56 results on '"Nicolas Vermeulen"'
Search Results
2. Neuroticism predicts national vaccination rates across 56 countries
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Nicolas Vermeulen
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General Psychology - Abstract
Quite strikingly, there is significant variation in Covid-19 vaccine coverage around the world. Some countries do not progress from around 2-3% while others are close to 100% coverage. In addition to some already known economic, health and sociodemographic predictors, the present research is interested in emotional factors that may predict a significant part of this cross-country variation. We examined the personality factor Neuroticism, which corresponds to the relatively stable tendency to experience negative emotions, anxiety and low tolerance for stress. Results confirm that gross domestic product represents around 50 percent of cross-country variation. Neuroticism added 6 to 9 percent of inter-country variation in vaccination coverage. The results are discussed in relation to the associations between Neuroticism, increased worry, greater attention to Covid-19 related information and confidence, as well as lower vaccine hesitancy. more...
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- 2023
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3. When the body matches the picture: The influence of physiological arousal on subjective familiarity of novel stimuli
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Piotr Winkielman, Anne Kever, Laurie Geers, Delphine Grynberg, Evan W. Carr, and UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute
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Relaxation (psychology) ,Emotions ,Recognition, Psychology ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Cognition ,PsycINFO ,Stimulus (physiology) ,External source ,Affect (psychology) ,Arousal ,Judgment ,Behavioral Neuroscience ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Humans ,Interoception ,Psychology ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Numerous studies show that bodily states shape affect and cognition. Here, we investigated whether incidental physiological arousal impacted perceived familiarity for novel images depicting real-world scenes. Participants provided familiarity ratings for a series of high- and low-arousal emotional images, once after a cycling session (to increase heart rate) and once after a relaxation session (to reduce heart rate). We observed a novel match-effect between internal (physiological) and external (stimulus) arousal sources, where participants rated highly arousing images as more familiar when bodily arousal was also high. Interestingly, the match-effect was greater in participants that scored low on self-report measures of interoception, suggesting that these individuals are less able to correctly perceive bodily changes, and thus are more likely to confuse their physiological arousal with an external source. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of interactions between the mind, body, and stimulus, especially when it comes to subjective judgments of familiarity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved). more...
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- 2021
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4. Consumption coping with ageing: Individual factors underlying the use of anti‐ageing products
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Gordy Pleyers and Nicolas Vermeulen
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Consumption (economics) ,Gerontology ,Coping (psychology) ,Social Psychology ,Ageing ,Anti ageing ,Psychology ,Applied Psychology - Published
- 2021
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5. Alexithymia disrupts the beneficial influence of arousal on attention: Evidence from the attentional blink
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Martial Mermillod, Marie Bayot, Delphine Grynberg, and UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute
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Alexithymia ,Adult ,Male ,media_common.quotation_subject ,PsycINFO ,Attentional Blink ,Arousal ,Young Adult ,medicine ,Humans ,Personality ,Attention ,Attentional blink ,Affective Symptoms ,media_common ,Cognition ,medicine.disease ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Clinical Psychology ,Feeling ,Female ,Psychology ,Cognitive psychology ,Cognitive style - Abstract
Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct that encompasses difficulties in identifying and describing feelings along with an externally oriented cognitive style. The influence of alexithymia and arousal on the cognitive processing of emotion is now widely demonstrated. To test the joint influence of alexithymia and arousal on attentional processes, 55 participants completed 2 blocks of attentional blink trials, one after a baseline (relaxed) session and the other after a cycling (aroused) session. The attentional blink task consists in presenting a neutral first to-be-detected target and second targets (T2) that were neutral (e.g., echo), low-arousal (i.e., emptiness), or high-arousal (e.g., murder) words and presented 213 ms after the first target. The results show that alexithymia interacted with arousal (cycling vs. baseline) and type T2, so that arousal was beneficial to detect T2 only for low-alexithymia scorers. The findings are discussed within the framework showing a decoupling between physiological arousal and subjective experience in high-alexithymia scorers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved). more...
