The Stroop effect is commonly demonstrated by measuring the time required to identify the colour of the ink (e.g. blue) in which a colour word (e.g. RED) is printed and illustrates a strong interference effect when the prepotent response of processing the word must be inhibited to respond correctly to the colour of the ink. Longer response latencies in colour-identification tasks involving emotional words versus neutral words, an effect dubbed the Emotional Stroop (ES), is often likened to the type of interference found in the Stroop task. However, research has suggested that the effect of attentional modulation in Stroop tasks may be very different from the kind of emotional interference found when comparing reaction times to emotional versus neutral words (McKenna & Sharma, 2004). Proportional congruency experiments using the Stroop task manipulate the amount of incongruity present in a block of trials (Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979), and demonstrate attentional modulation as a change in the size of the Stroop effect such that a greater amount of Stroop interference in a block is associated with a smaller Stroop effect. Manipulating the proportion of interference trials may inform understanding of the differences between Stroop colour-word interference and emotional-word interference. In three experiments, we manipulated the proportion of emotional words in a mixed-list design to study the effect of proportion manipulation on the ES. An enlarged ES was found in blocks of trials that contained more emotional interference; a finding contrary to attentional modulation seen for proportion manipulations of congruency in the Stroop task. The differences between the ES effect and the Stroop effect are discussed, including the role of response incongruity as one possible reason for the discrepancy. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / In three experiments, we investigated the role of proportionally more or less emotional interference on a colour naming task. Emotional interference in the form of emotional words was compared to response interference where participants see mismatched and matched colour words (e.g. the word ‘NIGHTMARE’ in green versus the word ‘BLUE’ in green). We expected participants to be able to learn which blocks contained more emotional word content and to adapt in order to reduce this slow-down effect. Instead, participants were especially slow on emotional words when they were in blocks that contained more emotional word interference. The possible importance of emotional stimuli to participants over the task demands of naming the colour of a word, as compared to other kinds of interference, is discussed.

Acting is a fascinating phenomenon whereby individuals modify their physicality to portray another person and persuade audiences that they are indeed said person. Historically, and with the goal of creating realistic characterizations, acting theorists have debated if actors must begin either from the internalized driving forces of the characters or from external manifestations of the characters’ physical expression. However, regardless of whether actors have to actually feel the emotions of the characters who they portray during a performance, the challenge for the actor remains the same: to produce compelling representations of persons who they themselves are not. This production is physical by its very nature and can therefore lend itself to being gesturally coded, systematized, and modeled. To explore the question of whether character performances can be modeled, I designed and validated a classification scheme of character conceptualizations. I examined if a set of prototypical characters extracted from the literature were conceptually shared amongst a large group of raters, and found that character concepts were indeed shared. In addition, I found that character concepts could be modeled along the two orthogonal personality-trait dimensions of assertiveness and cooperativeness. I then sought to validate this model behaviourally. I designed a novel performance experiment whereby a group of professional actors performed a subset of characters from the model while I recorded their vocal and facial gestures. I found that actors used their vocal and facial gestures contrastively to differentiate between the characters, as well as between their performance-related and non-performance selves. Furthermore, I found that vocal gestures could be predicted by changes in the level of a character’s assertiveness. Complementary to this, I v found that facial gestures could be predicted by changes in the level of a character’s cooperativeness. Finally, I conducted a cross-modal examination of character and emotion performances and found that characters and emotions, as testable or “functional” units of performative behaviour, share a similar dimensional relationship. My data provide validated support for a dimensional behavioural model of character performance and character classification. My research extends previous findings on acting and emotions and provides new evidence for the quantification and predictive modeling of the products and processes of acting as a whole. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / When acting, actors change their outward physicality to portray another person and persuade audiences that they are that person. Regardless of training or method employed by an actor, this production is ultimately physical and can therefore be recorded, analyzed, and modeled. I investigated this using a novel character classification scheme. I found that stock characters taken from Western literature were shared conceptually amongst a large group of raters and could be modeled along the two personality-trait dimensions of assertiveness and cooperativeness. I tested this new model in a performance experiment, measuring the vocal and facial gestures of a group of professional actors. I found that actors used their vocal and facial gestures to differentiate between characters that differed in personality. I discovered that vocal gestures could be predicted by changes in the level of a character’s assertiveness and, complementary to this, that facial gestures could be predicted by changes in the level of a character’s cooperativeness. Finally, I examined character and emotion performances in both the voice and face and found that characters and emotions share a similar dimensional relationship. My research extends previous findings on acting and emotions and provides new evidence for modeling of the products and processes of acting as a whole.

No description available.

There is a paucity of research regarding autistic adults, yet as autistic individuals grow to adulthood, they are often met with several barriers because of their differences from the neurotypical (NT) population. Given the demands of adult social interaction, some of the social difficulties experienced by autistic adults are likely related to emotion processing and prosody function. With sensory processing differences added as a diagnostic criterion for autism within the last decade, an investigation into its relationship with emotional processing, another marked difficulty for this population, is warranted. There are logical connections between sensory processing, emotion, and prosody, such that an individual is required to detect the slight variations in pitch, stress, and pausing of prosody and have a typical and functional understanding of emotion to be able to comprehend the full meaning behind the prosodic cues of a speaker. Additionally, a speaker needs to understand these same sensory and emotional aspects in order to express typical prosody and have their full message, spoken and unspoken, be received by the listener. Thus, we hypothesized that there would be positive relationships between emotion, sensory processing, and prosody difficulties, and that sensory processing would act as a mediator between emotion and prosody. This study involved an online survey (n = 639) and an in-person component (n = 51) of NT and autistic young adults aged 18-27. Participants completed questionnaires and behavioral measures related to emotion, sensory processing, and prosody. Results revealed positive relationships between the three constructs and that sensory processing (especially auditory processing) was, indeed, a mediator between emotion and prosody. An exploratory analysis between males and females revealed no difference in prosody perception or production but differences in the role emotion plays in the above model between the sexes. This study provides a potential bridge between the NT and autistic communities and clinical implications for working with autistic individuals or those who express autistic traits.

