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- When are puppies receptive to emotion-induced human chemosignals? The cases of fear and happinessPublication . D'ANIELLO, BIAGIO; Pinelli, Claudia; Scandurra, Anna; Di Lucrezia, Alfredo; Aria, Massimo; Semin, Gün R.We report an observational, double-blind, experimental study that examines the efects of human emotional odors on puppies between 3 and 6 months and adult dogs (one year and upwards). Both groups were exposed to control, human fear, and happiness odors in a between subjects’ design. The duration of all behaviors directed to the apparatus, the door, the owner, a stranger, and stress behaviors was recorded. A discriminant analysis showed that the fear odor activates consistent behavior patterns for both puppies and adult dogs. However, no behavioral diferences between the control and happiness odor conditions were found in the case of puppies. In contrast, adult dogs reveal distinctive patterns for all three odor conditions. We argue that responses to human fear chemosignals systematically infuence the behaviors displayed by puppies and adult dogs, which could be genetically prefgured. In contrast, the efects of happiness odors constitute cues that require learning during early socialization processes, which yield consistent patterns only in adulthood.
- A multi‐analyses approach of inductive/deductive asymmetry in the affective priming paradigmPublication . Foroni, Francesco; Marmolejo‐Ramos, Fernando; Wilcox, Rand; de Bastiani, Fernanda; Semin, Gün R.Rapidly evaluating our environment's beneficial and detrimental features is critical for our successful functioning. A classic paradigm used to investigate such fast and automatic evaluations is the affective priming (AP) paradigm, where participants classify valenced target stimuli (e.g., words) as good or bad while ignoring the valenced primes (e.g., words). We investigate the differential impact that verbs and adjectives used as primes and targets have on the AP paradigm. Based on earlier work on the Linguistic Category Model, we expect AP effect to be modulated by non-evaluative properties of the word stimuli, such as the linguistic category (e.g., if the prime is an adjective and the target is a verb versus the reverse). A reduction in the magnitude of the priming effect was predicted for adjective–verb prime-target pairs compared to verb–adjective prime-target pairs. Moreover, we implemented a modified crowdsourcing of statistical analyses implementing independently three different statistical approaches. Deriving our conclusions on the converging/ diverging evidence provided by the different approaches, we show a clear deductive/inductive asymmetry in AP paradigm (exp. 1), that this asymmetry does not require a focus on the evaluative dimension to emerge (exp. 2) and that the semantic-based asymmetry weakly extends to valence (exp. 3).
- Lateralization of facial emotion processing and facial paresis in Vestibular Schwannoma patientsPublication . Blom, Stephanie; Aarts, Henk; Kunst, Henricus P. M.; Wever, Capi C.; Semin, Gün R.This study investigates whether there exist differences in lateralization of facial emotion processing in patients suffering from Vestibular Schwannoma (VS) based on the presence of a facial paresis and their degree of facial functioning as measured by the House Brackmann Grading scale (HBG).
- Not all emotions are equal:Fear chemosignals lower awareness thresholds only for fearful facesPublication . Semin, Gün R.; Korb, Sebastian; Gomes, Nuno; Silva, FábioExposure to body odors (chemosignals) collected under different emotional states (i.e., emotional chemosignals) can modulate our visual system, biasing visual perception. Recent research has suggested that exposure to fear body odors, results in a generalized faster access to visual awareness of different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, happy, and neutral). In the present study, we aimed at replicating and extending these findings by exploring if these effects are limited to fear odor, by introducing a second negative body odor - i.e., disgust. We compared the time that three different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral) took to reach visual awareness, during a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, across three body odor conditions (i.e., fear, disgust and neutral). We found that fear body odors do not trigger an overall faster access to visual awareness, but instead sped-up access to awareness specifically for facial expressions of fear. Disgust odor, on the other hand, had no effects on awareness thresholds of facial expressions. These findings contrast with prior results, suggesting that the potential of fear body odors to induce visual processing adjustments is specific to fear cues. Furthermore, our results support a unique ability of fear body odors in inducing such visual processing changes, compared to other negative emotional chemosignals (i.e., disgust). These conclusions raise interesting questions as to how fear odor might interact with the visual processing stream, whilst simultaneously giving rise to future avenues of research.
- Does the linguistic expectancy bias extend to a second language?Publication . Garrido, Margarida V.; Saraiva, Magda; Semin, Gün R.The linguistic expectancy bias (LEB) reflects the tendency to describe expectancyconsistent behavior more abstractly than expectancy-inconsistent. The current studies replicate the LEB in Portuguese and examine it in a second language (English). Earlier studies found differences in processing a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) shaping affective and cognitive processes. We did not expect these differences to shape the LEB because controlled lexical decisions (e.g., use of verbs and adjectives) are unlikely, even when using L2. Participants wrote stereotypically male or female behavioral descriptions for male and female targets. A new group of participants read those descriptions and was asked about their causes. Expectancy-consistent behavior was described more abstractly and shaped more dispositional inferences in L1 and L2. Aside from replicating the LEB in a different language, these studies indicate that structural features of language preserve a linguistic bias with implications for social perception even when using a second language.
