Psychophysiology

Measuring Temperature with the iButton – A Quick Guide

by Hans IJzerman

Cold-blooded loneliness: Social exclusion leads to lower skin temperatures

by Hans IJzerman

Co-authored with Marcello Gallucci, Wim Pouw, Sophia Weiβgerber, Niels van Doesum, & Kip Williams. This paper has been accepted in Acta Psychologica. This paper not yet been published; this copy may thus not reflect the final published copy of the article.

Being ostracized or excluded, even briefly and by strangers, is painful and threatens fundamental needs. Recent work... more Being ostracized or excluded, even briefly and by strangers, is painful and threatens fundamental needs. Recent work by Zhong and Leonardelli (2008) found that excluded individuals perceive the room as cooler and that they desire warmer drinks. A perspective that many rely on in embodiment is the theoretical idea that people use metaphorical associations to understand social exclusion (see Landau, Meier, & Keefer, 2010). We suggest that people feel colder because they are colder. The results strongly support the idea that more complex metaphorical understandings of social relations are scaffolded onto literal changes in bodily temperature: Being excluded in an online ball tossing game leads to lower finger temperatures (Study 1), while negative affect typically experienced after such social exclusion is alleviated after holding a cup of warm tea (Study 2). The authors discuss further implications for the interaction between body and social relations specifically, and for basic and cognitive systems in general.

Attention Training Toward and Away from Threat in Social Phobia: Effects on Subjective, Behavioral, and Physiological Measures of Anxiety

by Alexandre Heeren

Heeren, A., Reese, H., McNally, R. J., & Philippot, P. (2012). Atttention training toward and away from threat in social phohia: Effects on behavioral, subjective, and physiological measures of anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 50, 30-39

The effects of difficulty and gain versus loss on vocal physiology and acoustics

by Tom Johnstone

To inhale or not to inhale: Conditioned avoidance in breathing behavior in an odor - 20% CO2 paradigm.

by Ann Meulders

Fannes, S., Van Diest, I., Meulders, A., De Peuter, S., Vansteenwegen, D., Van den Bergh, O. (2008). Biological Psychology, 78 (1), 87-92.

Preexposure to (un)predictable shock modulates discriminative fear learning between cue and context: An investigation of the interaction between fear and anxiety

by Ann Meulders

Meulders, A., Vervliet, B., Fonteyne, R., Baeyens, F., Hermans, D., Vansteenwegen, D. (2012). International Journal of Psychophysiology, in press.

Contrasts between the cardiovascular concomitants of tests of planning and attention

by Hugh Middleton

Social power makes the heart work more efficiently: Evidence from cardiovascular markers of challenge and threat.

by Kai Sassenberg

Scheepers, D., de Wit, F., Ellemers, N., & Sassenberg, K. (2012). Social power makes the heart work more efficiently: Evidence from cardiovascular markers of challenge and threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 371-374.

Possessing social power is beneficial for a wide range of physical and psychological outcomes. In the current research... more Possessing social power is beneficial for a wide range of physical and psychological outcomes. In the current research we test the hypothesis that the mere activation of high social power elicits an efficient cardiovascular pattern (challenge) while the activation of low social power elicits an inefficient cardiovascular pattern (threat; Blascovich, 2008a, b). Results from two experiments (one using power priming and one involving role playing) provide evidence for this hypothesis and are discussed in terms of the embodiment of power, the power-approach relationship, and further implications for the relation between power and health.

Behavior and neural basis of near-optimal visual search

by Ronald van den Berg

WJ Ma, V Navalpakkam, JM Beck, R van den Berg, A Pouget
Nature Neuroscience, 2011

The ability to search efficiently for a target in a cluttered environment is one of the most remarkable functions of... more The ability to search efficiently for a target in a cluttered environment is one of the most remarkable functions of the nervous system. This task is difficult under natural circumstances, as the reliability of sensory information can vary greatly across space and time and is typically a priori unknown to the observer. In contrast, visual-search experiments commonly use stimuli of equal and known reliability. In a target detection task, we randomly assigned high or low reliability to each item on a trial-by-trial basis. An optimal observer would weight the observations by their trial-to-trial reliability and combine them using a specific nonlinear integration rule. We found that humans were near-optimal, regardless of whether distractors were homogeneous or heterogeneous and whether reliability was manipulated through contrast or shape. We present a neural-network implementation of near-optimal visual search based on probabilistic population coding. The network matched human performance.

Social Psychophysiology for Social and Personality Psychology

by Wendy Berry Mendes

Gaspar, A & Esteves, F (2011). Empathic Cross-Paths: SCR and EMG Responses to Emotion in Ape and Human Faces. Does Species Matter? Psychophysiology (48), Special Issue Supplement, s1–s131, (abstract)

by Augusta Gaspar

Gaspar, A & Esteves, F (2009). Appraisals and Skin Conductance in Response to Four Emotional Expressions Across Physiognomic Categories: Psychophysiology (46), Special Issue Supplement, s1–s173, (abstract)

by Augusta Gaspar

Class and compassion: Socioeconomic factors predict responses to suffering.

by Michael Kraus

Vigilance Requires Hard Mental Work and Is Stressful

by Gerald Matthews

Objective: We describe major discoveries and developments in vigilance research. Background: Vigilance tasks have... more Objective: We describe major discoveries and developments in vigilance research. Background: Vigilance tasks have typically been viewed as undemanding assignments requiring little mental effort. The vigilance decrement function has also been considered to result from a decline in arousal brought about by understimulation. Methods: Recent research in vigilance is reviewed in four areas: studies of task type, perceived mental workload during vigilance, neural measures of resource demand in vigilance, and studies of task-induced stress. Results: Experiments comparing successive and simultaneous vigilance tasks support an attentional resource theory of vigilance. Subjective reports also show that the workload of vigilance is high and sensitive to factors that increase processing demands. Neuroimaging studies using transcranial Doppler sonography provide strong, independent evidence for resource changes linked to performance decrement in vigilance tasks. Finally, physiological and subjective reports confirm that vigilance tasks reduce task engagement and increase distress and that these changes rise with increased task difficulty. Conclusions: Converging evidence using behavioral, neural, and subjective measures shows that vigilance requires hard mental work and is stressful. Application: This research applies to most human-machine systems that require human monitoring, particularly those involving automated subsystems.