The goal of this research is to identify key affective body gestures that can clearly convey four emotions, namely happy, content, bored, and frustrated, in animated characters that lack facial features. Two studies were conducted, a first to identify affective body gestures from a series of videos, and a second to validate the gestures as representative of the four emotions. Videos were created using motion capture data of four actors portraying the four targeted emotions and mapping the data to two 3D character models, one male and one female. In the first study the researcher identified body gestures that are commonly produced by individuals when they experience each of the four emotions being tested. Each body gesture was then annotated with descriptions of the movements using the FABO database. In the second study the researcher tested four sets of identified body gestures, one set for each emotion. The animated gestures were mapped to the 3D character models and 91 participants were asked to identify the emotional state conveyed by the characters through the body gestures. The participants were also asked to rate intensity, typicality, and sincerity for each emotion using a 5-point Likert scale. The study identified six gestures that were shown to have an acceptable recognition rate of at least 80% for three of the four emotions tested. Content was the only emotion which was not conveyed clearly by the identified body gestures. The gender of the character and the participants’ age were found to have a significant effect on recognition rates for the emotions.

No description available.

Trust is valuable as it plays a vital role in first impressions and decision-making. However, trust perceptions of speakers are heavily influenced by stereotypes and biases. Given how impactful eyewitness testimonies are in courtroom rulings and how often biases are used to judge speakers in courtroom settings, it is crucial to understand what factors impact perceptions of trust within this context. This is the first study to analyze the relationship between trust perception and emotion (Anger, Fear, Happy, Sad, Disgust, and Neutral) within the context of a courtroom testimony while also looking at how race, sex, vocal characteristics of the speaker, and intensity (gun-present vs. gun-absent crime) impact this interaction. Participants listened to a random sample of voices saying, "That is exactly what happened" and then responded yes or no when asked if they trusted the speaker. We found a highly significant interaction between sex and race on the proportion of voices trusted in select emotions. An in-depth analysis of voice characteristics indicated varying effects of pitch, Cepstral Peak Prominence, Vocal tract length, Subharmonic to harmonic ratio, Speech rate, Long-term Average Spectrum, and Harmonics to Noise Ratio (HNR) on perceptions of trust in male and female speakers. This experiment supports findings that heuristic cues influence the perception of trust in the courtroom. Understanding the role stereotypes and biases play in decision-making in the courtroom is vital to ensuring a fair prosecution. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been shown to have significantly deleterious effects on an individual’s overall health (Felitti et al., 1998), including poor subjective experiences of health (Khrapatina & Berman, 2017). Difficulties in emotion regulation (DERs), which reflect the inability to identify, interpret, and manage strong emotions, may be one mechanism through which ACEs affect health. Successful emotion regulation has been associated with high levels of self-reported health, whereby DERs has been linked to poor selfreported health (Kinnunen et al., 2005). The current study seeks to determine whether DERs (Gratz & Roemer, 2004) mediate the relationship between ACEs and subjective experiences of health. Utilizing a sample of students from a mid-sized university in rural Appalachia, the mediating role of DERs was tested using the PROCESS macro for SPSS with bootstrapping (5000 samples). Results demonstrated that DERS did significantly mediate the relationship between ACEs and self-reported health [R2 = .12, F(2,616) = 43.60, p < .000; indirect effect of DERS total t(616) = -7.01, p < .000, CI = -.04, -.02]. The identification of DERs as one mechanism through which ACEs increases the risk of poor self-reported health offers one target for interventions designed to mitigate the negative outcomes of ACEs and promote resilience in the face of past adversity

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Maureen Ritchey / Regulating negative emotions that arise while recalling an unpleasant event presents a persistent challenge. As a reconstructive process, recall offers an opportunity to ease the burden of repeated regulation by updating negative memories, with the potential for long-term reductions in the negative affect associated with a memory. However, little is known about the recall-related brain processes that support lasting effects of emotion regulation on episodic memories. Across three studies, the current project examined the behavioral and neural correlates of regulating emotionally negative memories. First, a stimulus database of real-life news videos optimized for studying naturalistic emotional memory was developed. Then, the behavioral effects of two emotion regulation strategies, memory reappraisal and memory suppression, were tested. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the brain processes associated with lasting reappraisal-related changes in memory valence. We found that reappraisal was associated with lasting reductions in the negative valence of naturalistic memories, whereas suppression had no effect on memory valence. We also found that recall-related activity in lateral occipital cortex was associated with a reappraisal-mediated reduction in negative valence 24-hours after reappraisal. These results suggest that brain processes involved in the initial retrieval of negative content also support the emotion regulation of those memories, consistent with research showing that memory reactivation is critical for robust memory updating. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology.