Responses to auditory distractors during a class depend on participant’s enjoyment: An eye-tracking and skin conductance study.

Purpose The primary purpose of this study was to explore the audiovisual speech perception strategies.80.23.47 adopted by normal-hearing and deaf people in processing familiar and unfamiliar languages. Our primary hypothesis was that they would adopt different perception strategies due to different sensory experiences at an early age, limitations of the physical device, and the developmental gap of language, and others. Method Thirty normal-hearing adults and 33 prelingually deaf adults participated in the study. They were asked to perform judgment and listening tasks while watching videos of a Uygur–Mandarin bilingual speaker in a familiar language (Standard Chinese) or an unfamiliar language (Modern Uygur) while their eye movements were recorded by eye-tracking technology. Results Task had a slight influence on the distribution of selective attention, whereas subject and language had significant influences. To be specific, the normal-hearing and the d10eaf participants mainly gazed at the speaker's eyes and mouth, respectively, in the experiment; moreover, while the normal-hearing participants had to stare longer at the speaker's mouth when they confronted with the unfamiliar language Modern Uygur, the deaf participant did not change their attention allocation pattern when perceiving the two languages. Conclusions Normal-hearing and deaf adults adopt different audiovisual speech perception strategies: Normal-hearing adults mainly look at the eyes, and deaf adults mainly look at the mouth. Additionally, language and task can also modulate the speech perception strategy.

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Skin Conductance and Subjective Arousal in Anxiety, Depression, and Comorbidity

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000176 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 31 (4) ◽

pp. 145-157 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Laina E. Rosebrock ◽

Denada Hoxha ◽

Catherine Norris ◽

John T. Cacioppo ◽

Jackie K. Gollan

Keyword(s):

Skin Conductance ◽

Comparison Group ◽

Group Differences ◽

Autonomic Arousal ◽

Emotional Picture ◽

Self Reports ◽

Picture Viewing ◽

Anxiety Depression ◽

Subjective Arousal ◽

Healthy Participants

Abstract. Skin conductance (SC), an autonomic arousal measure of the sympathetic nervous system, is a sensitive and useful index of physiological arousal. However, SC data does not always align with self-reports of arousal. SC, self-reported arousal, and their association, known as emotion coherence, may be altered with the presence of major psychiatric illness. This study investigated group differences on SC reactivity and self-reported arousal while viewing positive, negative, neutral, and threat images between participants diagnosed with major depression with and without anxiety disorders relative to a healthy comparison group. Additionally, the strength and direction of association between SC reactivity and arousal ratings (emotion coherence) was examined within groups. Unmedicated participants were recruited via online and paper advertisements around Chicago and categorized into one of four groups (Depressed: n = 35, Anxious: n = 44, Comorbid: n = 38, Healthy: n = 29). SC and affect ratings were collected during and after a standardized emotional picture viewing task. SC reactivity was significantly higher during threat images, regardless of group. During threat image presentation, increased SC reactivity occurred during the last few seconds before picture offset; for all other stimulus types, SC reactivity decreased significantly after picture offset. Anxious and comorbid participants rated emotional images as more arousing than healthy participants; there were no observed differences in arousal ratings between depressed and healthy participants. Heightened reactivity in anxiety may manifest in arousal ratings without corresponding increased SC reactivity to emotional images. Results do not suggest underlying altered psychophysiology in this sample of depressed or anxious participants.

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Activation and Persistence of Implicit Causality Information in Spoken Language Comprehension

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000002 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 57 (1) ◽

pp. 5-16 ◽

Cited By ~ 46

Author(s):

Pirita Pyykkönen ◽

Juhani Järvikivi

Keyword(s):

Eye Tracking ◽

Language Comprehension ◽

Spoken Language ◽

Visual World ◽

Implicit Causality ◽

Causality Information ◽

Spoken Language Comprehension

A visual world eye-tracking study investigated the activation and persistence of implicit causality information in spoken language comprehension. We showed that people infer the implicit causality of verbs as soon as they encounter such verbs in discourse, as is predicted by proponents of the immediate focusing account ( Greene & McKoon, 1995 ; Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006 ; Van Berkum, Koornneef, Otten, & Nieuwland, 2007 ). Interestingly, we observed activation of implicit causality information even before people encountered the causal conjunction. However, while implicit causality information was persistent as the discourse unfolded, it did not have a privileged role as a focusing cue immediately at the ambiguous pronoun when people were resolving its antecedent. Instead, our study indicated that implicit causality does not affect all referents to the same extent, rather it interacts with other cues in the discourse, especially when one of the referents is already prominently in focus.

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The Effect of Searching Versus Surfing on Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Online News

Journal of Media Psychology Theories Methods and Applications ◽

10.1027/1864-1105.21.2.49 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 49-59 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Kevin Wise ◽

Hyo Jung Kim ◽

Jeesum Kim

Keyword(s):

Heart Rate ◽

Skin Conductance ◽

Skin Conductance Level ◽

Emotional Responses ◽

Online News ◽

Self Report ◽

Mixed Design ◽

Information Need ◽

News Stories ◽

Rate Acceleration

A mixed-design experiment was conducted to explore differences between searching and surfing on cognitive and emotional responses to online news. Ninety-two participants read three unpleasant news stories from a website. Half of the participants acquired their stories by searching, meaning they had a previous information need in mind. The other half of the participants acquired their stories by surfing, with no previous information need in mind. Heart rate, skin conductance, and corrugator activation were collected as measures of resource allocation, motivational activation, and unpleasantness, respectively, while participants read each story. Self-report valence and recognition accuracy were also measured. Stories acquired by searching elicited greater heart rate acceleration, skin conductance level, and corrugator activation during reading. These stories were rated as more unpleasant, and their details were recognized more accurately than similar stories that were acquired by surfing. Implications of these results for understanding how people process online media are discussed.

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