User:Ja meier/sandbox

Measures of Psychophysiology

Psychophysiology measures exist in three domains; reports, readings, and behavior. . Evaluative reports involve participant introspection and self-ratings of internal psychological states or physiological sensations, such as self-report of arousal levels on the self-assessment manikin , or measures of interoceptive visceral awareness such as heartbeat detection . Merits to self-report are an emphasis on accurately understand the participants’ subjective experience and understanding their perception; however, its pitfalls include the possibility of participants misunderstanding a scale or incorrectly recalling events . Physiological responses also can be measured via instruments that read bodily events such as heart rate change, skin conductance, muscle tension, or cardiac output. These measures are beneficial because they provide accurate and perceiver-independent data recorded by hopefully functioning machinery ; the downsides, however, are that any physical activity or motion can alter responses, and basal levels and responsiveness can differ among individuals and even between situations . Finally, one can measure overt action or behavior, which involves the observation actual actions like running, freezing, eye movement or facial expression recording. Which are good response measures and are easy to record in animals but they are however not as utilized in human studies

Psychophysiology of Emotion

Early work done linking emotions to psychophysiology started with research on mapping consistent autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses to discrete emotional states. For example, anger might be constituted by a certain set of physiological responses, such as increased cardiac output and high diastolic blood pressure, which would allow us to better understand patterns and predict emotional responses. Some studies were able to detect consistent patterns of ANS responses that corresponded to specific emotions under certain contexts, like an early study by Paul Ekman and colleagues in 1983 “Emotion-specific activity in the autonomic nervous system was generated by constructing facial prototypes of emotion muscle by muscle and by reliving past emotional experiences. The autonomic activity produced distinguished not only between positive and negative emotions, but also among negative emotions” . However, as more studies were conducted, more variability was found in ANS responses to discrete emotion inductions, not only among individuals but also over time in the same individuals, and greatly between social groups . Some of these differences can be attributed to variables like induction technique, context of the study, or classification of stimuli, which can alter a perceived scenario or emotional response. However it was also found that features of the participant could also alter ANS responses. Factors such as basal level of arousal at the time of experimentation or between test recovery, learned or conditioned responses to certain stimuli, range and maximal level of effect of ANS action, and individual attentiveness can all alter physiological responses in a lab setting . Even supposedly discrete emotional states fail to show specificity. For example, some emotional typologists consider fear to have subtypes, which might involve fleeing or freezing, both of which can have distinct physiological patterns and potentially distinct neural circuitry . As such no definitive correlation can be drawn linking specific autonomic patterns to discrete emotions, causing emotion theorists to rethink classical definitions of emotions.

{Psychophysiology Perspective} (To be added to emotion page) It has long been recognized that emotional episodes are partly constituted by physiological responses such as heart rate change, skin conductance, muscle tension, or cardiac output . The field of psychophysiology attempts to link emotions and these physiological responses by measuring electrodermal activity, electromyography, and electrocardiography . Early work attempted to link these physiological responses to discrete emotion states (such as fear, anger, or happiness). Some studies found consistent autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses (the ANS generates physiological states) to these emotion states under certain contexts, like a study by Paul Ekman and colleagues in 1983 . However as more studies were conducted and previous studies were repeated, ANS responses showed a lot of variability even under the same emotional contexts .

Conceptual Act Model of Emotion (To be added to emotion page)

Recent shifts in emotion thinking has led to emotions being defined as psychological constructs, and rather than have a special autonomic signature, they represent a population of instances . The Conceptual Act Theory (CAT) in particular states that emotions are situated concepts used to identify, organize, and communicate our experiences. The CAT frames emotions as categorizations created from prior knowledge , and are not predetermined "natural kinds" . So for example fear is not a naturally hardwired response that has dedicated circuits and a specific autonomic pattern, it is an abstract categorization of experiences that is rather generated from things like our physiological response, interoception, and memory . Therefore fear as a concept is subjective to individual and contextual variation, each fear experience may be different, however stating "I am afraid" communicates the situation and personal feeling to others . The CAT accounts for the variability in psychophysiology studies in linking ANS responses to emotions, and rather than view the variance in responses as a by product of study, it views individual variation as the true emotion and their conceptualizations are a statistical average . Therefore factors like context of induction, prior knowledge, continued learning, and social convention can all alter and define emotions; which explains the presence of emotions not defined in the English language as they are not common or useful in that context . The conceptual act theory represents a paradigm shift in the thinking and study of emotions, shifting the concept of emotion away from being thought of as specific and discrete entities and toward a population approach.

{The Conceptual Act Theory} Meta-Analysis across many psychophysiology studies has failed to show specificity linking discrete emotional categories to particular ANS patterns . This has caused a shift in thinking about emotion: Emotions do not have a special autonomic signature, but instead represent a population of instances, in which ANS activity varies according to changing internal and external environmental parameters . This means that the “normal” emotion idea (i.e., discrete emotions) is merely an abstract, statistical average, and that individual and contextual variation represents the reality of our emotional responses. The Conceptual Act Theory (CAT) states that emotions are situated concepts used to identify, organize, and communicate our experiences. Rather than emotions being “natural kinds” linked to a certain anatomical pathway triggering a specific ANS response (e.g., stating fear comes from the amygdala), they are categorizations created from prior knowledge used to help understand and respond to events Rather than say, anger, being a set of responses hardwired in the brain it is situationally constructed from interactions among domain-general psychological factors such as interoception, language, and memory . This implies that emotions are a way for the brain to group heterogeneous events by a common factor, such as danger being associated with fear, creating a homogeneous concept for heterogeneous situations and responses. This accounts for the inconsistency in the study of psychophysiology of emotion in a number of ways. Firstly it asserts the importance of context in the induction of emotion. A certain group of people may view a certain stimulus (hearing an associated sound or seeing a triggering event) as emotionally salient in one way, so a homogeneous study group might have a similar set of physiological to a certain induction technique. However, applying this method to a heterogeneous group will likely show heterogeneity of ANS responses . In addition the CAT accounts for prior knowledge and continued learning, which can affect emotional concepts not only over long periods of time but also during the course of a study. This is evidenced by cross-cultural examination of emotions that are not shared in American culture, as they are not defined as common, specific, or useful in that context Thus the CAT explains why some studies can show specificity of discrete emotions while others cannot, because based on the situated concepts and inductive contexts of each study individuals may experience the same situated emotion concept but each individual might associate this concept with a different set of responses, or they might experience different situated concepts entirely. The CAT frames our emotion concepts as ways of representing and organizing abstract experiences to allow us to better communicate and respond to them. Take the example of fear, the most common factor associated with fear is danger or a sense of danger. However different people (or even the same person) experience many different forms of fear each constituted by a different physiological response (fear while hiding from danger will be experienced differently than fear during a flight response). Nonetheless, saying that “I am afraid” allows others to relate this experience to their own concept of fear and better understand the situation . The conceptual act theory represents a paradigm shift in the thinking and study of emotions, shifting the concept of emotion away from being thought of as specific and discrete entities and toward a population approach.