The effect of cognitive reappraisal on physiological reactivity and emotional memory

We investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotional arousal, facial expressivity and subsequent memory. Men and women viewed emotionally negative pictures while they attempted to either increase or decrease negative emotions elicited by the pictures, or to simply view the pictures. Neutral pictures were also presented with instructions to simply view the pictures. Concurrent changes in emotional arousal and valence were assessed with skin conductance responses (SCRs) and facial corrugator electromyographic responses (EMG), respectively. Picture memory was assessed with an immediate recall test and a delayed recognition test. Relative to simply viewing pictures, voluntary reappraisal to increase negative emotion generated greater facial corrugator EMG and SCR responses, and reappraisal to decrease negative emotion generated decreased corrugator EMG responses. Men showed enhanced recognition for pictures presented during the increase and decrease conditions, whereas women showed comparable recognition performance across all regulation conditions. The modulation of subsequent recognition memory associated with decreasing emotion was inversely associated with changes in physiological responses. Our results suggest that sex is an important factor to consider in determining how reappraisal-induced physiological changes are associated with subsequent changes in memory. These findings contribute to our understanding of how reappraising emotion exerts both immediate and enduring influences on physiological responses and subsequent memory.     

Effects of menstrual cycle and neuroticism on females' emotion regulation

Fifteen highly neurotic women and 21 women who were low in neuroticism participated in this study. The women were surveyed three times over a single menstrual cycle during the mid-late luteal, menstrual, and late follicular phases. Each time, the participants were asked to use reappraisal to regulate their emotions, which were evoked by a sad film clip, and their subjective emotional experiences and physiological responses were recorded. The results showed that neuroticism had no impact on emotion regulation, and the females experienced fluctuations in their emotion regulation success over their menstrual cycle. During the menstrual phase, women reported significantly higher levels of reappraisal, but subjective sadness did not differ throughout the three phases. Additionally, the regulation effects on galvanic skin response (GSR) were smaller during the menstrual phase than in the mid-late luteal phase. These results suggested that women in the menstrual phase expended more effort but gained less success at regulating their emotions.     

Reduced positive emotion and underarousal are uniquely associated with subclinical depression symptoms: Evidence from psychophysiology,self‐report,and symptom clusters

Multiple models of aberrant emotional processing in depression have been advanced. However, it is unclear which of these models best applies to emotional disturbances in subclinical depressive symptoms. The current study employed a battery of psychophysiological measures and emotional ratings in a picture‐viewing paradigm to examine whether the underarousal, low positive emotion, heightened negative emotion, or emotion context insensitivity model of emotional dysfunction in subclinical depressive symptoms received greatest support. Postauricular reflex and skin conductance response potentiation for pleasant minus neutral pictures (measuring low positive emotion), overall skin conductance magnitude and late positive potential (LPP) amplitude (measuring underarousal), and pleasant minus aversive valence ratings (measuring emotion context insensitivity) and aversive minus neutral arousal ratings (measuring heightened negative emotionality) were all negatively related to depressive symptomatology. Of these, postauricular reflex potentiation and overall LPP amplitude were incrementally associated with depressive symptoms over the other measures. Postauricular reflex potentiation, overall skin conductance magnitude, and aversive minus neutral arousal ratings were incrementally associated with depressive symptomatology after controlling for other symptoms of internalizing disorders. Though no model was unequivocally superior, the low positive emotion and underarousal models received the most support from physiological measures and symptom reports, with self‐report data matching patterns consistent with the emotion context insensitivity model.     

Age differences in perception and awareness of emotion

We investigated the effects of age and gender on emotional perception and physiology using electrodermal skin conductance response (SCR) and examined whether SCR is related to subjective perceptions of emotional pictures. Older adults found pictures to be more positive and arousing than younger participants. Older women rated pictures more extremely at both ends of the valence continuum: they rated positive pictures more positively and negative pictures more negatively. Elders were less likely to show measurable SCRs. However, magnitude of SCRs when a response occurred did not differ between young and old. Subjective ratings of emotion correlated with physiological responses in younger participants, but they were unrelated in older participants. Thus, in older adults the perception of emotional events was disconnected from the physiological state induced by emotion.     

The time course of pupil dilation evoked by visual sexual stimuli: Exploring the underlying ANS mechanisms

The early processing of visual sexual stimuli shows signs of automaticity. Moreover, there is evidence for sex‐specific patterns in cognitive and physiological responding to erotica. However, little is known about the time course of rapid pupillary responses to sexual stimuli and their correspondence with other measures of autonomic activity in women and men. To study pupil dilation as an implicit measure of sexual arousal at various stages of picture processing, we presented 35 heterosexual participants with pictures showing either erotic couples or single (male/female) erotic nudes, contrasted with people involved in everyday situations. Brightness‐adjusted grayscale pictures were shown for a duration of 2,500 ms within the central visual field, alternating with perceptually matched patches. Left pupil diameter was recorded at 500 Hz using a video‐based eye tracker. Skin conductance and heart rate were coregistered and correlated with latent components of pupil dilation (dissociated by temporal PCA). Whereas stimulus‐evoked changes in pupil size indicated virtually no initial constriction, a rapid effect of appetence emerged (dilation to erotica within 500 ms). Responses at early stages of processing were remarkably consistent across both sexes. In contrast, later phases of pupil dilation, subjective ratings, and skin conductance responses showed a sex‐specific pattern. Moreover, evidence for an association of early‐onset pupil dilation and heart rate acceleration was found, suggestive of parasympathetic inhibition, whereas the late component was mainly related to sympathetically mediated skin conductance. Taken together, our results indicate that different temporal components of pupil responses to erotic stimuli may reflect divergent underlying neural mechanisms.     

The influence of frontal alpha‐asymmetry on the processing of approach‐ and withdrawal‐related stimuli—A multichannel psychophysiology study

The approach‐withdrawal model of hemispheric activation suggests that left frontal cortical areas mediate approach, while right frontal cortical areas mediate withdrawal motivation. Within this framework, the present study investigates the association of frontal cortical asymmetry with attentional and emotional responses toward approach‐ and withdrawal‐related emotional stimuli. Resting frontal asymmetry was measured from 43 students before they passively viewed negative, neutral, and positive emotional pictures. The startle reflex, skin conductance response, and subjective ratings of valence and arousal were assessed to quantify emotional responding, while attention was assessed with ERPs. We also assessed frontal asymmetry in response to the pictures. Results indicated that relatively stronger right frontal cortical activation was associated with increased N1 amplitudes and more negative subjective emotional evaluation of all stimuli. Furthermore, enhanced right frontal asymmetry (state and trait) was associated with diminished emotional modulation of the late positive potential. In contrast, no association of frontal asymmetry with defensive reflex physiology or activation of sympathetic nervous system activity was found. The current data suggest dissociable influence of resting frontal brain asymmetry on attentional and physiological processing of withdrawal‐ and approach‐related stimuli. That is, asymmetrical frontal cortical brain activation might not modulate approach‐/withdrawal‐related motor responses and sympathetic arousal directly, but instead enhances allocation of attentional resources to subjectively significant stimuli. The results are discussed in terms of their potential importance for emotion perception in anxiety disorders and their contribution to the understanding of frontal asymmetry.     

Resting physiological arousal is associated with the experience of music-induced chills

In the study of emotion and autonomic nervous system functioning, resting physiological arousal is usually considered a negative characteristic. The present study examined the relationship between resting physiological arousal and positive emotional experience linked to psychophysiological arousal. We assessed resting physiological arousal using markers as high skin conductance level and low respiratory sinus arrhythmia, measured just before participants listened to their favorite music. Participants reported the sensation of chills (goose bumps, shivers) by pressing a mouse button while listening. The results indicated that individuals with resting physiological arousal frequently experience music-induced chills, which evoked unambiguous pleasurable feelings and an increase in skin conductance response. The current results, and the previously demonstrated relationship between resting physiological arousal and negative emotionality linked to psychophysiological arousal (e.g., anxiety, panic), suggest that resting physiological arousal may reflect sensitivity to psychophysiological arousal with both intense positive and negative emotions.     

