Dissertations / Theses: 'Emotions and cognition'

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Boakes, Jolee Alison. "The role of specific emotions in affective priming effects." University of Western Australia. Graduate School of Education, 2010. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2010.0116.

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Abstract:

[Truncated abstract] The finding that less time is needed to evaluate the valence of a target when it is preceded by a prime of the same valence, as opposed to one of the opposite valence, has become known as the affective priming effect. The research reported here investigated a new model of the mechanisms underlying affective priming effects, which focuses on the role of specific emotions within global valence categories. Specifically, this model stipulates that when presented with a stimulus that elicits particular emotions, the area of the brain corresponding to that emotion is automatically stimulated. This in turn will produce a diffuse activation of meaning nodes that are associated with that emotion. This emotion-based priming model departs from previous spreading activation accounts of affective priming, as it suggests that the facilitation effects observed in such studies may be due primarily to spreading activation via emotion-congruent, rather than valence-congruent, nodes. The overarching goal of the empirical research programme reported here was to test predictions based on this model. In three studies, facilitation effects ascribable to specific emotion-based congruence (e.g., fear-fear) were compared with those ascribable to global valence-based congruence (e.g., negative-negative) alone (i.e., in the absence of emotion-based congruence). Participants made valence judgements on targets which represented one of five basic human emotions: one positive (happy) and four negative (disgust, fear, sad, and anger). ... The fundamental design elements were the same across all three studies: the only difference was in the stimulus format of the prime-target pairs: emotion-laden scenes were used in Study One; facial expressions in Study Two; and emotion-laden words in Study Three. Results showed that, in comparison to the neutral and incongruent baselines, there were significant emotion-based priming effects across all stimulus formats. This result was also consistent across all of the negative emotions employed. Significant valence-based priming effects were, however, also obtained in each of the three studies, although these effects were more inconsistent than those obtained for emotion-based priming. That is, reaction times were significantly shorter on valence-congruent than on neutral and incongruent baseline trials, but only for a portion of the tests performed across the three studies. In Studies One and Two, reaction times were consistently shorter for emotion-congruent prime-target pairs than for valence-congruent prime-target pairs. This trend was absent in Study Three, in which word stimuli were used. These results indicate that while reaction times were facilitated, albeit inconsistently, for valence-congruent prime-target pairs, they were facilitated significantly further for emotion-congruent pairs when picture-based stimuli were used. The emotion-based and valence-based priming effects obtained across the three studies are discussed in terms of three competing theories: (i) spreading activation via global valence nodes, (ii) spreading activation via emotion centres, and (iii) expectancy-based processes. A dual-process hypothesis of affective priming is then proposed. The plausibility of the hypothesis is then explored through a synthesis and re-examination of results reported in previous affective priming research. Directions for future research to elaborate and extend on this work are discussed.