Gender effect in affective processing: Alpha EEG source analysis on emotional slides and film-clips.

Past research on gender-related brain asymmetries in emotions was limited and not univocal. The present study analyzed EEG alpha activity (indexing cortical de-activation) from 64 scalp sites in 20 women and 20 men during a counterbalanced block presentation of emotional slides and short video-clips. Stimuli consisted of 45 brief clips of 13 s, divided into 15 erotic (pleasant), 15 neutral and 15 fear (unpleasant) contents. Slides consisted in 45 photo shots (presented for 13 s each) extracted from the videos. As expected, women perceived fear stimuli as more arousing and more unpleasant compared to men. Alpha EEG source analysis revealed gender effects depending on stimulus. Emotional film-clips elicited in both groups a pattern of greater right than left occipital activation. Instead, emotional pictures activated opposite occipital regions, as women showed greater activation in the left, men in the right hemisphere. Men also showed greater activation to Erotic compared to Fear stimuli (i.e., pictures/clips) in the posterior parietal complex. Results point to the relevance of emotional stimulus type to reveal gender effects: clips are ecological, dynamic and engaging, and forced a unified pattern of emotional responses that reset individual differences. Emotional pictures, less engaging, allowed individual differences to emerge and interact with the stimulus category.

Generalization of savoring to novel positive stimuli.

Savoring is a positive emotion up-regulation technique that can increase electrocortical and self-reported valence and arousal to positive and neutral pictures, with effects persisting to increase response to the same stimuli when encountered later. Outside of the lab, emotion regulation techniques that persist to affect not just encounters with the same stimuli but also encounters with similar, but previously unencountered stimuli should save individuals time and effort. Here, we used event-related potentials and picture ratings to test whether savoring would generalize to similar, but previously unseen positive pictures. To this end, 89 participants (56 female; M age = 18.96 years, SD = 1.87) were asked to savor positive pictures from one category (e.g., happy people) and to view positive pictures from another category (e.g., cute animals), as well as to view neutral pictures (e.g., plants). In a subsequent passive picture viewing task, participants viewed novel pictures from all three categories (i.e., happy people, cute animals, plants). In the first task, savoring was effective for pictures of animals throughout picture presentation, but only for pictures of people during the later part of picture presentation. In the second task, savoring generalized to novel pictures of animals, though this was only evident in the early portion of picture processing (and for self-reported ratings). Therefore, savoring holds promise as a useful technique for increasing positive emotion in everyday life, though more work is needed to understand whether effects may vary depending on different types of picture content.

Preschool children generate quantity inferences from both words and pictures.

As children learn to communicate with others, they must develop an understanding of the principles that underlie human communication. Recent evidence suggests that adults expect communicative principles to govern all forms of communication, not just language, but evidence about children's ability to do so is sparse. This study investigated whether preschool children expect both pictures and words to adhere to the communicative principle of quantity using a simple matched paradigm. Children (N = 293) aged of 3 to 5 years (52.5% male and 47.5% female; majority White with college-educated mothers) participated. Results show that children as young as 3.5 years can use the communicative principle of quantity to infer meaning across verbal and pictorial alternatives.

A processing advantage in favor of animate entities in incidental word learning in young children.

Because of their evolutionary importance, it has been proposed that animate entities would be better remembered than inanimate entities. Although a growing body of evidence supports this hypothesis, it is still unclear whether the animacy effect persists under incidental learning conditions. Furthermore, few studies have tested the robustness of this effect in young children, with conflicting results. Using an incidental learning paradigm, we investigated whether young children (4- and 5-year-olds) would be better at learning words that refer to either human or animal entities rather than vehicle entities using pictures as stimuli. A sample of 79 children were asked to play digital Memory games while associations between pictures and words were presented incidentally. Consistent with the adaptive view of memory, the results showed that words associated with human and animal entities were better learned incidentally than words associated with vehicle entities. The visual complexity of the pictures did not influence this animacy effect. In addition, the more exposure to the pictures, the more incidental learning occurred. Overall, the results confirm the robustness of the animacy effect and show that this processing advantage can be found in an incidental learning task in children as young as 4 or 5 years. Furthermore, it is the first study to show that this effect can be obtained with pictures in children. The demonstration of the animacy effect with pictures, and not just words, is a prerequisite for an ultimate explanation of this effect in terms of survival.

