Rapid Neural Representations of Personally Relevant Faces.

The faces of those most personally relevant to us are our primary source of social information, making their timely perception a priority. Recent research indicates that gender, age and identity of faces can be decoded from EEG/MEG data within 100 ms. Yet, the time course and neural circuitry involved in representing the personal relevance of faces remain unknown. We applied simultaneous EEG-fMRI to examine neural responses to emotional faces of female participants' romantic partners, friends, and a stranger. Combining EEG and fMRI in cross-modal representational similarity analyses, we provide evidence that representations of personal relevance start prior to structural encoding at 100 ms, with correlated representations in visual cortex, but also in prefrontal and midline regions involved in value representation, and monitoring and recall of self-relevant information. Our results add to an emerging body of research that suggests that models of face perception need to be updated to account for rapid detection of personal relevance in cortical circuitry beyond the core face processing network.

Cerebral processing of proper and common nouns: Perception and production following left hemisphere damage.

The goal of this study was to further investigate hemispheric specialization for proper and common nouns by examining the ability of individuals with left hemisphere damage (LHD) to perceive and verbally reproduce famous names and matched common names compared with the performance of matched healthy controls (HC). Ten individuals with LHD due to stroke and 16 age- and education-matched HC completed recognition and production tasks of famous proper and common nouns. All tasks were designed as split-visual field experiments, modelled after the study done by Ohnesorge and Van Lancker. Results contribute to a better understanding of hemispheric roles in perception and production of famous proper nouns, suggesting that (1) both hemispheres can recognize famous proper nouns, possibly due to a right hemisphere role in personal relevance and (2) production of proper nouns as well as common nouns is associated with left hemisphere.

The Moderating Role of Mood and Personal Relevance on Persuasive Effects of Gain- and Loss-Framed Health Messages.

We predicted that mood would moderate the relation between message framing and two outcome variables, message evaluation and behavioral intention, when the message was personally relevant to the target audience. Participants (N = 242) were randomly assigned to an experimental condition in which a positive or negative mood was induced. Participants then read and evaluated a health message that emphasized potential benefits or risks associated with a vaccine. As predicted, participants who received a loss-framed message reported higher message evaluation and intention scores but only when the message was personally relevant and they were in a positive mood.

Knowledge, perceptions and preferences of elderly regarding protein-enriched functional food.

Promoting protein consumption in the elderly population may contribute to improving the quality of their later years in life. Our study aimed to explore knowledge, perceptions and preferences of elderly consumers regarding protein-enriched food. We conducted three focus groups with independently living (ID) elderly (N = 24, Mage = 67 years) and three with elderly living in a residential home (RH) (N = 18, Mage = 83 years). Both the ID and RH elderly were predominantly sceptical about functional food in general. Confusion, distrust and a perceived lack of personal relevance were main perceived barriers to purchasing and consuming these products, although a majority of the participants did report occasionally consuming at least one type of functional food. For the ID elderly, medical advice was an important facilitator that could overcome barriers to purchasing and consuming protein-enriched food, indicating the importance of personal relevance for this group. For the RH elderly, in contrast, sensory appeal of protein-enriched foods was a facilitator. Carrier preferences were similar for the two groups; the elderly preferred protein-enriched foods based on healthy products that they consumed frequently. Future studies should explore ways to deal with the confusion and distrust regarding functional food within the heterogeneous population of elderly.

"That Looks Like My Kitchen!" - Personalized context by usage frequency and familiarity influences consumer perception and liking of chicken nuggets in VR.

Restoring relevant context during consumer sensory testing using virtual reality (VR) technologies may facilitate evaluations reflective of real-world experiences, enabling reliable data collection to better predict product success. Prior research has applied the same consumption scenario to all participants without accounting for variations in individual consumption habits. Thus, a consumption scenario of low personal relevance can lead to misleading conclusions. This study aimed to investigate how personal relevance (usage frequency and similarity) of a consumption environment influences consumer perception and acceptance during product evaluations. Using a VR system, 63 consumers evaluated four commercial frozen chicken nuggets in three virtual environments one week apart: sensory booth, high-relevance kitchen, and low-relevance kitchen. Participants assessed the products virtually on overall liking, Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) on 20 attributes, and purchase intent. They also completed a virtual presence and engagement questionnaire after testing. Results found better product discrimination in both kitchen environments compared to the booth as demonstrated in more post-hoc statistical subgroups (p's < 0.05) on liking and purchase intent. Additionally, more significant product differences were found among CATA attributes in the kitchens. CATA penalty-lift analyses indicated that sensory attributes had more pronounced positive and negative impacts on liking in the high relevance kitchen, followed by the low relevance kitchen, and lastly the booth. Consumers were equally present and engaged during testing across conditions (p's > 0.05). Results suggest providing a personally relevant consumption environment via VR technologies for consumer testing generated more discriminating data that can improve the quality of consumer insights.

