Affective Priming Task

Description

An affective priming task is used to study the impact of emotional stimuli on cognitive processes. The task involves presenting a series of stimuli, which can be either positive, negative, or neutral in nature. These stimuli are typically presented for a few milliseconds, and are immediately followed by a target stimulus that the participant needs to respond to.

The task examines how the emotional content (valence) of the initial stimulus (prime) influences the processing of the subsequent target stimulus. If the prime and target share the same emotional valence (e.g., both are positive or negative), this is a congruent condition. If they have different emotional valences, it is an incongruent condition.

The participants' accuracy and reaction times to the target stimulus are measured to assess the priming effect. Typically, if the prime and target are congruent, participants tend to respond faster and more accurately compared to when the prime and target are incongruent. This suggests that the emotional valence of the prime has influenced the cognitive processing and response to the target.

Affective priming tasks can provide insights into how emotions can automatically and unconsciously influence cognitive processes, such as attention, memory, and decision-making. They are widely used in research to investigate emotional processing, social cognition, and the impact of emotions on various aspects of human behavior.

Procedure

The task begins with a 24 x 24 px fixation cross presented for 500ms. 72 trials are performed, evenly split between neutral primes, congruent prime-targets, and incongruent prime-targets. Primes are presented for 33ms (2 frames in PsychoPy Builder). The target word is presented for 1000 ms.

Emotional Valence Words from:

Vasa, R. A., Carlino, A. R., London, K., & Min, C. (2006). Valence ratings of emotional and non-emotional words in children.Personality and individual differences, 41(6), 1169-1180.

Reference

Klauer, K. C. (1997). Affective priming. European review of social psychology, 8(1), 67-103.