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- 2019
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6. Desperately seeking friends: How expectation of punishment modulates attention to angry and happy faces
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Alexandre Schaefer, Nicolas Vermeulen, Olivier Corneille, Gordy Pleyers, Martial Mermillod, Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC ), Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry])-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes [2016-2019] (UGA [2016-2019]), Monash University [Malaysia], ANR-19-P3IA-0003,MIAI,MIAI @ Grenoble Alpes(2019), and UCL - SSH/LouRIM - Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations more...
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Punishment ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Emotions ,[SHS.PSY]Humanities and Social Sciences/Psychology ,Automaticity ,Face (sociological concept) ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Anger ,050105 experimental psychology ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Perception ,Attention ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,ComputingMilieux_MISCELLANEOUS ,Threat ,media_common ,Visual search ,Facial expression ,Fear-system ,Counter-regulation ,05 social sciences ,Detection ,Happiness ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery - Abstract
In the literature, a well-known processing advantage for angry schematic faces was largely observed in the “Face in the Crowd” (FIC) visual search task. A debate about automaticity and guidance of these effects by emotional/perceptual features is still raging. In order to modify the emotional context, the present study used a state of expectation of punishment (versus safety state). There was an angry superiority effect in the present study. However, we hypothesized and found that the presentation of a cue signalling an imminent threat (punishment) prior to the FIC task impairs the well-known processing advantage for angry schematic faces. On the reverse, the threat cue also facilitates the detection of happy (smiling) schematic faces. These results suggest that selective attention serves at least two basic affective purposes: (1) To efficiently detect threatening signals and (2) to detect potential coping resources in the environment, depending on motivational context. These findings are further discussed in terms of the threat detection system whose role is to respond to potentially dangerous situations [Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108(3), 483–522] and with regards to the counter-regulation principle which suggests that people may be biased towards searching for objects whose valence is opposite to their current affective state [Rothermund, K., Voss, A., & Wentura, D. (2008). Counter-regulation in affective attentional biases: A basic mechanism that warrants flexibility in emotion and motivation. Emotion, 8(1), 34–46]. more...
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- 2019
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7. Both high and low spatial frequencies are critical for visual consciousness in autism: Evidence of an emotional attentional blink paradigm
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Marie Gomot, Gewnhi Park, Martial Mermillod, Mickaël J. R. Perrier, Adeline Lacroix, Carole Peyrin, Frédéric Dutheil, and Margot Fombonne
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medicine ,Autism ,Attentional blink ,Spatial frequency ,Psychology ,medicine.disease ,Visual consciousness ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
High Spatial Frequencies (HSF - conveying local information) may serve a critical role in visual consciousness. Despite an HSF bias during visual perception in autism, autistic individuals demonstrate impairments in face processing. Our aim was to investigate the respective role of HSF and Low Spatial Frequencies (LSF - conveying coarse information) on visual consciousness in autism. Thirty-two autistic adults and 35 typically developing (TD) controls performed an emotional attentional blink paradigm with spatially filtered distractors. TD participants showed reduced T2 accuracy (i.e., accuracy for the second target given the correct report of the first target T1) after unfiltered and HSF distractors compared to LSF distractors. In the autistic group, we observed lower T2 accuracy than controls after HSF and LSF distractors but not after unfiltered distractors. Results suggest the importance of HSF for visual consciousness in TD participants whereas, both LSF and HSF seem important in autism. more...
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- 2021
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8. High spatial frequencies disrupt conscious visual recognition: evidence from an attentional blink paradigm
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Martial Mermillod, Mickaël J.R. Perrier, Adeline Lacroix, Louise Kauffmann, Carole Peyrin, Alain Méot, Nicolas Vermeulen, Frédéric Dutheil, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC ), Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry])-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), University of Leeds, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive (LAPSCO), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA), Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Fund for Scientific Research [Brussels, Belgium] (FNRS), and ANR-19-P3IA-0003,MIAI,MIAI @ Grenoble Alpes(2019) more...