Exploring the evocative qualities of masks' visual imagery and their associations with adversity and trauma.

Introduction: Studies suggest a relationship between the emotional evocativeness of visual imagery and viewer responses, however, there is limited understanding of these associations, especially as they relate to viewers' personal experiences of adversities. Methods: In this exploratory study, we examined the relationship between the visual content of mask images and viewers' responses. In an online survey 699 participants (of n = 1,010 total initial participants) rated 98 masks based on valence, arousal, and personal relevance and completed the Life Events Checklist. The masks included those created by service members (SMs) with traumatic brain injury (TBI), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depicting physical, psychological, and moral injuries and matched neutral masks created by creative arts therapists and arts in health scholars. Findings: The findings indicated that responses to mask image content (traumatic versus neutral) were associated with viewers' personal history of adversity and trauma. Specifically, images representing injury/trauma provoked stronger reactions on valence and arousal than neutral images. Moreover, participants with personal histories of trauma had heightened emotional responses to distressing imagery. Discussion: These findings have implications for art therapists as well as for clinical and general populations in that these results highlight the potential impact of distressing imagery particularly for individuals with personal histories of experiencing or witnessing traumatic events.

Does Considering the Consequences of Selective Exposure Help Reduce Selective Exposure Behaviors?

Selective exposure (the tendency to avoid information one disagrees with) is particularly easy to do and leads to problematic outcomes. This study investigated if personally relevant message frames would increase participant engagement and agreement when reading a counterattitudinal message. Participants (N = 180) were randomly assigned into one of three message frames: the idea attack frame asked participants to recall a time their ideas were attacked or summarily dismissed; the unable to defend position frame asked participants to recall a time they were vulnerable due to a lack of knowledge; and an irrelevant-frame control. Participants then read a counterattitudinal message about increasing internet service taxes. Next, participants rated their message agreement, and self-perceived engagement level. Although the messages did not influence agreement, the unable to defend position and the idea attack frames influenced participants to be more engaged with the message. This suggests that people are motivated to engage more with a counterattitudinal message when they are reminded of a time in which they were vulnerable due to a lack of knowledge or when others were summarily dismissive of their own ideas. Overall, both frames showed some promise and should be explored further.

It's who, not what that matters: personal relevance and early face processing.

The faces of our friends and loved ones are among the most pervasive and important social stimuli we encounter in our everyday lives. We employed electroencephalography to investigate the time line of personally relevant face processing and potential interactions with emotional facial expressions by presenting female participants with photographs of their romantic partner, a close friend and a stranger, displaying fearful, happy and neutral facial expressions. Our results revealed elevated activity to the partner's face from 100 ms after stimulus onset as evident in increased amplitudes of P1, early posterior negativity, P3 and late positive component, while there were no effects of emotional expressions and no interactions. Our findings indicate the prominent role of personal relevance in face processing; the time course of effects further suggests that it might not rely solely on the core face processing network but might start even before the stage of structural face encoding. Our results suggest a new direction of research in which face processing models should be expanded to adequately capture the dynamics of the processing of real-life, personally relevant faces.

Is It Personal? The Impact of Personally Relevant Robotic Failures (PeRFs) on Humans' Trust, Likeability, and Willingness to Use the Robot.

In three laboratory experiments, we examine the impact of personally relevant failures (PeRFs) on users' perceptions of a collaborative robot. PeR is determined by how much a specific issue applies to a particular person, i.e., it affects one's own goals and values. We hypothesized that PeRFs would reduce trust in the robot and the robot's Likeability and Willingness to Use (LWtU) more than failures that are not personal to participants. To achieve PeR in human-robot interaction, we utilized three different manipulation mechanisms: (A) damage to property, (B) financial loss, and (C) first-person versus third-person failure scenarios. In total, 132 participants engaged with a robot in person during a collaborative task of laundry sorting. All three experiments took place in the same experimental environment, carefully designed to simulate a realistic laundry sorting scenario. Results indicate that the impact of PeRFs on perceptions of the robot varied across the studies. In experiments A and B, the encounters with PeRFs reduced trust significantly relative to a no failure session. But not entirely for LWtU. In experiment C, the PeR manipulation had no impact. The work highlights challenges and adjustments needed for studying robotic failures in laboratory settings. We show that PeR manipulations affect how users perceive a failing robot. The results bring about new questions regarding failure types and their perceived severity on users' perception of the robot. Putting PeR aside, we observed differences in the way users perceive interaction failures compared (experiment C) to how they perceive technical ones (A and B).