Inducing emotionally negative nonbelieved memories using negative pictures.

Memories that can be recalled but are no longer believed are termed nonbelieved memories. The current studies examined the creation of emotionally negative nonbelieved memories after viewing negatively valenced pictures. In both experiments, participants took part in two sessions. In Session 1, after being presented with a set of neutral and negative pictures, participants had to rate their emotional state. One week later, in Session 2, participants had to complete a recognition task to identify pictures that had appeared during the previous session. During this task, participants' memories for some pictures were challenged by telling them that their answers were incorrect in order to evoke nonbelieved memories. The experimental procedure was successful in creating nonbelieved memories in the participants. Specifically, in Experiment 1 (N = 35), we induced nonbelieved true memories for both negative and neutral pictures. We found a significant decrease in both belief and recollection after the challenge, with the change in belief being twice as large as the change in recollection. In Experiment 2 (N = 43), we successfully induced both nonbelieved true and false memories for negative pictures. Again, the reduction of belief was significantly greater than that of recollection. In general, participants evinced better memory for negative pictures, but following challenges people were just as likely to accept false social feedback and change their memories regarding other types of pictures. In both experiments, our challenges did not lead to notable changes in emotional state. In general, our findings show that emotionally negative nonbelieved memories can be successfully evoked in an experimental setting.

Effects of bitten food images in marketing communications.

Marketing communications (e.g., food packages, restaurant menus, coupons, social media posts) often include images of bitten and non-bitten (i.e., complete) foods. Taking an empirics first approach, the current research explores how and why these images influence consumers. A field study shows a higher redemption rate for discount coupons featuring a bitten (vs. non-bitten) food. However, a controlled online study fails to replicate this effect. Two additional preregistered studies shed light on the inconsistent results observed online and in the field by identifying two competing mechanisms catalyzed by bitten food images. Bitten food images lead to vicarious enticement, an automatic process in which a viewer makes sense of a bitten food image by picturing someone approaching and tasting the food, as well as emotional conflict (i.e., the simultaneous activation of positive and negative thoughts and feelings). While vicarious enticement has a positive impact on product responses, emotional conflict has a negative impact. The effect of bitten (vs. non-bitten) food images on product responses appears to depend on the strength of these two mechanisms in a given context. These findings yield insights for researchers examining visual characteristics of food images as well as advertisers designing marketing communications.

Accuracy and completeness of autobiographical memory: evidence from a wearable camera study.

A small wearable camera, SenseCam, passively captured pictures from everyday experience that were later used to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of autobiographical memory. Nine undergraduates wore SenseCams that took pictures every 10 s for two days. After one week and one month, participants first recalled their experiences from specific time periods (timeslices), then reviewed the corresponding pictures to make corrections and report information omitted from initial recall. Results demonstrated the utility of wearable cameras as research tools, and illustrated several characteristics of everyday memory. Recall contents reflected the structure of undergraduate lives. Three different types of omissions were reported: neglected, reminded, and forgotten. Pictures stimulated memory, even for non-visual information (e.g., feelings, thoughts), increasing recall by 23%. The mean completeness of initial recall was 79% (upper bound), with at least 21% forgetting. Accuracy was self-scored by participants (M = 89%), and the mean error rate (11%) provided evidence against strong reconstructive and copy theories of memory. The characteristics of errors shed light on the cognitive processes underlying them. Ratings of recall (confidence, reliving, knowledge, and frequency) supported the episodic/semantic distinction, the dual-process theory of repetition, and reconstructive imagery. Metamemory measures showed a positive correlation between confidence and accuracy.