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Emotional facial expressions ,Multidisciplinary ,Spatial frequencies ,Visual consciousness ,[SCCO.PSYC]Cognitive science/Psychology ,Attentional blink ,[SDV.MHEP]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Human health and pathology - Abstract
International audience; In this article, we tested the respective importance of low spatial frequencies (LSF) and high spatial frequencies (HSF) for conscious visual recognition of emotional stimuli by using an attentional blink paradigm. Thirty-eight participants were asked to identify and report two targets (happy faces) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation of distractors (angry faces). During attentional blink, conscious perception of the second target (T2) is usually altered when the lag between the two targets is short (200–500 ms) but is restored at longer lags. The distractors between T1 and T2 were either non-filtered (broad spatial frequencies, BSF), low-pass filtered (LSF), or high-pass filtered (HSF). Assuming that prediction abilities could be at the root of conscious visual recognition, we expected that LSF distractors could result in a greater disturbance of T2 reporting than HSF distractors. Results showed that both LSF and HSF play a role in the emergence of exogenous consciousness in the visual system. Furthermore, HSF distractors strongly affected T1 and T2 reporting irrespective of the lag between targets, suggesting their role for facial emotion processing. We discuss these results with regards to other models of visual recognition. more...
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- 2021
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9. Heightened sensitivity to low-level visual information in autism during an emotional attentional blink task
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Mickaël J. R. Perrier, Gewnhi Park, Carole Peyrin, Adeline Lacroix, Martial Mermillod, Nicolas Vermeulen, Marie Gomot, Frédéric Dutheil, and Margot Fombonne
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medicine.medical_specialty ,medicine ,Autism ,Attentional blink ,Sensitivity (control systems) ,Audiology ,Psychology ,medicine.disease ,Task (project management) - Abstract
Background Impairments in facial emotion recognition have been a hallmark of autism, which may contribute to the difficulty in social engagement and interpersonal interaction. Impaired facial emotion recognition in autism could be partly due to the asymmetrical perceptual bias to High Spatial Frequencies (HSF) information observed during visual perception. While Low Spatial Frequencies (LSF) convey coarse information, which would be critical for a fast analysis and categorization of emotional faces, HSF convey local information, which may serve a critical role in visual consciousness. However, to our knowledge, the effect of HSF on visual consciousness in autism has not been specifically studied so far. Methods Thirty-three adult autistic participants and 35 typically developing (TD) control participants performed an emotional attentional blink paradigm. Participants had to identify and report two targets (happy faces, T1 and T2) embedded in a stream of distractors (angry faces). The distractors between T1 and T2 were unfiltered or filtered in HSF or LSF. We used ANOVA to compare the impact of spatial frequency information on visual consciousness in the two groups of participants. Results TD control participants showed significantly reduced T2 accuracy (i.e., accuracy for the second target given the correct report of the first target T1) after unfiltered and HSF distractors compared to LSF distractors. As predicted, reduced T2 accuracy was observed after HSF distractors in the autistic group as compared to the TD group. Although we did not hypothesized, we also found reduced T2 accuracy after LSF distractors in the autistic group. The accuracy between the two groups did not differ regarding unfiltered distractors. Limitations Our sample was adult, high functioning and mainly late diagnosed. Therefore, our findings may not generalize to the whole autistic population. Conclusion Results confirm that HSF plays a critical role in visual consciousness in both TD and autistic participants. More importantly, autistic participants demonstrated impaired target detections after filtered distractors, suggesting that they have enhanced sensitivity for low-level characteristics, such as high and low spatial frequencies filtering. These findings are discussed in the context of the Enhanced Perceptual Functioning theory and predictive coding frameworks. more...