Image Framing, Emoticons, and Sharing Intention for Health-Related Posts on Facebook.

In response to calls for greater integration of research on the effects of visual images in the emotional and cognitive processing of health-related posts on Facebook, this study examined the questions of how gain-and-loss framed images, the valence of emoticon responses, and level of personal relevance of health topics contribute toward intentional engagement (e.g., sharing the posts) on Facebook. This study conducted a 2 (visual framing: gain vs. loss) × 2 (personal relevance of health topic: high vs. low) × 2 (emoticon valence: positive vs. negative) mixed-factorial experiment. A total of 187 college students were recruited to assess the impact of visual framing, personal relevance, and emoticon valence on sharing intention. Results showed that negative emoticons led to a higher intention to share health news posts than positive emoticons. Moreover, two parallel mediation models showed that (a) gain-framed images with high-relevance topics positively predicted perceived susceptibility but negatively predicted perceived severity that both positively impacted sharing intention; (b) loss-framed images with low-relevance topics positively predicted perceived severity but negatively predicted perceived susceptibility that both positively impacted the sharing intention. The implications regarding the contribution to the literature of visual framing and emotion on social media engagement and health communication are discussed.

Why Do We "Like" on WeChat Moments: The Effects of Personality Traits and Content Characteristics.

To probe the motivational roles of hedonic gratification and social gratification in giving "Like" feedback on social media, we developed a set of novel pictures to simulate WeChat Moments. We subsequently examined how the personality trait of extraversion and stimulus content characteristics (e.g., emotional valence, personal relevance) influenced "Liking" behavior. A 2 (extraversion: extrovert group vs. introvert group) × 3 (emotional valence: positive vs. neutral vs. negative) × 2 (personal relevance: personally relevant vs. personally irrelevant)-mixed experimental design was applied to data obtained from 56 WeChat Moments users. These participants included 28 individuals with the highest extraversion scale scores (the extrovert group), and 28 individuals with the lowest extraversion scale scores (the introvert group), according to the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Briefly, participants observed pictures on an interface similar to that of WeChat Moments and were given the option to "Like" each picture. "Like" rates and response time were then compared across groups and conditions by applying a mixed-design analysis of variance. Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated to explore relationships between the "Like" rates under each condition and the scores for each personality trait. Compared with the neutral pictures, the positive and negative pictures were "Liked" more and less frequently, respectively (F 2, 108 = 46.22, p < 0.001). Compared with the poster-unrelated pictures, the personally related pictures were "Liked" more frequently (F 1, 54 = 19.54, p < 0.001). In the extrovert group, the frequency of "Likes" given to unrelated negative content positively associated with neuroticism (r = 0.42, p = 0.025) and negatively associated with conscientiousness (r = -0.46, p = 0.014). No correlations were observed in the introvert group. Compared with not giving "Like" feedback, participants gave "Likes" to positive and negative pictures more quickly (p = 0.035) and slowly (p < 0.001), respectively.These results support the hypothesis that hedonic gratification and social gratification motivate "Like" feedback for positive content and personally related content, respectively. "Liking" behavior was not affected by extraversion, but was related to neuroticism and conscientiousness. Content-related differences in time intervals for giving "Like" feedback in this study suggest that people do not hesitate to give "Like" feedback to positive content on WeChat Moments, yet linger in deciding to give "Like" feedback to negative content.

Prioritization of personally relevant stimuli in male abstinent heroin users.

