Neuroimaging experiments have revealed that the visual cortex is involved in the processing of affective stimuli: seeing emotional pictures leads to greater activation than seeing neutral ones. It is unclear, however, whether such differential activation is due to stimulus valence or whether the results are confounded by arousal level. In order to investigate the contributions of valence and ar...

Researchers from various disciplines are concerned with the study of affective phenomena, especially arousal. Expressed affective modulations, which reflect both an individual’s internal state and external factors, are central to the communicative process. Bone et al. developed a robust, unsupervised (rule-based) method which provides a scale-continuous, bounded arousal rating from the vocal si...

OBJECTIVE A virtual reality environment (VRE) was designed to expose participants to substance use and sexual risk-taking cues to examine the utility of VR in eliciting adolescent physiological arousal. METHODS 42 adolescents (55% male) with a mean age of 14.54 years (SD = 1.13) participated. Physiological arousal was examined through heart rate (HR), respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), and s...

The arousal theory of color proposes that red is associated with arousal. Research on the color-in-context theory, in turn, states that the context in which red is perceived influences its valence-related meaning and behavioral responses to it. This study faces and integrates these theories by examining the influence of red on both arousal and valence perceptions of test-relevant and neutral st...

"Arousal" at a particular time has been defined as the energetic state at that moment, reflected in electrodermal activity and measured by skin conductance level. In contrast, task related "activation" has been defined as the change in arousal from a resting baseline to the task situation. The present study, replicating some aspects of a previous investigation of these ideas in children, aimed ...

We measured the effects of sound and visual dynamic elements on user experience of a serious game, with special interest in engagement and arousal. Engagement was measured through questionnaires and arousal through the SAM and electromyography (EMG). We adopted the EMG of the corrugator (frown muscle) and the zygomatic muscle (smile muscle) as indicators for arousal and valence. We hypothesized...

The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimens...

Three adult male sex offenders with developmental disabilities participated in an evaluation of presession factors that may influence levels of sexual arousal measured with a penile plethysmograph. We evaluated the effects of presession masturbation (1 participant) and arousal-suppression strategies (2 participants). Results showed that presession masturbation lowered arousal levels and both pa...