task, and choice-deadline reaction time task. The circumplex model of affect was used to structure the self-reported state affects. The authors found that hostility was associated with displeasure, high arousal, and low dominance ratings of IAPS pictures. Hostility was related to unpleasant affect and unactivated unpleasant affect during the experiment, and subscale paranoia was related to activated unpleasant affect. Findings suggest that participants scoring high on hostility are prone to negative emotional reactions.     

Oscillatory brain responses evoked by video game events: the case of super monkey ball 2.

Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded while the subjects played a video game where the player had to steer a monkey into a goal while collecting bananas for extra points and had to avoid falling off the edge of the game board. Each of these three studied events evoked differential EEG oscillatory changes. Picking up bananas evoked decreased theta activation on central electrodes, decreased high alpha activation on frontal electrodes, and increased beta activation on frontal electrodes. Falling off the game board evoked decreased central theta activation and increased fronto-central beta activation. Reaching the goal evoked increased theta activation on parietal electrodes, increased low alpha activation on frontal electrodes, increased high alpha activation on frontal, central, and parietal electrodes, and increased beta activation on frontal and central electrodes. It is suggested that the EEG oscillations evoked by picking up bananas reflect increased cortical activation and arousal; the oscillations evoked by falling off the edge of the game board reflect motor functions; and the oscillations evoked by reaching the goal reflect a relaxed state. Thus, EEG may turn out to be a valuable tool when examining psychological responses to video game events.