Emotional ratings and skin conductance response to visual, auditory and haptic stimuli.

The human emotional reactions to stimuli delivered by different sensory modalities is a topic of interest for many disciplines, from Human-Computer-Interaction to cognitive sciences. Different databases of stimuli eliciting emotional reaction are available, tested on a high number of participants. Interestingly, stimuli within one database are always of the same type. In other words, to date, no data was obtained and compared from distinct types of emotion-eliciting stimuli from the same participant. This makes it difficult to use different databases within the same experiment, limiting the complexity of experiments investigating emotional reactions. Moreover, whereas the stimuli and the participants' rating to the stimuli are available, physiological reactions of participants to the emotional stimuli are often recorded but not shared. Here, we test stimuli delivered either through a visual, auditory, or haptic modality in a within participant experimental design. We provide the results of our study in the form of a MATLAB structure including basic demographics on the participants, the participant's self-assessment of his/her emotional state, and his/her physiological reactions (i.e., skin conductance).

Social Power Increases Interoceptive Accuracy.

Building on recent psychological research showing that power increases self-focused attention, we propose that having power increases accuracy in perception of bodily signals, a phenomenon known as interoceptive accuracy. Consistent with our proposition, participants in a high-power experimental condition outperformed those in the control and low-power conditions in the Schandry heartbeat-detection task. We demonstrate that the effect of power on interoceptive accuracy is not explained by participants' physiological arousal, affective state, or general intention for accuracy. Rather, consistent with our reasoning that experiencing power shifts attentional resources inward, we show that the effect of power on interoceptive accuracy is dependent on individuals' chronic tendency to focus on their internal sensations. Moreover, we demonstrate that individuals' chronic sense of power also predicts interoceptive accuracy similar to, and independent of, how their situationally induced feeling of power does. We therefore provide further support on the relation between power and enhanced perception of bodily signals. Our findings offer a novel perspective-a psychophysiological account-on how power might affect judgments and behavior. We highlight and discuss some of these intriguing possibilities for future research.

Improving manual skills in persons with disabilities (PWD) through a multimodal assistance system.

UNLABELLED: In this research work, we present a Multimodal Guidance System (MGS) whose aim is to provide dynamic assistance to persons with disabilities (PWD) while performing manual activities such as drawing, coloring in and foam-cutting tasks. The MGS provides robotic assistance in the execution of 2D tasks through haptic and sound interactions. Haptic technology provides the virtual path of 2D shapes through the point-based approach, while sound technology provides audio feedback inputs related to the hand's velocity while sketching and filling or cutting operations. By combining this Multimodal System with the haptic assistance, we have created a new approach with possible applications to such diverse fields as physical rehabilitation, scientific investigation of sensorimotor learning and assessment of hand movements in PWD. The MGS has been tested by people with specific disorders affecting coordination, such as Down syndrome and developmental disabilities, under the supervision of their teachers and care assistants inside their learning environment. A Graphic User Interface has been designed for teachers and care assistants in order to provide training during the test sessions. Our results provide conclusive evidence that the effect of using the MGS increases the accuracy in the tasks operations. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION: The Multimodal Guidance System (MGS) is an interface that offers haptic and sound feedback while performing manual tasks. Several studies demonstrated that the haptic guidance systems can help people in recovering cognitive function at different levels of complexity and impairment. The applications supported by our device could also have an important role in supporting physical therapist and cognitive psychologist in helping patients to recover motor and visuo-spatial abilities.