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- 2020
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10. Mindfulness and Empathy: Differential Effects of Explicit and Implicit Buddhist Teachings
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Anne Kever, Moïra Mikolajczak, and Marie Bayot
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050103 clinical psychology ,Health (social science) ,Mindfulness ,Psychotherapist ,Social Psychology ,Buddhist ethics ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,Psychological intervention ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Compassion ,Empathy ,Interpersonal communication ,050105 experimental psychology ,Interdependence ,Mentalization ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Psychology ,Applied Psychology ,media_common - Abstract
Several authors argue that interpersonal changes such as benevolence, compassion, and empathy should naturally emerge from a diligent practice of mindfulness. While empirical data from secularized and standardized mindfulness interventions do not fully support this assumption, a group of authors suggest that making underlying Buddhist teachings explicit within mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) might be a key factor in the modification of such culturally rooted aspects of interpersonal functioning. In order to investigate this suggestion, we compared a mindfulness program that explicitly integrates elements of Buddhist ethics (i.e., the four immeasurables) and wisdom (i.e., interdependency, non-self, common humanity) (ethics-oriented mindfulness training (EMT)), to a standard mindfulness training (SMT) program and a control group (i.e., waiting list), with a randomized controlled design in a community sample. Empathy components (i.e., affective responding, mentalization, emotion regulation, and behavioral responding), as well as variables that are typically associated with MBIs (i.e., mindfulness, self-compassion, and well-being) were assessed using multi-dimensional measures (i.e., self-reported, behavioral, physiological). Results showed no overall effects on empathy of our interventions in comparison with our control group. With regard to other variables, we found specific effects for each of our interventions. Whereas SMT led to a stable increase in mindfulness (Cohen’s d = .7), EMT led instead to increases in self-compassion (Cohen’s d = .8) and subjective well-being (Cohen’s d = .54). Although challenging theoretical expectations, we posit that our lack of empathy effects might be explained by several factors such as program structure, individual differences, and culture. more...
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- 2018
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11. Alexithymia disrupts verbal short-term memory
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Nicolas Vermeulen
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Recall ,Emotions ,Emotional words ,Short-term memory ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,medicine.disease ,Semantics ,Correlation ,Mood ,Memory, Short-Term ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Alexithymia ,Mental Recall ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,medicine ,Humans ,Affective Symptoms ,Valence (psychology) ,Psychology ,Clinical psychology - Abstract
While some research has now started to suggest that there are long-term memory (LTM) deficits in alexithymia, short-term memory (STM) in alexithymia remained largely unexplored. This study investigated whether the STM trace for emotion and neutral words might also be disrupted by alexithymia. Forty-four participants were randomly assigned to Study 1 in which the to-be-memorised six-word lists were composed of words belonging to the same valence (i.e. pure lists condition, Study 1), and 44 other participants were randomly assigned to Study 2 in which six-word lists were composed of embedded neutral and emotional words (i.e. mixed lists condition). All the participants completed the Toronto-Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and a current mood states scale (PANAS). Results showed that the main effect of alexithymia was observed in the pure lists condition while no alexithymia groups effect emerged in the mixed lists condition. In the pure lists condition only correlation analyses confirmed that alexithymia significantly and negatively correlated with recall accuracy. The results are discussed with regard to the influence of alexithymia on the proposed role of (1) semantic organisation of LTM on STM performance in the pure lists condition and (2) attentional capture by emotional words in the mixed lists condition. more...
