Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Emotion and cognition (Y1) - Coggle Diagram
Emotion and cognition (Y1)
Defining emotion
Emotions are responses to stimuli in the environment - they are various mental states that are relatively short lived and associated with an eliciting event (Gilhooly et al, 2011)
Background on research on emotion - Quinlan, 2008 -
There has been a growing interest in the area of cognition and emotion since the 1980s - in part due to advances in computer technology; the technique of morphing makes it possible to represent changes in facial expression of emotion for research purposes
Most research is usually conducted with clinical populations in clinical settings
The emotion of fear has been extensively researched in fields like biopsychology as it is the easiest emotion to infer from behaviour (Pinel and Barnes, 2021)
Huron (2020) - some people do not display the facial expressions associated with an emotion in order for personal gain - can feel emotions and change facial expression
Features of emotions
They are mind-brain responses triggered by a chunk of information -
A good example - stress response triggered by a stressor, which causes a series of reactions and hormone responses
They have a short duration - they generally last a few seconds but can last for hours (Gobet et al, 2011)
They have a clear onset - you can pinpoint when the emotion occurred - and a fuzzy offset as the emotion dissipates over time (Gilhooly et al, 2011)
Generate a subjective experience - they provide us with feedback on the execution of our plans relative to our goals and allow us to detect, and to work to reduce discrepancies between actual and expected outcomes (Gilhooly et al, 2011)
They generate action tendencies - it is suggested that there is a motivational-behavioural component to emotion which involves our actions in response to the emotion
They are accompanied by a facial expression which makes it possible to communicate feelings to others
After analysing hundreds of films and photographs of people experiencing a real range of emotions, Ekman and Friesen (1971) concluded six primary emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise have specific facial expressions (Pinel and Barnes, 2021)
Purposes, characteristics and structure of emotions
What are emotions for - Gobet et al, 2016 - t
To provide the body and mind with a rapid adaptation to a relevant stimuli
Positive emotions - expected to occur whenever a reward is under consideration
Negative emotions - mark the consideration of a dark perspective
Characterising emotion -
Valence - positive and negative
Arousal - intensity of emotion
Structure of emotions -
Emotional response - the actual changes that take place in your body and mind
Emotional experience - occurs when you become conscious of those changes
Stimulus presentation -> appraisal (danger) -> affective state (mood, valence and arousal) -> regulation of affective state (automatic v conscious)
-> Regulation of the affective state -> production of affective state -> identification of the emotional significance of a stimulus
Differences between mood and emotion (Gobet et al, 2016)
Emotion / mood -
Mood is a baseline of the emotional system - it is what we feel when nothing is stimulating the emotional system
Emotion - response to stimuli in the environment
-> Emotion - a long lasting mood may moderate the impact of a given emotion
-> Mood - strong emotion may change the baseline mood for longer than a few hours
Positive mood Induction Task (Gorilla, n.d.) - mood induction paradigm -
Used a to induce a specific mood state by having participants watch a film, receive a gift, or think about a memory that is happy or sad
Mood induction provides a way of altering state so that the effect on cognitive processes can be observed (Russ, 2011)
Exploring neural correlates of emotion processing using music
Emotions processing of major, minor and dissonant chords - an fMRI study (Pallesen, 2005)
Listen passively to each type of chord
Listen to each type of chord whilst completing an n-back working memory task (on pitch)
Rating each type of chord on two 11-point scale (as unpleasant-pleasant, happy-sad)
experiment took place inside an fMRI scanner
-> Brain structures implicated in emotion processing of musical chords were - amygdala, retrosplenial cortex, brain stem and cerebellum
Main findings - Pallesen et al, 2005 -
key areas when comparing musicians and non-musicians
Minor or dissonant chords evoked a larger response than major chords during passive listening in key areas
Musicians rated minor chords as sadder, and dissonant chords as unpleasant, but this was not observed in their neural response in comparison to non-musicians
According to this study, and the amygdala and the brain stem are part of an 'alarm system' that may be perceiving minor/dissonant chords as potentially alarming stimuli
Neural responses to threatening sounds - Pinel and Barnes, 2021:
Circuit of the brain that is thought to mediate the effects of fear conditioning to an auditory stimuli
After sound travels from the medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus to reach the amygdala, either directly or indirectly, it is then assessed in terms of its emotional significance
The amygdala assesses this based on previous encounters with it an activates the appropriate response circuit - PAG and sympathetic circuits in the hypothalamus (Pinel and Barnes, 2021)
Threatening sound -> thalamus + medial geniculate nucleus -> auditory cortex -> amygdala
