A review of extant literature on positive affect suggested that it has two major dimensions: a hedonic dimension related to subjective feelings and reward processing, and a cognitive dimension related to affect-specific changes in perception and cognition. A novel dopaminergic mod el was proposed to provide a unitary account for the effects of positive affect across the two dimensions. The model hypothesized that positive affect is associated with distinct modes of mesocortical and mesolimbic dopa mine transmission, which in turn mediate unbiased, unfiltered and flexible attention. Three separate behavioral tasks on perception, attention, and reward learning were conducted. In line with the hypothesis, positive affect was found to associate with less biased bi-stable perception, faster regain of attention to previously ignored information, and fewer perseverative errors in face of changing reward contingencies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/31666 |
| Date | 05 January 2012 |
| Creators | You, Yuqi |
| Contributors | Anderson, Adam K. |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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