- Published
- 2019
12. 'Passion' versus 'patience': the effects of valence and arousal on constructive word recognition
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Anne Kever, Arnaud Szmalec, Delphine Grynberg, Nicolas Vermeulen, and Eleonore Smalle
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Adult ,Male ,Time Factors ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Decision Making ,Emotions ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Passion ,Constructive ,Arousal ,Young Adult ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,Lexical decision task ,Humans ,Valence (psychology) ,media_common ,Visual word recognition ,Recognition, Psychology ,Patience ,Semantics ,Word recognition ,Female ,Psychology ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Accumulating evidence suggests that emotional information is often recognised faster than neutral information. Several studies examined the effects of valence and arousal on word recognition, but yielded partially diverging results. Here, we used two alternative versions of a constructive recognition paradigm in which a target word is hidden by a visual mask that gradually disappears, to investigate whether the emotional properties of words influence their speed of recognition. Participants were instructed either to classify the incrementally appearing word as emotional or non-emotional (semantic categorisation task) or to decide whether the appearing letter string is an existing word or not (lexical decision task). Results from both tasks revealed faster recognition times for high- compared to low-arousing words, and for positive compared to negative or neutral words. These findings indicate a recognition advantage for emotionally positive and highly arousing stimuli that persists even when visual word recognition is hampered and participants are encouraged to make more active, semantic inferences to generate the meaning of the emerging word. more...
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- 2019
13. Live happily live in hiding (from our affect): Alexithymia Influences affect intensity and affect frequency ratings in men
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Carole Fantini-Hauwel, Nicolas Vermeulen, Olivier Luminet, and UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute
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Adult ,Male ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Emotions ,Happiness ,medicine.disease ,Affect (psychology) ,Developmental psychology ,Young Adult ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Sex Factors ,Feeling ,Alexithymia ,Sex factors ,medicine ,Humans ,Female ,Affective Symptoms ,Valence (psychology) ,Students ,Psychology ,Incremental validity ,Biological Psychiatry ,media_common - Abstract
Alexithymia has been frequently studied in the context of negative affect frequency but rarely in the context of positive affect frequency or in the context of affect intensity. However, affect intensity and frequency, even if they are independent, are generally confounded due to an overlap in items wording (tapping both dimensions). The aim of the study was to examine the incremental validity of alexithymia for predicting both affect intensity and frequency, regarding positive and negative valence. Two hundred and fifty five students fulfilled measurements for alexithymia, affect intensity and affect frequency. Results showed that the factor "Difficulty identifying feelings" is related to higher positive and negative affect intensity, as well as to negative affect frequency. Men were also more sensitive to positive affect intensity and frequency if they scored higher on alexithymia. They experienced less often positive affect, but the intensity of their affect was more intense. Conversely, alexithymia did not influence women's affect intensity or affect frequency. Thus, alexithymia factors are associated with specific patterns of affect intensity and frequency, highlighting an overall deficit in the processing of emotions with contrasting patterns regarding gender. more...
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- 2015
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14. The body language: The spontaneous influence of congruent bodily arousal on the awareness of emotional words
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Coralie Eeckhout, Anne Kever, Nicolas Vermeulen, Delphine Grynberg, Martial Mermillod, Carole Fantini, Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, Université Grenoble Alpes [2016-2019] (UGA [2016-2019]), Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry]), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche (M.E.N.E.S.R.), and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) more...
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Adult ,Male ,Adolescent ,[SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio] ,Emotions ,emotion ,[SHS.PSY]Humanities and Social Sciences/Psychology ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Attentional Blink ,Developmental psychology ,Arousal ,Two-factor theory of emotion ,[SCCO]Cognitive science ,Young Adult ,Behavioral Neuroscience ,physiological arousal ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Heart Rate ,Kinesics ,Low arousal theory ,Humans ,Attentional blink ,embodiment ,Relaxation (psychology) ,heart rate variability ,Cognition ,Awareness ,Body language ,Embodied cognition ,Female ,Psychology ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
International audience; Nowadays, the idea of a reciprocal influence of physiological and psychological processes seems to be widely accepted. For instance, current theories of embodied emotion suggest that knowledge about an emotion concept involves simulations of bodily experienced emotional states relevant to the concept. In line with this framework, the present study investigated whether actual levels of physiological arousal interact with the processing of emotional words. Participants performed 2 blocks of an attentional blink task, once after a cycling session (increased arousal) and once after a relaxation session (reduced arousal). Concretely, participants were instructed to detect and report 2 target words (T1 and T2) presented among a series of nonword distractors. T1 and T2 were either neutral, high arousal, or low arousal words. Results revealed that increased physiological arousal led to improved reports of high arousal T2 words, whereas reduced physiological arousal led to improved reports of low arousal T2 words. Neutral T2 remained unaffected by the arousing conditions. These findings emphasize that actual levels of physiological arousal modulate the cognitive access to arousal (in-)congruent emotional concepts and suggest a direct grounding of emotion knowledge in our bodily systems of arousal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) more...