The influence of attachment representation on parental perception and interpretation of infant emotions: A multilevel approach

The aim of the study was to investigate parental perception and interpretation of infant emotional expression depending on their attachment representation. Forty‐six parents' responses to infant pictures depicting positive, neutral, and negative emotions were assessed on the level of affective judgments (valence, arousal), mimic responses (facial muscle activity), and of the eyelid reflex (using the startle paradigm). Results revealed small differences between parents of different attachment representations with respect to their subjective evaluations. However, secure parents, as compared to insecure ones, showed a positive bias in their mimic responses to infant pictures. The modulation of the startle response indicated a negative evaluation of negative infant emotion expressions in dismissing parents, while an augmentation of the startle response to negative infant emotions could not be observed in secure and preoccupied parents. The findings highlight the role of attachment experiences for emotional information processing in parents and its consequences for parental behavior. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 52: 411–423, 2010.     

Postauricular reflex responses to pictures varying in valence and arousal

Reflexes are modulated by emotions. Much research has revealed that the startle reflexive eyeblink response is modulated by emotion, particularly in response to pictures of emotional scenes. Investigations of other reflexes are limited. Recently, research suggested that the postauricular reflex in response to a startling noise was modulated by emotion. In particular, pleasant stimuli enhanced the postauricular reflex. However, these first investigations were limited: One experiment demonstrated only a marginal difference between the pleasant stimuli and neutral stimuli and the other lacked the typical neutral scene comparison. The present experiment was designed to assess whether significant emotion versus neutral differences would occur. Results demonstrated that pleasant stimuli, regardless of arousal level, evoked larger postauricular reflex activation than neutral and unpleasant emotional stimuli.     

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia as an index of emotional response in young adults

The relationship between respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and valence and arousal remains unclear. In the present study, the associations between emotion responses and tonic or task-related changes in RSA were assessed. Specifically, the sensitivities of changes in interbeat interval, RSA, and skin conductance to the valence and arousal values of emotional stimuli were examined. This study also explored the association between tonic RSA and subjective, expressive, and physiological emotional responses. Response measures were collected from 56 adults during baseline and film-viewing periods. Tonic RSA was not significantly related to any of the response measures. Increased skin conductance and decreased RSA were associated with arousal independent of valence. Interbeat interval was related to affective valence and not arousal. These findings suggest that RSA may be a useful adjunct to skin conductance measures in assessing emotional arousal.     

Event-related skin conductance responses to musical emotions in humans

While the reasons underlying musical emotions are unclear, music is nevertheless a powerful elicitor of emotion, and as such, may induce autonomic nervous system responses. One typical measure of this neural pathway is the skin conductance response (SCR). This response generally depends upon stimulus arousal, one of the two motivational determinants of emotion. The objective of the present study was to verify whether emotional reactions to music elicit such event-related autonomic responses. To this aim, four musical emotions varying in arousal were employed: fear, happiness, sadness and peacefulness. SCRs were found to be greater with the two more stimulating emotions, fear and happiness, as compared to the two more relaxing emotions, sadness and peacefulness (P<0.05). In addition, subjects' ratings of the emotional clarity for each excerpt did not parallel the corresponding SCRs magnitudes. The results show that SCRs can be evoked and modulated by musical emotional arousal, but are not sensitive to emotional clarity. While several studies have been performed with visual scenes and environmental sounds, the present study brings similar evidence from the musical domain.     

