Happiness takes you right: The effect of emotional stimuli on line bisection

Emotion recognition is mediated by a complex network of cortical and subcortical areas, with the two hemispheres likely being differently involved in processing positive and negative emotions. As results on valence-dependent hemispheric specialisation are quite inconsistent, we carried out three experiments with emotional stimuli with a task being sensitive to measure specific hemispheric processing. Participants were required to bisect visual lines that were delimited by emotional face flankers, or to haptically bisect rods while concurrently listening to emotional vocal expressions. We found that prolonged (but not transient) exposition to concurrent happy stimuli significantly shifted the bisection bias to the right compared to both sad and neutral stimuli, indexing a greater involvement of the left hemisphere in processing of positively connoted stimuli. No differences between sad and neutral stimuli were observed across the experiments. In sum, our data provide consistent evidence in favour of a greater involvement of the left hemisphere in processing positive emotions and suggest that (prolonged) exposure to stimuli expressing happiness significantly affects allocation of (spatial) attentional resources, regardless of the sensory (visual/auditory) modality in which the emotion is perceived and space is explored (visual/haptic).     

Emotional true and false memories in children with callous-unemotional traits

Several studies have found that children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits have a deficit in processing emotionally negative material. The present study examined whether this deficit also affects emotional memory. Twenty-two children with low CU traits and 24 children with high CU traits between 8 and 12 years of age were selected from a community sample and presented with neutral and negative emotional words, using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm. On true recall, there was no difference between the groups. Both groups had higher true recall rates for the neutral word lists than for the negative lists. However, on false recall, although there were no group differences for neutral word lists, the high CU group recalled significantly fewer critical lures on the negative word lists than the low CU group. Furthermore, the high CU group had significantly less false recall on the negative word lists compared to the neutral word lists, while the low CU group showed no difference in false recall between the word lists. These results indicate that children with high CU traits have no deficiencies in true memory performance, yet are less susceptible to developing false memories concerning emotionally negative material.     

Intensity profiles of emotional experience over time

A full understanding of emotions and emotion characteristics can only be reached when their dynamic nature is taken into account. As such, a primary objective of the present study is to describe and account for variability in temporal profiles of experienced emotional intensity. Participants were asked to make detailed drawings of intensity profiles of recently experienced episodes of anger, sadness, joy and affection. Functional data analysis revealed three features that together accounted for 84% of the total variability: (i) steepness at onset; (ii) skewness; and (iii) the number of peaks. Emotions differed with regard to the first two features, with the rise at onset being steeper for sadness and joy and affection being the most negatively skewed emotion under study. Individual differences regarding each of the three features were found, however, they did not strongly generalise across emotions.     

Age differences in affective forecasting and experienced emotion surrounding the 2008 US presidential election

In everyday life, people frequently make decisions based on tacit or explicit forecasts about the emotional consequences associated with the possible choices. We investigated age differences in such forecasts and their accuracy by surveying voters about their expected and, subsequently, their actual emotional responses to the 2008 US presidential election. A sample of 762 Democratic and Republican voters aged 20 to 80 years participated in a web-based study; 346 could be re-contacted two days after the election. Older adults forecasted lower increases in high-arousal emotions (e.g., excitement after winning; anger after losing) and larger increases in low-arousal emotions (e.g., sluggishness after losing) than younger adults. Age differences in actual responses to the election were consistent with forecasts, albeit less pervasive. Additionally, among supporters of the winning candidate, but not among supporters of the losing candidate, forecasting accuracy was enhanced with age, suggesting a positivity effect in affective forecasting. These results add to emerging findings about the role of valence and arousal in emotional ageing and demonstrate age differences in affective forecasting about a real-world event with an emotionally charged outcome.     

Memory bias for negative emotional words in recognition memory is driven by effects of category membership

Recognition memory studies often find that emotional items are more likely than neutral items to be labelled as studied. Previous work suggests this bias is driven by increased memory strength/familiarity for emotional items. We explored strength and bias interpretations of this effect with the conjecture that emotional stimuli might seem more familiar because they share features with studied items from the same category. Categorical effects were manipulated in a recognition task by presenting lists with a small, medium or large proportion of emotional words. The liberal memory bias for emotional words was only observed when a medium or large proportion of categorised words were presented in the lists. Similar, though weaker, effects were observed with categorised words that were not emotional (animal names). These results suggest that liberal memory bias for emotional items may be largely driven by effects of category membership.     

Long life to emotions: Emotional response categorisation across the lifespan

People perceive and organise their social world on the basis of their previous semantic knowledge as well as on the basis of their emotional responses. We tested the hypothesis that emotional response categorisation, namely the tendency to group stimuli on the basis of the emotion they evoke, increases across the lifespan. Young and older adults were asked to categorise target words and either conceptual or emotional response similarity could be used to perform the task. Results showed that older adults were more likely than younger adults to rely on emotional equivalence to categorise stimuli. In addition, current affective state was significantly related to emotional response categorisation. These findings are discussed in relation to recent models that propose a prominent role for emotions in the social life of older adults.     

Emotionally meaningful targets enhance orienting triggered by a fearful gazing face

Studies investigating the effect of emotional expression on spatial orienting to a gazed-at location have produced mixed results. The present study investigated the role of affective context in the integration of emotion processing and gaze-triggered orienting. In three experiments, a face gazed non-predictively to the left or right, and then its expression became fearful or happy. Participants identified (Experiments 1 and 2) or detected (Experiment 3) a peripheral target presented 225 or 525 ms after the gaze cue onset. In Experiments 1 and 3 the targets were either threatening (a snarling dog) or non-threatening (a smiling baby); in Experiment 2 the targets were neutral. With emotionally valenced targets, the gaze-cuing effect was larger when the face was fearful compared to happy—but only with the longer cue–target interval. With neutral targets, there was no interaction between gaze and expression. Our results indicate that a meaningful context optimises attentional integration of gaze and expression information.     

A post-genomic view of behavioral development and adaptation to the environment

Recent advances in molecular genetics and epigenetics are reviewed that have major implications for the bio-behavioral sciences and for understanding how organisms adapt to their environments at both phylogenetic and ontogenic levels. From a post-genomics perspective, the environment is as crucial as the DNA sequence for constructing the phenotype, and as a source of information in trying to predict phenotypes. The review is organized with respect to four basic processes by which phenotypes adapt to environmental challenges, with an emphasis on the data for humans: (1) developmental plasticity, (2) epigenetic mechanisms, (3) genotype-environment correlations, and (4) gene × environment interactions.     

Number bias for the discrimination of large visual sets in infancy

This brief report attempts to resolve the claim that infants preferentially attend to continuous variables over number [e.g. Psychol. Sci. 10 (1999) 408; Cognit. Psychol.44 (2002) 33] with the finding that when continuous variables are controlled, infants as young as 6-months of age discriminate large numerical values [e.g. Psychol. Sci. 14 (2003) 396; Cognition 89 (2003) B15; Cognition 74 (2000) B1]. In two parallel experiments, we compare 6-month-old infants' ability to discriminate number and ignore continuous variables with their ability to form a representation of a cumulative surface area and ignore number. We find that infants discriminate a 2-fold change in number but fail to discriminate a 2-fold change in cumulative surface area. The results point to a more complicated relationship between discrete and continuous dimensions than implied by previous literature.     

Magnitude comparison in preschoolers: what counts? Influence of perceptual variables

This study examined numerosity comparison in 3-year-old children. Predictions derived from the analog numerical model and the object-file model were contrasted by testing the effects of size and ratio between numerosities to be compared. Different perceptual controls were also introduced to evaluate the hypothesis that comparison by preschoolers is based on correlated perceptual variables rather than on number per se. Finally, the relation between comparison performance and verbal counting knowledge was investigated. Results showed no evidence that preschoolers use an analog number magnitude or an object-file mechanism to compare numerosities. Rather, their inability to compare sets controlled for surface area suggests that they rely on perceptual cues. Furthermore, the development of numerosity-based representations seems to be related to some understanding of the cardinality concept.