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- 2015
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15. Congruent bodily arousal promotes the constructive recognition of emotional words
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Anne Kever, Nicolas Vermeulen, Delphine Grynberg, Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives (SCALab) - UMR 9193 (SCALab), Université de Lille-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Laboratoire Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives - UMR 9193 (SCALab) more...
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Adult ,Male ,Emotions ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Affect (psychology) ,050105 experimental psychology ,Psycholinguistics ,Developmental psychology ,Arousal ,Two-factor theory of emotion ,03 medical and health sciences ,[SCCO]Cognitive science ,Young Adult ,0302 clinical medicine ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Low arousal theory ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,Reaction Time ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Language ,Relaxation (psychology) ,05 social sciences ,Cognition ,Recognition, Psychology ,Categorization ,Female ,Psychology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Considerable research has shown that bodily states shape affect and cognition. Here, we examined whether transient states of bodily arousal influence the categorization speed of high arousal, low arousal, and neutral words. Participants realized two blocks of a constructive recognition task, once after a cycling session (increased arousal), and once after a relaxation session (reduced arousal). Results revealed overall faster response times for high arousal compared to low arousal words, and for positive compared to negative words. Importantly, low arousal words were categorized significantly faster after the relaxation than after the cycling, suggesting that a decrease in bodily arousal promotes the recognition of stimuli matching one's current arousal state. These findings highlight the importance of the arousal dimension in emotional processing, and suggest the presence of arousal-congruency effects. more...
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- 2017
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16. Amplification of attentional blink by distress-related facial expressions: Relationships with alexithymia and affectivity
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Olivier Luminet, and Delphine Grynberg
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Facial expression ,media_common.quotation_subject ,General Medicine ,Anger ,Affect (psychology) ,medicine.disease ,Negative affectivity ,Distress ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Alexithymia ,Feeling ,medicine ,Attentional blink ,Psychology ,General Psychology ,Cognitive psychology ,media_common - Abstract
The present studies aimed to analyse the modulatory effect of distressing facial expressions on attention processing. The attentional blink (AB) paradigm is one of the most widely used paradigms for studying temporal attention, and is increasingly applied to study the temporal dynamics of emotion processing. The aims of this study were to investigate how identifying fear and pain facial expressions (Study 1) and fear and anger facial expressions (Study 2) would influence the detection of subsequent stimuli presented within short time intervals, and to assess the moderating influence of alexithymia and affectivity on this effect. It has been suggested that high alexithymia scorers need more attentional resources to process distressing facial expressions and that negative affectivity increases the AB. We showed that fear, anger and pain produced an AB and that alexithymia moderated it such that difficulty in describing feelings (Study 1) and externally oriented thinking (Study 2) were associated with higher interference after the processing of fear and anger at short time presentations. These studies provide evidence that distressing facial expressions modulate the attentional processing at short time intervals and that alexithymia influences the early attentional processing of fear and anger expressions. Controlling for state affect did not change these conclusions. more...
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- 2013
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17. Verifying properties of concepts spontaneously requires sharing resources with same-modality percept
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Olivier Corneille, Gordy Pleyers, Betty P. I. Chang, Nicolas Vermeulen, Martial Mermillod, Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC), and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry]) more...
