The purpose of the present investigation was to replicate and extend the International Affective Picture System norms (Ito, Cacioppo, & Lang, 1998; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999). These norms were developed to provide researchers with photographic slides that varied in emotional evocation, especially arousal and valence. In addition to collecting rating data on the dimensions of arousal and v...

According to the traditional view, both imageability and concreteness ratings reflect the way word meanings rely on information mediated by the senses. As a consequence, the two measures should and do correlate. The link between these two indexes was already hypothesized and demonstrated by Paivio et al. (1968) in a seminal article, where they introduced the idea of imageability ratings for the...

Advances in the use of virtual affective agents for therapeutic purposes in mental health opened a research avenue to improve the way patients interpret other’s behavior as helpful instead of menacing. Here, the authors propose an original paradigm based on affective computing and virtual reality technologies requiring the assessment of helping intentions as well as self-monitoring metacognitio...

Emotion boosts the consolidation of events in the declarative memory system. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is believed to foster the memory consolidation of emotional events. On the other hand, REM sleep is assumed to reduce the emotional tone of the memory. Here, we investigated the effect of selective REM-sleep deprivation, SWS deprivation, or wake on the affective evaluation and consolidati...

Pictorial stimuli can vary on many dimensions, several aspects of which are captured by the term 'visual complexity.' Visual complexity can be described as, "a picture of a few objects, colors, or structures would be less complex than a very colorful picture of many objects that is composed of several components." Prior studies have reported a relationship between affect and visual complexity, ...

in English Research on aging indicates that cognitive and affective functions follow different trajectories across the lifespan. In general, cognitive capabilities are attenuated, whereas affective functions are more stable or may even be enhanced in older adults, for instance, emotional regulation and increased affective heterogeneity. It is unclear whether affective changes with age correspon...

Natural scenes provide important affective cues for observers to avoid danger. From an adaptationist perspective, such cues affect the behavior of the observer and shape the evolution of the observer's response. It is evolutionarily significant for individuals to extract affective information from the environment as quickly and as efficiently as possible. However, the nearly endless variations ...

Regular participation in physical activity is associated with a variety of health benefits and a reduction in diverse chronic diseases. However, empirical studies have shown that about 50% of the participants in exercise programs drop out during the first six months. One strategy to increase regular physical activity would be to promote positive feelings during exercise. The purposes of this ex...