Cognitive reappraisal during unpleasant picture processing: Subjective self‐report and peripheral physiology

Increased attention among the research community in exploring underlying mechanisms of emotion regulation has prompted a growth of experimental works in this field. Empirical studies have mainly focused on self‐reports, brain imaging, and electrophysiological measures, with only a few works exploring peripheral physiology. Additionally, most of such studies have not considered the specific stimuli content, even though prior literature has shown relevant differences in psychophysiological and subjective responses depending on picture categories. The current study assessed several peripheral correlates (startle amplitude, electrodermal changes, heart rate) of emotion regulation processes in a sample of 122 healthy participants. The task consisted of voluntary reappraisal of negative emotions prompted by unpleasant pictures (threat to others and victims), compared to a nonregulation control condition (looking at exemplars of the same categories and household objects). Results showed an effect of emotion regulation instructions in all psychophysiological and subjective measures. In peripheral physiology, greater responses were observed specifically when increasing negative emotions, concurring with previous research. Regarding specific content, our findings evidence a similar emotion regulation pattern, independently of the unpleasant category, suggesting a plausible effect of cognitive variables (such as cognitive effort) during voluntary reappraisal for both categories.     

Different time course of emotion regulation towards odors and pictures: Are odors more potent than pictures?

The present study assessed emotion regulation in response to chemosensory and visual stimuli. Using cognitive reappraisal, 40 female participants regulated their emotions in response to disgusting pictures and odors, while the startle reflex was elicited and emotion ratings were assessed. Participants reported feeling less negative, and less aroused, while down-regulating their emotions towards both odors and pictures. Although being rated as equally negative and arousing, odor presentations were accompanied by larger startle responses than picture presentations. Furthermore, as compared to pictures emotion regulation towards odors followed a strikingly different time course suggesting less effective emotion regulation in response to disgusting odors. Questionnaire data show that differences between emotion regulation outcome towards odors was not attributable to different regulation strategies used. Thus, the current data suggest a unique role of olfaction in emotion perception, and show that cognitive emotion regulation - although being generally effective - may also be limited.     

Individual differences in cognitive reappraisal: experiential and physiological responses to an anger provocation.

Effective emotion regulation is widely seen as vital for healthy adaptation. There remains considerable uncertainty, however, as to what constitutes effective emotion regulation. One promising emotion regulation strategy is cognitive reappraisal, which involves reframing emotional events so as to decrease their emotional impact. This strategy is useful because it seems to enable individuals to down-regulate negative feelings without the physiological costs that are associated with other forms of emotion regulation. It remains unknown, however, whether individual differences in the use of reappraisal are associated with experiential and physiological responses to anger-inducing situations. To examine this question, individuals either high or low in reappraisal were made angry in the laboratory while emotion experience and cardiovascular responses were assessed. Results indicated that compared to low reappraisers, high reappraisers had a more adaptive profile of emotion experience and cardiovascular responding. Specifically, across baseline and provocation periods, high reappraisers reported less anger, less negative emotion, and more positive emotion, showed greater cardiac output and ventricular contractility, and lesser total peripheral resistance. These findings suggest that reappraisers are successful at down-regulating negative emotions, even in the context of a potent negative emotion such as anger.     

Startle modulation during conscious emotion regulation is arousal-dependent

Conscious regulation of negative emotion has been shown to affect human eyeblink startle responses, but whether these results depend on modulation of arousal- or valence-based processes is unknown. The authors presented participants with negative, neutral, and positive pictures and directed them to enhance, maintain, and suppress emotional responses. On emotional picture trials, startle responses decreased as a function of cue in the following order: enhance > maintain > suppress. Analysis of negative and positive picture trials separately revealed similar patterns of startle modulation by emotion regulation. There were no effects of emotion regulation on neutral trials. Results indicate that arousal, not valence, may be critical to startle modulation via conscious emotion regulation.     

Positive emotional reactions to loved names

Studies concerning personal attachment have successfully used loved familiar faces to prompt positive affective and physiological reactions. Moreover, the processing of emotional words shows similar physiological patterns to those found with affective pictures. The objective of this study was to assess whether the passive viewing of loved names would produce a pattern of subjective and physiological reactivity similar to that produced by the passive viewing of loved faces. The results showed that, compared to neutral (unknown) and famous names, loved names produced a biphasic pattern of heart rate deceleration‐acceleration, heightened skin conductance and zygomaticus muscle activity, inhibition of corrugator muscle activity, and potentiation of the startle reflex response. This pattern of physiological responses was accompanied by subjective reports of higher positive affect and arousal for loved names than for neutral and famous ones. These findings highlight not only the similarity but also the differences between the affective processing of identity recognition by loved faces and names.     