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Male ,business.product_category ,Computer science ,Property (programming) ,Concept Formation ,MESH: Cognition ,Neuropsychological Tests ,MESH: Perception ,Cognition ,0302 clinical medicine ,Attention ,05 social sciences ,MESH: Neuropsychological Tests ,General Medicine ,Knowledge ,MESH: Young Adult ,Auditory Perception ,Visual Perception ,MESH: Knowledge ,Female ,[SDV.NEU]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC] ,Psychological Theory ,Cognitive psychology ,Adult ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,050105 experimental psychology ,Young Adult ,MESH: Auditory Perception ,03 medical and health sciences ,Stimulus modality ,Artificial Intelligence ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Headphones ,MESH: Attention ,MESH: Humans ,Modality (human–computer interaction) ,MESH: Psychological Theory ,MESH: Visual Perception ,MESH: Adult ,MESH: Concept Formation ,MESH: Male ,Embodied cognition ,Task analysis ,Perception ,Percept ,business ,MESH: Female ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery - Abstract
International audience; In the present experiments, participants had to verify properties of concepts but, depending on the trial condition, concept-property pairs were presented via headphones or on the screen. The results showed that participants took longer and were less accurate at verifying conceptual properties when the channel used to present the CONCEPT-property pair and the type of property matched in sensory modality (e.g., LEMON-yellow on screen; BLENDER-loud in headphones) compared to when properties and channel did not match (e.g., LEMON-yellow in headphones; BLENDER-loud on screen). Such interference is consistent with theories of embodied cognition holding that knowledge is grounded in modality-specific systems (Barsalou in Behav Brain Sci 22:577-660, 1999). When the resources of one modality are burdened during the task, processing costs are incurred in a conceptual task (Vermeulen et al. in Cognition 109:287-294, 2008). more...
- Published
- 2013
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18. Differential Reliance on the Duchenne Marker During Smile Evaluations and Person Judgments
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Susanne Quadflieg, and Bruno Rossion
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Attractiveness ,Amusement ,Social judgment theory ,Trustworthiness ,Social Psychology ,Social perception ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Perception ,Inference ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,Social relevance ,media_common - Abstract
When evaluating the smiles of other people (regarding amusement, authenticity, spontaneity, or intensity), perceivers typically rely on Orbicularis oculi activity that causes wrinkles around a target’s eyes. But does this so-called Duchenne marker also impact more generalized judgments of person characteristics (e.g., regarding a target’s attractiveness, intelligence, dominance, and trustworthiness)? To address this issue, the current study asked participants to provide the above smile evaluations and person judgments for a series of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles. The results showed that smile evaluations uniformly increased during Duchenne marker presence. The marker’s effect on person judgments, in contrast, was judgment dependent. While attractiveness, dominance and intelligence ratings showed the expected enhancement, trustworthiness ratings remained unaffected by the facial cue of interest. The findings suggest that the Duchenne marker’s role as a cue of social relevance during target perception depends on the type of person inference under consideration. more...
- Published
- 2013
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19. Can we test the influence of prosociality on high frequency heart rate variability? A double-blind sham-controlled approach
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Brice Beffara, Martial Mermillod, and Nicolas Vermeulen
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Double blind ,Interaction factor ,Psychophysiology ,Prosocial behavior ,Polyvagal Theory ,Closeness ,Heart rate variability ,Valence (psychology) ,Psychology ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
The polyvagal theory (Porges, 2007) proposes that physiological flexibility dependent on heart- brain interactions is associated with prosociality. So far, whether prosociality has a causal effect on physiological flexibility is unknown. Previous studies present mitigated results on this matter. In a randomized double-blind protocol, we used a generation of social closeness procedure against a standardized control condition in order to manipulate social affiliation as a prosocial interaction factor. High frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV, indexing physiological flexibility), electromyographical activity of the corrugator supercilii (sensitive to the valence of the interaction) and self-reported measure of social closeness were monitored before, during, and after experimental manipulation. Cooperation was measured after the experimental manipulation as an index of behavioral prosociality. Data reveal no evidence toward and effect of the experimental manipulation on these measures. We discuss methodological aspects related to the experimental constraints observed in social psychophysiology. Implications for the experimental test of the polyvagal theory are approached within alternative theoretical frameworks. more...
