Creating Dynamic Visual Stimuli For Use In Fmri And Eeg Studies On The Internal Representation Of Affective States

Alexia Junker

School Name

South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics

Grade Level

12th Grade

Presentation Topic

Psychology and Sociology

Presentation Type

Mentored

Mentor

Mentor: Svetlana Shinkareva, Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina

Oral Presentation Award

1st Place

Abstract

Affective states are central to how the world is experienced. An affective reaction to presented stimuli is included in the perception of the stimuli, becoming a property of it. According to the circumplex model of affect, affective states are represented along the dimensions of valence and arousal. These results have been shown for word, picture, and face stimuli. The use of dynamic visual stimuli is important because they are naturalistic. This study focused on the examination of the internal representation of dynamic visual stimuli. First, visual stimuli were created to vary on valence (positive, neutral, negative) while balancing across semantic features (human, animals, inanimate) and arousal across valence categories. The stimuli were found online and edited into five second clips. Second, in a behavioural experiment, 9 participants rated the video clips on six rating scales (e.g., how sad, how calm, how anxious, etc.). The similarity on video ratings was analyzed with multidimensional scaling. The results showed that most of the variability in the ratings was accounted for by dimensions of valence and arousal, consistent with the circumplex model of affect. This study was instrumental in the dynamic visual stimuli creation for fMRI and EEG studies of the internal representation of affective states.

Start Date

4-11-2015 8:45 AM

End Date

4-11-2015 9:00 AM

COinS
 
Apr 11th, 8:45 AM Apr 11th, 9:00 AM

Creating Dynamic Visual Stimuli For Use In Fmri And Eeg Studies On The Internal Representation Of Affective States

Affective states are central to how the world is experienced. An affective reaction to presented stimuli is included in the perception of the stimuli, becoming a property of it. According to the circumplex model of affect, affective states are represented along the dimensions of valence and arousal. These results have been shown for word, picture, and face stimuli. The use of dynamic visual stimuli is important because they are naturalistic. This study focused on the examination of the internal representation of dynamic visual stimuli. First, visual stimuli were created to vary on valence (positive, neutral, negative) while balancing across semantic features (human, animals, inanimate) and arousal across valence categories. The stimuli were found online and edited into five second clips. Second, in a behavioural experiment, 9 participants rated the video clips on six rating scales (e.g., how sad, how calm, how anxious, etc.). The similarity on video ratings was analyzed with multidimensional scaling. The results showed that most of the variability in the ratings was accounted for by dimensions of valence and arousal, consistent with the circumplex model of affect. This study was instrumental in the dynamic visual stimuli creation for fMRI and EEG studies of the internal representation of affective states.