- Sex differences in the behavioral responses of dogs exposed to human chemosignals of fear and happinessPublication . D'ANIELLO, BIAGIO; Fierro, Barbara; Scandurra, Anna; Pinelli, Claudia; Aria, Massimo; Semin, Gün R.This research focuses on sex differences in the behavioral patterns of dogs when they are exposed to human chemosignals (sweat) produced in happy and fear contexts. No age, breed or apparatus-directed behavior differences were found. However, when exposed to fear chemosignals, dogs' behavior towards their owners, and their stress signals lasted longer when compared to being exposed to happiness as well as control chemosignals. In the happy odor condition, females, in contrast to males, displayed a significantly higher interest to the stranger compared to their owner. In the fear condition, dogs spent more time with their owner compared to the stranger. Behaviors directed towards the door, indicative of exit interest, had a longer duration in the fear condition than the other two conditions. Female dogs revealed a significantly longer door-directed behavior in the fear condition compared to the control condition. Overall the data shows that the effect of exposure to human emotional chemosignals is not sex dependent for behaviors related to the apparatus, the owner or the stress behaviors; however, in the happiness condition, females showed a stronger tendency to interact with the stranger.
- The lasting smell of emotions: The effects of reutilizing fear sweat samplesPublication . Gomes, Nuno; Silva, Fábio; Semin, Gün R.A growing body of research has shown that human apocrine sweat carries information about the emotional state of its donor. Exposure to sweat produced in a fear-inducing context triggers in its receivers a simulacrum of this emotional state, as evidenced by increased medial frontalis and corrugator supercilii (facial electromyography; fEMG) activity - two facial muscles involved in the display of fear facial expressions. However, despite the increased interest in the effects of emotional sweat, little is known about the properties of these chemical sweat samples. The goal of this study was to examine whether a second application of the same sweat sample would yield reliable results. Specifically, we assessed whether sweat samples collected from Portuguese males (N = 8) in fear (vs. neutral)-inducing contexts would produce similar fEMG activations (i.e., in the medial frontalis and corrugator supercilii) in female receivers (N = 60) across two independent applications (the first with Dutch and the second with Portuguese receivers). Our findings showed that exposure to fear (vs. neutral) sweat resulted in higher activation of both muscles compared with neutral odors, revealing a similar data pattern across the two applications and underlining the feasibility of reusing emotional sweat samples. The implications of these findings for properties of these sweat volatiles are discussed.
- The spatial grounding of politicsPublication . Garrido, Margarida V.; Farias, Ana R.; Horchak, Oleksandr; Semin, Gün R.In three studies, we advance the research on the association between abstract concepts and spatial dimensions by examining the spatial anchoring of political categories in three different paradigms (spatial placement, memory, and classification) and using non-linguistic stimuli (i.e., photos of politicians). The general hypothesis that politicians of a conservative or socialist party are grounded spatially was confirmed across the studies. In Study 1, photos of politicians were spontaneously placed to the left or right of an unanchored horizontal line depending on their socialist-conservative party affiliation. In Study 2, the political orientation of members of parliament systematically distorted the recall of the spatial positions in which they were originally presented. Finally, Study 3 revealed that classification was more accurate and faster when the politicians were presented in spatially congruent positions (e.g., socialist politician presented on the left side of the monitor) rather than incongruent ones (e.g., socialist on the right side). Additionally, we examined whether participants’ political orientation and awareness moderated these effects and showed that spatial anchoring seems independent of political preference but increases with political awareness.
- Puppies in the problem-solving paradigm: quick males and social femalesPublication . Pinelli, Claudia; Scandurra, Anna; Di Lucrezia, Alfredo; Aria, Massimo; Semin, Gün R.; D'ANIELLO, BIAGIOWe report an observational, double-blind study that examined puppies’ behaviors while engaged in solving an experimental food retrieval task (food retrieval task instrument: FRTI). The experimental setting included passive social distractors (i.e., the dog’s owner and a stranger). The focus was on how the social and physical environment shapes puppies’ behaviors according to sex. The dependent variables were the number of tasks solved on an apparatus (Performance Index) and the time required to solve the frst task (Speed). Sex and Stress were set as explanatory factors, and Social Interest, FRTI interactions, other behavior, and age as covariates. The main fndings were that male puppies solved the frst task faster than females. On the other hand, females displayed signifcantly more social interest and did so more rapidly than males. Males showed delayed task resolution. This study demonstrates sex diferences in a problem-solving task in dog puppies for the frst time, thus highlighting that sexually dimorphic behavioral diferences in problem-solving strategies develop early on during ontogenesis.
- Mapping human vigilance: The influence of conspecificsPublication . Gomes, Nuno; Semin, Gün R.A considerable volume of animal research on detecting threat and foraging reveals that the co-presence of conspecifics reduces vigilance and enhances foraging. Monitoring threat is an adaptive process and is of considerable relevance to humans. It is therefore important to understand how the presence of others influences threat monitoring - namely vigilance - and consequently the capacity to detect threats. We examine this with a novel paradigm, that simulates a “foraging under threat” situation, with an eye-tracker (allowing the examination of the allocation of attention). Our results show, as predicted, that participants in the individual condition (versus co-presence) allocated more attentional resources to scanning the environment and thereby sacrificing foraging, which increased their likelihood of detecting threatening events. Thus, the presence or absence of others modulates vigilance strategies in humans. These findings highlight the heuristic value of animal vigilance models to understand humans threat monitoring with considerable applied relevance.
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