EITHER -
-> hypothalamus -> sympathetic response
-> Periaqueductal grey -> behavioural response
The interaction between emotion and cognition
Affect and attention - attentional biases -
occur when emotional stimuli capture attention, studied in participants with depression, anxiety or other disorders using an Emotional stroop task and visual search tasks
Affect and perception - visions, sounds and speech perception
Fear seems to enhance early vision processes with a negative mood seeming to bias perception of loudness - influences speech perception also
Affect and memory - fishbulb, tunnel and mood-congruent memories
Memories for emotional events tend to be better than for non-emotional stress, however intense emotion is detrimental for cognition
Tunnel theory - weapon-focus effect in EWT
Fishbulb (vivid) memories with emotional intensity tend to be associated with greater recall - strong negative emotions enhance memory for central details, but this at the expense of peripheral memory
We also seem to recall positive memories in a good mood
Affect and decision making - integral affects stem from decisions based on a central decision at han, or decisions being influenced by anticipated effects
Incidental affects stem from other sources than the decision at hand and may influence decision making processes
Affect heuristic involves substituting feelings or target attributes in decision problems
Theories of emotion
Pinel and Barnes (2021) -
James-Lange Theory; argued that the automatic activity and behaviour that are triggered by the emotional event produce the feeling of emotion, not the other way round
Cannon-Bard theory - views emotional experience and expression as parallel processes that have no direct causal relation
Modern biopsychological view - each of the three principal factors in an emotional response - perception of the emotion-inducing stimulus, automatic / somatic response to stimulus and the experience of emotion can influence the other two
The Oatley and Johnson-Laird Theory (1987) -
Mind is composed of a set of modules or autonomous processors, each of which is self-contained and has an associated information processing goal (Quinlan, 2008)
Modules are organised hierarchially and there is an overarching controller which coordinates their operations
Controller sends out emotional signals that convey information about the emotional state of the person -> signal propagation -> they set out the whole system into an emotional module
Emotional modes - mutually inhibit each other, can only be sad or happy at a given moment (reciprocal inihibition) and they come into play when an action plan is broken down into sub goals and junctures
Non-emotional modes - daydreaming, planning, free association (not really emotionless) - emotions relate to biopsychological needs
Cognitive primacy - Lazarus's Theory (Gilhooly et al, 2022) - first comprehensive appraisal theory
Appraisal theories have in common the assertion that emotions result from our interpretations of, or reactions to, events
Lazarus argued that cognitive appraisal is fundamental to emotional experience - cognitive aspects are inseparable, proposing three kinds of appraisal
-> Primary appraisal - initial assessment of a situation (irrelevant, negative, positive or threat)
-> Secondary appraisal - assesses the available resources for us to deal with a given situation
-> Reappraisal continuously monitors the situation until it is resolved
Emotions in mental illness / neurodevelopmental disorders:
Facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia - Gao et al, 2021
We communicate using facial expressions
Deficits and biases in facial emotion recognition are linked to impairments in social and emotional function which aggravate the development of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, autism and depression
Primarily, individuals with schizophrenia exhibit emotional deficits in recognizing negative emotions (sadness, fear and anger)
Facial emotion recognition impairment in children with sub-threshold ADHD - Staff et al, 2021:
Impaired facial emotion recognition has been suggested as a possible mechaism underlying social and emotional problems experienced by children with ADHD symptoms
Severity of emotion recognition problems was a predictor of the severity of emotional and peer problems
Face masks - impact ability to communicate, interpret and mimic facial expressions of those with whom we interact
Positive emotions lessen and negative emotions are amplified
Emotional mimcry, contagion and emotionality in general are reduced and bonding between teachers and learners, group cohesion and learning reduced - emotions majorly drive attachment and bonding
Summary -
emotion and cognition work together
emotion is defined as a response to stimuli in the environment
The purpose of an emotion is to provide the body and mind with rapid adaptation to a relevant stimulus
Moods are longer lasting than emotions, but they influence each other
Through music research, we have learned that some chords may be processed as alarming stimuli, thus engaging the amygdala
Emotion influences attention, memory, perception and decision making processes - cognitive appraisal is fundamental to emotional experience
It is important to raise awareness of diversity and individual differences in facial emotion recognition as this helps us to strive towards a more inclusive society - this knowledge can help us better understand schizophrenia etc