Visual images of disgusting creatures facilitated attentional orienting and delayed attentional disengagement.

Numerous studies have suggested that threatening stimuli induce a spatial attention bias; however, only a few studies have investigated spatial attention biases for disgusting stimuli. Moreover, past studies generally reported that the spatial attention bias to disgusting images is not robustly in normal individuals. We hypothesized that this was due to the unfamiliar of the images, so we prepared the creature's images that were clearly categorized as disgusting and examined the effects of disgusting images on spatial attention bias. A disgusting or an emotionally neutral image was paired and presented with an (emotionally neutral) filler image. After a temporal interval, a target appeared at either the position where a disgusting or a neutral image was presented (valid condition) or where a filler image was presented (invalid condition). Participants pressed a key corresponding to the target's position as quickly and accurately as possible. We varied the position-response correspondence among three experiments. The results showed that the RTs in the invalid condition was longer for the disgusting images than for the neutral images when the position of a disgusting image was not naturally associated with the left-right hand position. We interpreted the results in that that disgusting images generally slowed down attentional disengagement process but the manual responses were inhibited for the position where a disgusting image appeared when the locations of keys and targets were congruent. The present results suggest that disgusting images affect not only attentional processes but also manual responses related to the selection and initiation of responses.

Electrophysiological normative responses to emotional, neutral, and cigarette-related images.

To create reproducible emotional probes, affective scientists rely on sets of standardized pictures that are normed using subjective ratings of valence and emotional arousal. However, when emotional responses are investigated using neurophysiological measures, it might be more appropriate to select pictures integrating information from normative subjective reports and normative neurophysiological responses. Here, we provide electrophysiological normative responses for 323 emotional pictures (215 from the IAPS) covering a wide range of categories (erotica, romantic, appetizing foods, landscapes, people engaged in mundane activities, household objects, disgusting objects, accidents, sad people, violence, mutilations, and cigarette-related contents). Event-related potentials (ERPs) and subjective ratings of pleasure and emotional arousal were collected from 763 individuals (52% females, 41% white) aged between 18 and 65 (mean = 43). For each image, the mean amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP, an electrophysiological index of motivational relevance) and the mean subjective ratings of valence and arousal were calculated. We validated our procedure by showing that the subjective ratings of valence and arousal from this sample were highly correlated to the IAPS' published norms (Pearson r = .97 for pleasure and r = .82 for emotional arousal). LPP responses and subjective ratings of emotional arousal also were correlated (Pearson r = .61), but some categories reported being significantly more arousing than neutral (i.e., food, landscapes, and unpleasant objects) did not evoke LPPs significantly different from those evoked by neutral pictures. Researchers interested in probing the brain's affective systems can use these electrophysiological normative responses to create emotional probes that evoke reliable neuroaffective responses.

From moulage to metrics: Bibliometric survey of visual arts in dermatopathology and dermatology.

BACKGROUND: Both dermatopathology and dermatology are highly visual medical specialties. We performed a bibliometric literature survey of the visual arts in reference to either discipline to better understand how medical literature approaches art within the context of the two specialties. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed a bibliometric analysis of publications found via multiple medical search engines and selected keywords meant to capture art-related publications in dermatopathology and dermatology. Keywords (art, portrait, painting, dermatology, dermatopathology) and keyword combinations were entered into the search engines PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Pubs Hub, and Scopus. Topics of articles, years of publication, countries of origin, and contributing journals were compiled and analyzed. RESULTS: Eighty publications were retrieved between January 1903 and August 2021. The highest number of articles were found in both PubMed and Google Scholar (n = 55), and the top publication year was 2020 (n = 11). Geographically, the United States of America (n = 38) had the greatest number of articles. The dermatology and art keyword combination yielded the most journal articles (n = 36), and the maximum number of publications were retrieved from JAMA Dermatology (n = 14) followed by the American Journal of Dermatopathology (n = 10). CONCLUSION: Our survey showed an increasing number of publications related to the visual arts and dermatopathology/dermatology during the examined period, and a transition from observational case studies (often relating to art history) to articles examining the incorporation of the visual arts into medical training programs or professional societies.