The prioritization of the processing of highly relevant personal stimuli pervades various cognitive domains and is vital to our survival and normal functioning. However, the extent to which this process is altered by drug addiction remains to be elucidated. The present study examined the self-prioritization effect in abstinent heroin users (AHUs) using the perceptual matching task, which controls for the confounding effect of familiarity, and further modified it to revalidate the drug-prioritization effect (DPE). Eighty male AHUs and forty healthy control (HC) participants were recruited for this study. Participants filled in the questionnaire and completed two perceptual matching tasks. The questionnaire included demographic information (e.g., age, education) and characteristics of drug use, whereas the HC participants only completed the demographic information. AHUs exhibited a robust self-advantage in the self-perceptual matching task, and that the magnitude of the self-prioritization effect (MSPE) was comparable to that in HCs. Only AHUs prioritized the processing of drug-related stimuli in the drug-perceptual matching task, and showed similar prioritization effects during self- and drug-related processing. The MSPE and magnitude of the drug-prioritization effect (MDPE) were correlated with the heroin consumption behavior in AHUs. The process of self-prioritization is intact in drug users, and they uniquely prioritize the processing of drug cues. The similar pattern between the self- and drug-related processing provided behavioral evidence to support that drug cues are likely to be associated with heightened personal relevance in drug users. These prioritization processes may play critical roles in addiction and provide a promising route for intervention.

Is the news making us unhappy? The influence of daily news exposure on emotional states.

There is evidence that exposure to negative news is making people feel bad, but not much is known about why this only affects some people or whether this also applies to everyday news exposure. This study examined the direct and indirect effects of daily news exposure on people's affective states. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), 63 respondents (24 men and 39 women) reported their news exposure and affective states five times a day for 10 days. In addition, personal relevance of the news and personality characteristics, neuroticism and extraversion, were assessed. Results showed that negative news perceptions were related to more negative affect and less positive affect, and these effects were moderated by personal relevance, but not personality characteristics. The implications of these outcomes are discussed.

Effectiveness of the level of personal relevance of visual autobiographical stimuli in the induction of positive emotions in young and older adults: pilot study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: The ability to retrieve specific memories is a cognitive and emotional protective factor. Among the most effective techniques to generate autobiographical memories is the use of audio-visual stimuli, particularly images. Developing and improving techniques that facilitate the generation of such memories could be highly effective in the prevention of depressive symptoms, especially in the elderly population. The aim of the present study is to examine how the level of personal relevance of pictures as autobiographical memory cues to induce positive emotions may affect an individual's emotion regulation. METHODS: The participants, 120 older adults aged 65 and over and 120 young adults aged between 18 and 35, of both sexes and without depressive symptoms, will be induced to a negative mood state by means of viewing a film clip. Following the negative mood induction, the participants will be shown positive images according to experimental group to which they were randomly assigned (high personal relevance: personal autobiographical photographs; medium personal relevance: pictures of favourite locations associated with specific positive autobiographical memories; and low personal relevance: positive images from the International Affective Picture System). We will analyse the differences in subjective (responses to questionnaires) and objectives measures (EEG signal, heart rate variability and electrodermal activity) between the groups before and after the induction of negative affect and following the recall of positive memories. DISCUSSION: The use of images associated with specific positive autobiographical memories may be an effective input for inducing positive mood states, which has potentially important implications for their use as a cognitive behavioural technique to treat emotional disorders, such as depression, which are highly prevalent among older adults. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04251104 . Registered on 30 January 2020.

The impact of personal relevance on emotion processing: evidence from event-related potentials and pupillary responses.

Emotional stimuli attract attention and lead to increased activity in the visual cortex. The present study investigated the impact of personal relevance on emotion processing by presenting emotional words within sentences that referred to participants' significant others or to unknown agents. In event-related potentials, personal relevance increased visual cortex activity within 100 ms after stimulus onset and the amplitudes of the Late Positive Complex (LPC). Moreover, personally relevant contexts gave rise to augmented pupillary responses and higher arousal ratings, suggesting a general boost of attention and arousal. Finally, personal relevance increased emotion-related ERP effects starting around 200 ms after word onset; effects for negative words compared to neutral words were prolonged in duration. Source localizations of these interactions revealed activations in prefrontal regions, in the visual cortex and in the fusiform gyrus. Taken together, these results demonstrate the high impact of personal relevance on reading in general and on emotion processing in particular.

Facing two faces: Defense activation varies as a function of personal relevance.

