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Measures of Psychophysiology[edit]

Psychophysiology measures exist in three domains; reports, readings, and behavior.[2] Evaluative reports involve participant introspection and self-ratings of internal psychological states or physiological sensations, such as self-report of arousal levels on the self-assessment manikin,[3] or measures of interoceptive visceral awareness such as heartbeat detection.[4] Merits to self-report are an emphasis on accurately understand the participants’ subjective experience and understanding their perception; however, its pitfalls include the possibility of participants misunderstanding a scale or incorrectly recalling events.[5] Physiological responses also can be measured via instruments that read bodily events such as heart rate change, electrodermal activity (EDA), muscle tension, and cardiac output. Many indices are part of modern psychophysiology, including brain waves (electroencephalography, EEG), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), electrodermal activity (a standardized term encompassing skin conductance response, SCR, and galvanic skin response, GSR), cardiovascular measures (heart rate, HR; beats per minute, BPM; heart rate variability, HRV; vasomotor activity), muscle activity (electromyography, EMG), electrogastrogram (EGG) changes in pupil diameter with thought and emotion (pupillometry), eye movements, recorded via the electro-oculogram (EOG) and direction-of-gaze methods, and cardiodynamics, recorded via impedance cardiography . These measures are beneficial because they provide accurate and perceiver-independent objective data recorded by machinery.[2] The downsides, however, are that any physical activity or motion can alter responses, and basal levels of arousal and responsiveness can differ among individuals and even between situations.[6]

Finally, one can measure overt action or behavior, which involves the observation and recording actual actions, such as running, freezing, eye movement, and facial expression. These are good response measures and easy to record in animals, but they are not as frequently used in human studies.[2]

Uses of psychophysiology[edit]

Psychophysiological measures are often used to study emotion and attention responses to stimuli, during exertion,and increasingly, to better understand cognitive processes. Physiological sensors have been used to detect emotions in schools[7] and intelligent tutoring systems.[8]

Psychophysiology of Emotion[edit]

It has long been recognized that emotional episodes are partly constituted by physiological responses.[9] Early work done linking emotions to psychophysiology started with research on mapping consistent autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses to discrete emotional states. For example, anger might be constituted by a certain set of physiological responses, such as increased cardiac output and high diastolic blood pressure, which would allow us to better understand patterns and predict emotional responses. Some studies were able to detect consistent patterns of ANS responses that corresponded to specific emotions under certain contexts, like an early study by Paul Ekman and colleagues in 1983 “Emotion-specific activity in the autonomic nervous system was generated by constructing facial prototypes of emotion muscle by muscle and by reliving past emotional experiences. The autonomic activity produced distinguished not only between positive and negative emotions, but also among negative emotions”.[10] However, as more studies were conducted, more variability was found in ANS responses to discrete emotion inductions, not only among individuals but also over time in the same individuals, and greatly between social groups.[11] Some of these differences can be attributed to variables like induction technique, context of the study, or classification of stimuli, which can alter a perceived scenario or emotional response. However it was also found that features of the participant could also alter ANS responses. Factors such as basal level of arousal at the time of experimentation or between test recovery, learned or conditioned responses to certain stimuli, range and maximal level of effect of ANS action, and individual attentiveness can all alter physiological responses in a lab setting.[12] Even supposedly discrete emotional states fail to show specificity. For example, some emotional typologists consider fear to have subtypes, which might involve fleeing or freezing, both of which can have distinct physiological patterns and potentially distinct neural circuitry.[13] As such no definitive correlation can be drawn linking specific autonomic patterns to discrete emotions, causing emotion theorists to rethink classical definitions of emotions.

Psychophysiological inference and physiological computer games[edit]




See also[edit]


  2. ^ a b c Cacioppo, John; Tassinary, Louis; Berntson, Gary (2007). "25". Handbook of Psychophysiology (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 581–607. 
  3. ^ Bradley, Margaret; Lang, Peter (1994). "Measuring Emotion: The Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential". Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. 25 (1): 49–59. doi:10.1016/0005-7916(94)90063-9. 
  4. ^ Weins, Stefan; Mezzacappa, Elizabeth; Katkin, Edward (2000). "Heartbeat Detection and the Experience of Emotions". Cognition and Emotion. 14 (3): 417–427. 
  5. ^ Robinson, Michael; Clore, Gerald (2002). "Episodic and Semantic Knowledge in Emotional Self-Report: Evidence for Two Judgment Processes". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 83 (1): 198. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.83.1.198. 
  6. ^ Glynn, Laura; Christenfeld, Nicholas; Gerin, William (2002). "The Role of Rumination in Recovery From Reactivity; Cardiovascular Consequences of Emotional States". Psychosomatic Medicine. 64 (5): 714–726. doi:10.1097/01.psy.0000031574.42041.23. 
  7. ^ Arroyo, Ivon; Woolf, B; Cooper, D; Burleson, W; Muldner, K; Christopherson, R (2009). "Emotion Sensors Go To School". Artificial Intelligence in Education. 1 (1): 18–37. 
  8. ^ Hussein, M.S; Hussain, M. S.; AlZoubi, O.; Calvo, R. A.; D'Mello, S. K. (2011). "Affect Detection from Multichannel Physiology during Learning Sessions with AutoTutor.". Artificial Intelligence in Education. Auckland, New Zealand: Springer, LNAI Vol 6738.: 131–138. 
  9. ^ Williams, James (1884). "What is an Emotion?". Mind. 34 (2): 188–205. 
  10. ^ Paul, Ekman; Levenson, Robert; Friesen, Wallace (1983). "Autonomic Nervous System Activity Distinguishes Among Emotions". Science. 221 (4616): 1208–1210. 
  11. ^ Cacioppo, John; Berntson, Gary; Larsen, Jeff; Poehlmann, Kirsten; Ito, Tiffany (2000). "The Psychophysiology of Emotion". Handbook of Emotions. 2: 173–191. 
  12. ^ Stemmler, Gerhard; Wacker, Jan (2010). "Personality, Emotion, and Individual Differences in Physiological Responses". Biological Psychology. 84 (3): 541–551. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.09.012. 
  13. ^ Gross, Cornelius; Canteras, Newton (2012). "The Many Paths to Fear". Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 13 (9): 651–658. doi:10.1038/nrn3301. 
  14. ^ Gruszynski, Mike; Stephen H Faircloug. "Psychophysiological Inference and Physiological Computer Games". 
  • Bos, M. W., Dijksterhuis, A., & Van Baaren, R. (2012). Food for thought? Trust your unconscious when energy is low. Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics, 5(2), 124-130.





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