"I have to translate the colors": Description and implications of a genuine case of phoneme color synaesthesia.

The aim of this paper was to assess the genuineness of a case of phoneme color synesthesia (VA) by evaluating the influence of several psycholinguistic levels with different stimuli (isolated vowels, nonsense syllables, and words). Results demonstrate the robustness of the synesthesia no matter what the type of stimuli. To explore how this form of synesthesia manifested itself in everyday conversation, interviews were also conducted. VA reported that, in the context of conversation, phonemes still evoked colors that she had to translate in order to access the meaning. She also reported that her mental representations were multisensorial and that the verbal dimension was almost non-existent. We address several implications of this phoneme color synesthesia: the atypical speech perception that it implies, the cognitive cost of this stable system, and its relation to a specific cognitive functioning.

"Silent screams": Family perceptions in the drawings of incest victim children.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to examine the family perceptions in the drawings of children exposed to incest. DESIGN AND METHODS: This qualitative research involved 25 child survivors of incest, all of whom were examined and subjected to forensic interviews at a facility in northern Türkiye specializing in cases of child sexual abuse. The data were collected using the "Child and Family Descriptive Information Form", the "Abuser Descriptive Information Form", the "Family Drawing Test", and the "Semi-structured Interview Form". RESULTS: The children's drawings were subjected to a projective analysis, leading to the identification of three key themes: the distress of confronting incest; unbalanced power and role allocation in the family; and dysfunctional family dynamics.". These themes were discerned by examining the connections and coherence between the categories. CONCLUSION: It is concluded in the study that who are exposed to incest perceived a trauma experience that affected the whole family, perceived unbalanced power and role allocation in the family with authoritarian-aggressive and submissive-oppressed roles, and had negative perceptions of family dynamics such as emotional ties, family integrity, and social interaction. IMPLICATIONS TO PRACTICE: This study emphasizes the need to restructure the issues of familial trauma, power and role imbalance, and unmet needs within the family while planning for trauma in nursing approaches to children who are victims of incest.

Stimuli in 3 Acts: A normative study on action-statements, action videos and object photos.

The study of action observation and imagery, separately and combined, is expanding in diverse research areas (e.g., sports psychology, neurosciences), making clear the need for action-related stimuli (i.e., action statements, videos, and pictures). Although several databases of object and action pictures are available, norms on action videos are scarce. In this study, we validated a set of 60 object-related everyday actions in three different formats: action-statements, and corresponding dynamic (action videos) and static (object photos) stimuli. In Study 1, ratings of imageability, image agreement, action familiarity, action frequency, and action valence were collected from 161 participants. In Study 2, a different sample of 115 participants rated object familiarity, object valence, and object-action prototypicality. Most actions were rated as easy to imagine, familiar, and neutral or positive in valence. However, there was variation in the frequency with which participants perform these actions on a daily basis. High agreement between participants' mental image and action videos was also found, showing that the videos depict a conventional way of performing the actions. Objects were considered familiar and positive in valence. High ratings on object-action prototypicality indicate that the actions correspond to prototypical actions for most objects. 3ActStimuli is a comprehensive set of stimuli that can be useful in several research areas, allowing the combined study of action observation and imagery.

Gender Differences in Sending Nude Pictures and Videos Across Multiple Relationship Contexts in the Adult Norwegian Population.