Functional Coupling of Parietal Alpha Rhythms is Enhanced in Athletes Before Visuomotor Performance: A Coherence EEG Study

by Maurizio Bertollo

Temporal pattern of pre-shooting psycho-physiological states in elite athletes: A probabilistic approach

by Maurizio Bertollo

Maurizio Bertollo, Claudio Robazza, Walter Nicola Falasca, Massimiliano Stocchi, Claudio Babiloni Claudio Del Percio Nicola Marzano Marco Iacoboni, Francesco Infarinato,Fabrizio Vecchio, Cristina Limatola, Silvia Comani

Objective: The IZOF-based probabilistic approach provides a methodology to study within-individual patterns of a... more Objective: The IZOF-based probabilistic approach provides a methodology to study within-individual patterns of a performer’s states. So far, the time course of physiological data before performance has not been investigated within the probabilistic methodology framework. The purpose of this study was to examine the value of the probabilistic approach in the assessment of the time course of physiological indicators of arousal/activation and vigilance during the period preceding the shot, in comparison with the performance-based method.

Design: Longitudinal assessment of psycho-physiological data and performance outcomes was conducted on eight elite pistol shooters in a controlled setting.

Methods: Each participant performed 60 air-pistol shots in 2 sessions. Skin conductance level and cardiac activity were recorded. Affective states intensity was evaluated on a modified 11-point Borg scale. Affect, HR and SC level were evaluated with a Performance-based approach and a Probabilistic method, and results compared at an individual level.

Results: Findings showed the higher effectiveness of the probabilistic method to analyse physiological parameters (skin conductance and heart rate) and to describe the physiological mechanisms associated with shooters’ performance.

Conclusions: The probabilisticmethod betterdiscerned the contribution of arousal/activationand vigilance to optimal and non-optimal performance in elite shooters, thereby providing a sharper representation of the temporal pattern of performers’ states before shooting. From an applied perspective, we believe that the probabilistic approach can help athletes become aware of the subtle variations occurring in their psychophysical states during the preparatory period preceding the shot and not only at the moment of shot release.

Review on psychophysiological methods in game research

by Guillaume Chanel

Impact of Task Controllability on Perceived Control and Cardiovascular Processes.

by Yong Peng Why

Why, Y. P. & Foo, Y. (2010). Impact of Task Controllability on Perceived Control and Cardiovascular Processes. Psychophysiology, 47, 669-672. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.00984.x

This article examines the impact of task control on perceived control and cardiovascular processes. Fifty-eight... more This article examines the impact of task control on perceived control and cardiovascular processes. Fifty-eight undergraduates performed a computer task where the functionality of the computer mouse was used to manipulate task control. Results are consistent with the proposition that actual control triggers an initial physiological response which can be modified temporally later by perceived control and that male participants react psychologically faster to changes in task control than female participants.

Positive Illusions and its association with Cardiovascular Functions.

by Yong Peng Why

Why, Y. P. & Huang, R. Z. (2011). Positive Illusions and its association with Cardiovascular Functions. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 81, 305-311. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.07.016

The relationship between positive illusions (or self-enhancement) and cardiovascular functions was investigated using... more The relationship between positive illusions (or self-enhancement) and cardiovascular functions was investigated using Asian samples in two studies. In phase 1 of Study 1, a generalized self-enhancement index was created for 241 participants using a paired word association memory task, a facial emotion recognition task, and a reading test. 122 participants subsequently volunteered for a second phase in this study where their ambulatory cardiovascular functions were measured throughout a single waking day. In Study 2, a priming procedure experimentally induced self-enhancement (n = 35) and self-effacement (n = 37) and the participants' cardiovascular arousal and perceived control for a mental arithmetic task were measured. Self-enhancement predicted lower cardiovascular functions for both studies. In Study 1, self-enhancement assessed at phase 2 was a significant predictor while self-enhancement measured at phase 1 was not. In Study 2, the relationship between self-enhancement and vascular reactivity was partially mediated by perceived control. The findings indicate that the relationship between self-enhancement and cardiovascular stress response, which has implications for cardiovascular health, (i) is relevant for Asian populations, (ii) is not just correlational but potentially causal, and (iii) is partly mediated by an increase in perceived control for vascular reactivity.

On the just noticeable difference for tempo in speech

by Hugo Quené

Published in Journal of Phonetics, 35 (3), 353-362 (2006).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2006.09.001

Speakers vary their speech tempo (speaking rate), and such variations in tempo are quite noticeable. But what is the... more Speakers vary their speech tempo (speaking rate), and such variations in tempo are quite noticeable. But what is the just noticeable difference (JND) for tempo in speech? The present study aims at providing a realistic and robust estimate, by using multiple speech tokens from multiple speakers. The JND is assessed in two (2IAX and 2IFC) comparison experiments, yielding an estimated JND for speech tempo of about 5%. A control experiment suggests that this finding is not due to acoustic artefacts of the tempo-transformation method used. Tempo variations within speakers typically exceed this JND, which makes such variations relevant in speech communication.