The cognitive consequences of emotion regulation: an ERP investigation

Increasing evidence suggests that emotion regulation (ER) strategies modulate encoding of information presented during regulation; however, no studies have assessed the impact of cognitive reappraisal ER strategies on the processing of stimuli presented after the ER period. Participants in the present study regulated emotions to unpleasant pictures and then judged whether a word was negative or neutral. Electromyographic measures (corrugator supercilli) confirmed that individuals increased and decreased negative affect according to ER condition. Event-related potential analyses revealed smallest N400 amplitudes to negative and neutral words presented after decreasing unpleasant emotions and smallest P300 amplitudes to words presented after increasing unpleasant emotions whereas reaction time data failed to show ER modulations. Results are discussed in the context of the developing ER literature, as well as theories of emotional incongruity (N400) and resource allocation (P300).     

Airway response of healthy individuals to affective picture series.

We studied the effects of viewing pictures in three series of homogeneous affects on respiratory resistance. Results from prior studies had been equivocal with respect to modulation of resistance by affective valence or arousal. Forty-two healthy participants viewed three series of affective slides preselected for global categories of positive, neutral and negative valence. Oscillatory resistance (R(os)), time, volume and flow parameters of respiration, cardiac interbeat-interval, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and skin conductance were measured throughout the picture series, and individual pictures were rated in pleasure, arousal and interest. During the slide presentation, R(os) increased with decreasing picture valence. Other physiological parameters did not parallel these changes. R(os) changes were restricted to the expiratory portion of the breathing cycle, thus suggesting a contribution of upper airway sites to the response. It is concluded that R(os) is modulated by affective valence when pictures are selected in global categories of positive, neutral and negative affect. Observed airway responses are probably less informative with respect to affect-induced exacerbation in lower airway disease.     

How does cognitive reappraisal affect the response to gains and losses?

To investigate the influence of cognitive reappraisal, one important kind of emotion regulation strategy, on psychological and electrophysiological responses to gains and losses, a monetary gambling task was performed in two conditions, that is, spontaneity and regulation. Event‐related potentials (ERP) and self‐rating emotional experiences to outcome feedback were recorded during the task. Cognitive reappraisal reduced self‐rating emotional experience to both gains and losses and the amplitudes of the feedback‐related negativity (FRN) and the P3 of ERPs. According to these results, we suggest that the application of cognitive reappraisal strategy significantly modulated the motivational salience of current outcomes, thus weakening the subjective emotional experience elicited. In addition, cognitive reappraisal might have changed the allocation of cognitive resources during outcome evaluation. This study extends emotion regulation studies by applying monetary outcomes as emotional stimuli, and also implicates the significance of emotion regulation in decision‐making processes.     

Intact physiological response to arousal with impaired emotional recognition in alexithymia

BACKGROUND: The purpose of the present study was to clarify the relationship between the recognition of emotion and physiological response to emotion (i.e. arousal) in alexithymia. METHODS: This study investigated differences in physiological arousal state, as measured by continuous heart rate, electrodermal activity (EDA) and self-reported emotional intensity before and after exposure to an emotionally arousing or neutral videotape among 41 high- or low-alexithymic young adult participants. RESULTS: Across subjects, emotionally negative stimuli produced increased physiological arousal. However, high-alexithymic participants exposed to the arousing videotape did not report increased subjective emotional intensity, as did low-alexithymic participants. In addition, the baseline EDA of high-alexithymic participants was significantly higher than that of the low-alexithymic participants. CONCLUSIONS: Results support the prediction that alexithymia leads to a decoupling between subjective and physiological arousal when exposed to emotionally negative stimuli. This decoupling may increase alexithymic individuals' risks for stress-related illness.