This article aims to determine the prevalence of sending nude pictures/videos in the Norwegian population and investigates gender differences regarding consensual, unsolicited, and coerced experiences. Data were obtained from a probability-based web survey of 2181 men and 1967 women between 18 and 89 years old. The majority of participants expressed relatively accepting attitudes toward sending nude pictures/videos, and men expressed more positive attitudes than women. Twenty-nine percent of participants reported having lifetime experience with sending nude pictures/videos, and sending nude pictures/videos was more common in younger individuals than older individuals. More women than men claimed that they sent their most recent nude picture to a committed partner, and twice as many men than women had sent a nude picture to a stranger or a person they only had contact with on the Internet. In addition, more than twice as many women than men reported consensual sending nude pictures/videos, and more men than women sent unsolicited pictures/videos. Consensual sending nude pictures/videos was characterized by the presence of men and women within committed relationships. In Norway, sending nude pictures/videos seems to be a way of being sexual in the context of committed relationships.

How to do Better N400 Studies: Reproducibility, Consistency and Adherence to Research Standards in the Existing Literature.

Given the complexity of ERP recording and processing pipeline, the resulting variability of methodological options, and the potential for these decisions to influence study outcomes, it is important to understand how ERP studies are conducted in practice and to what extent researchers are transparent about their data collection and analysis procedures. The review gives an overview of methodology reporting in a sample of 132 ERP papers, published between January 1980 - June 2018 in journals included in two large databases: Web of Science and PubMed. Because ERP methodology partly depends on the study design, we focused on a well-established component (the N400) in the most commonly assessed population (healthy neurotypical adults), in one of its most common modalities (visual images). The review provides insights into 73 properties of study design, data pre-processing, measurement, statistics, visualization of results, and references to supplemental information across studies within the same subfield. For each of the examined methodological decisions, the degree of consistency, clarity of reporting and deviations from the guidelines for best practice were examined. Overall, the results show that each study had a unique approach to ERP data recording, processing and analysis, and that at least some details were missing from all papers. In the review, we highlight the most common reporting omissions and deviations from established recommendations, as well as areas in which there was the least consistency. Additionally, we provide guidance for a priori selection of the N400 measurement window and electrode locations based on the results of previous studies.

This is what life with cancer looks like: exploring experiences of adolescent and young adults with cancer using two visual approaches.

INTRODUCTION: Talking about illness experience can be challenging for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer. Visual tools, in addition to spoken language, might make this easier, such as rich pictures and photovoice. We aimed to obtain a comprehensive view of the cancer experience of AYAs by using rich pictures and photovoice. METHODS: AYAs (18-35 years old) who had any type of cancer, or were in remission from cancer, were eligible. AYAs drew rich pictures about their experience of living with cancer and explained these during subsequent interviews. Some of the AYAs also participated in photovoice and spent two days with a photographer to make photos about their illness experience. Rich pictures and photos were first analyzed separately, using open coding, after which the identified themes were compared. RESULTS: Twelve AYAs made rich pictures (RPs), of whom seven also participated in photovoice. The two most predominant themes emerging from the data were struggles related to the future and defining one's identity. The AYAs expressed concerns for the future related to relationships, education, and employment. Relating to defining one's identity, many AYAs expressed that the cancer had a negative impact on their body- and self-image. The main themes were visible in the RPs as well as in the photovoice; however, subtle differences in sub-themes were found. CONCLUSIONS: We found that cancer has an effect on many aspects of AYAs' lives. Further research on how the identified themes play a role in the lives of AYAs with cancer is needed.

The antimuscarinic agent biperiden selectively impairs recognition of abstract figures without affecting the processing of non-words.