It can be unsettling to be watched by a group of people, and when they express anger or hostility, this can prime defensive behavior. In contrast, when others smile at us, this may be comforting. This study tested to which degree the impact of facial expressions (happy, neutral, and angry) varies with the personal relevance of a social situation. Modelling a triadic situation, two faces looked either directly at the participant, faced each other, or they were back to back. Results confirmed that this variation constitutes a gradient of personal relevance (directed frontally > towards > away), as reflected by corresponding defensive startle modulation and autonomic nervous system activity. This gradient was particularly pronounced for angry faces and it was steeper in participants with higher levels of social anxiety. Thus, sender-recipient constellations modulate the processing of facial emotions in favor of adequate behavioral responding (e.g., avoidance) in group settings.

Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing.

The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer-conveyed by facial expression and face direction-amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations.

The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-Induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation.

A core aspect of the human self is the attribution of personal relevance to everyday stimuli enabling us to experience our environment as meaningful [1]. However, abnormalities in the attribution of personal relevance to sensory experiences are also critical features of many psychiatric disorders [2, 3]. Despite their clinical relevance, the neurochemical and anatomical substrates enabling meaningful experiences are largely unknown. Therefore, we investigated the neuropharmacology of personal relevance processing in humans by combining fMRI and the administration of the mixed serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine receptor (R) agonist lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), well known to alter the subjective meaning of percepts, with and without pretreatment with the 5-HT2AR antagonist ketanserin. General subjective LSD effects were fully blocked by ketanserin. In addition, ketanserin inhibited the LSD-induced attribution of personal relevance to previously meaningless stimuli and modulated the processing of meaningful stimuli in cortical midline structures. These findings point to the crucial role of the 5-HT2AR subtype and cortical midline regions in the generation and attribution of personal relevance. Our results thus increase our mechanistic understanding of personal relevance processing and reveal potential targets for the treatment of psychiatric illnesses characterized by alterations in personal relevance attribution.

Empathy and visual perspective-taking performance.

This study examined the extent to which visual perspective-taking performance is modulated by trait-level empathy. Participants completed a third-person visual perspective-taking task in which they judged the perspectives of two simultaneously presented avatars, designated "Self" and "Other." Depending on the trial, these avatars either held the same view (i.e., congruent) or a different view (i.e., incongruent). Analyses focused on the relationship between empathy and two perspective-taking phenomena: Selection between competing perspectives (i.e., perspective-congruence effects) and prioritization of the Self avatar's perspective. Empathy was related to improved overall performance on this task and a reduced cost of selecting between conflicting perspectives (i.e., smaller perspective-congruence effects). This effect was asymmetric, with empathy (i.e., empathic concern) levels predicting reduced interference from a conflicting perspective, especially when adopting the Self (vs. Other) avatar's perspective. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of the self-other distinction and mental flexibility components of empathy.

Effects of personal relevance and simulated darkness on the affective appraisal of a virtual environment.

This study investigated whether personal relevance influences the affective appraisal of a desktop virtual environment (VE) in simulated darkness. In the real world, darkness often evokes thoughts of vulnerability, threat, and danger, and may automatically precipitate emotional responses consonant with those thoughts (fear of darkness). This influences the affective appraisal of a given environment after dark and the way humans behave in that environment in conditions of low lighting. Desktop VEs are increasingly deployed to study the effects of environmental qualities and (architectural or lighting) interventions on human behaviour and feelings of safety. Their (ecological) validity for these purposes depends critically on their ability to correctly address the user's cognitive and affective experience. Previous studies with desktop (i.e., non-immersive) VEs found that simulated darkness only slightly affects the user's behavioral and emotional responses to the represented environment, in contrast to the responses observed for immersive VEs. We hypothesize that the desktop VE scenarios used in previous studies less effectively induced emotional and behavioral responses because they lacked personal relevance. In addition, factors like signs of social presence and relatively high levels of ambient lighting may also have limited these responses. In this study, young female volunteers explored either a daytime or a night-time (low ambient light level) version of a desktop VE representing a deserted (no social presence) prototypical Dutch polder landscape. To enhance the personal relevance of the simulation, a fraction of the participants were led to believe that the virtual exploration tour would prepare them for a follow-up tour through the real world counterpart of the VE. The affective appraisal of the VE and the emotional response of the participants were measured through self-report. The results show that the VE was appraised as slightly less pleasant and more arousing in simulated darkness (compared to a daylight) condition, as expected. However, the fictitious follow-up assignment had no emotional effects and did not influence the affective appraisal of the VE. Further research is required to establish the qualities that may enhance the validity of desktop VEs for both etiological (e.g., the effects of signs of darkness on navigation behaviour and fear of crime) and intervention (e.g., effects of street lighting on feelings of safety) research.