OBJECTIVES: The present study investigated the effects of biperiden, a muscarinic type 1 antagonist, on the recognition performance of pre-experimentally unfamiliar abstract figures and non-words in healthy young volunteers. The aim was to examine whether 4 mg biperiden could model the recognition memory impairment seen in healthy aging. METHODS: A double-blind, placebo-controlled, two-way crossover study was conducted. We used a three-phase (deep memorization, shallow memorization, and recognition) old/new discrimination paradigm in which memory strength was manipulated. Strong memories were induced by deep encoding and repetition. Deep encoding was encouraged by redrawing the abstract figures and mentioning existing rhyme words for the non-words (semantic processing). Weak memories were created by merely instructing the participants to study the stimuli (shallow memorization). RESULTS: Biperiden impaired recognition accuracy and prolonged reaction times of the drawn and the studied abstract figures. However, participants were biased towards "old" responses in the placebo condition. The recognition of the new abstract figures was unaffected by the drug. Biperiden did not affect the recognition of the non-words. CONCLUSIONS: Although biperiden may model age-related deficits in episodic memory, the current findings indicate that biperiden does not mimic age-related deficits in recognition performance.

Should you "picture" this? Effects of picture-taking features of food diary apps on memory, liking, and wanting.

Picture-taking functions are commonly available features in food diaries and other mobile applications that may influence how we think about the very food we consume. Because memories of food (Higgs & Donohoe, 2011) and the act of recording food consumption (Turk et al., 2013) have been shown to influence desire for and consumption of food, this paper investigated the effects of using the picture-taking feature of a food diary app on liking, wanting, and memory of food. Using a simple food diary app with a picture-taking feature loaded onto iPads, participants took part in a lab experiment where they either did or did not use the picture-taking feature of the app as they ate a snack. To capture the changes in liking and wanting that naturally occur as more food is consumed, participants were also randomly assigned to receive either larger or smaller portions of the snack. The results indicate that picture-taking while eating is associated with greater wanting of the food following consumption. Furthermore, for smaller portions of food, taking pictures during consumption is associated with greater liking of the food. However, taking pictures in the smaller portion size condition was also associated with less detailed recall of food's sensory properties.

Eye-Tracker Study of Influence of Affective Disruptive Content on User's Visual Attention and Emotional State.

When reading interesting content or searching for information on a website, the appearance of a pop-up advertisement in the middle of the screen is perceived as irritating by a recipient. Interrupted cognitive processes are considered unwanted by the user but desired by advertising providers. Diverting visual attention away from the main content is intended to focus the user on the appeared disruptive content. Is the attempt to reach the user by any means justified? In this study, we examined the impact of pop-up emotional content on user reactions. For this purpose, a cognitive experiment was designed where a text-reading task was interrupted by two types of affective pictures: positive and negative ones. To measure the changes in user reactions, an eye-tracker (for analysis of eye movements and changes in gaze points) and an iMotion Platform (for analysis of face muscles' movements) were used. The results confirm the impact of the type of emotional content on users' reactions during cognitive process interruptions and indicate that the negative impact of cognitive process interruptions on the user can be reduced. The negative content evoked lower cognitive load, narrower visual attention, and lower irritation compared to positive content. These results offer insight on how to provide more efficient Internet advertising.

Comparison of RetinaNet-Based Single-Target Cascading and Multi-Target Detection Models for Administrative Regions in Network Map Pictures.

There is a critical need for detection of administrative regions through network map pictures in map censorship tasks, which can be implemented by target detection technology. However, on map images there tend to be numerous administrative regions overlaying map annotations and symbols, thus making it difficult to accurately detect each region. Using a RetinaNet-based target detection model integrating ResNet50 and a feature pyramid network (FPN), this study built a multi-target model and a single-target cascading model from three single-target models by taking Taiwan, Tibet, and the Chinese mainland as target examples. Two models were evaluated both in classification and localization accuracy to investigate their administrative region detection performance. The results show that the single-target cascading model was able to detect more administrative regions, with a higher f1_score of 0.86 and mAP of 0.85 compared to the multi-target model (0.56 and 0.52, respectively). Furthermore, location box size distribution from the single-target cascading model looks more similar to that of manually annotated box sizes, which signifies that the proposed cascading model is superior to the multi-target model. This study is promising in providing support for computer map reading and intelligent map censorship.