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- 2016
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20. Pleine conscience et empathie : une ressource pour les intervenants et une pratique à remettre en contexte
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Marie Bayot, Nicolas Vermeulen, and Martial Mermillod
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- 2016
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21. Alexithymia is associated with an augmenter profile, but not only: Evidence for anticipation to arousing music
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Olivier Luminet, Delphine Grynberg, and Dimitri M. Davydov
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medicine.medical_specialty ,General Medicine ,Stimulus (physiology) ,Audiology ,medicine.disease ,Arousal ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Alexithymia ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,medicine ,Psychology ,Skin conductance ,General Psychology ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
It has been suggested that high alexithymia scorers have an ‘augmenter’ profile which amplifies their physiological and subjective responses to highly arousing stimuli. The aim of this study was to test this theory using several physiological measures. Participants listened to musical excerpts either in a ‘weak-to-strong’ or a ‘strong-to-weak’ order of arousing levels of stimuli. The results show that alexithymia was associated with an augmenter profile for subjective reports for the most arousing stimulus and with stronger skin conductance level responses in the ‘strong-to-weak’ order. These results partially support the augmenter profile and reveal that alexithymia may be associated with higher anticipation for the most arousing excerpt. more...
- Published
- 2012
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22. Current positive and negative affective states modulate attention: An attentional blink study
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Nicolas Vermeulen
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Time windows ,Perception ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Memoria ,Visual attention ,Attentional blink ,Cognition ,Psychology ,Affect (psychology) ,General Psychology ,Cognitive psychology ,media_common - Abstract
The influence of emotion and affect on perception and cognition is now well-documented. For instance, affect has been found to have a direct influence on memory functioning. To investigate whether such effects also extend to the attentional system, we used the "attentional blink" (AB) paradigm. Many studies have documented that the second target (T2) of a pair is typically missed (i.e., less accurately reported) when presented within a time window of about 200-500 ms from the first to-be-detected target (T1; i.e.. the AB effect). Using the PANAS, we found in 55 participants that positive affect increases but negative affect decreases the report of the second target. The finding is discussed in relation to a recent theoretical framework of visual attention. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. more...
- Published
- 2010
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23. Coarse scales are sufficient for efficient categorization of emotional facial expressions: Evidence from neural computation
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David Alleysson, Martial Mermillod, Laurie Mondillon, Patrick Bonin, and Nicolas Vermeulen
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Facial expression ,Visual perception ,Artificial neural network ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,Pattern recognition ,Cognitive neuroscience ,Computer Science Applications ,Perceptual system ,Models of neural computation ,Connectionism ,Artificial Intelligence ,Parvocellular cell ,Frequency domain ,Computer vision ,Artificial intelligence ,business - Abstract
The human perceptual system performs rapid processing within the early visual system: low spatial frequency information is processed rapidly through magnocellular layers, whereas the parvocellular layers process all the spatial frequencies more slowly. The purpose of the present paper is to test the usefulness of low spatial frequency (LSF) information compared to high spatial frequency (HSF) and broad spatial frequency (BSF) visual stimuli in a classification task of emotional facial expressions (EFE) by artificial neural networks. The connectionist modeling results show that an LSF information provided by the frequency domain is sufficient for a distributed neural network to correctly classify EFE, even when all the spatial information relating to these images is discarded. These results suggest that the HSF signal, which is also present in BSF faces, acts as a source of noisy information for classification tasks in an artificial neural system. more...
- Published
- 2010
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24. Explicit vs. implicit body image evaluation in restrictive anorexia nervosa
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László Lénárd, Clarisse Marechal, Renata Cserjesi, Olivier Luminet, Yves Simon, Nicolas Vermeulen, François Nef, and UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute
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Questionnaires ,Adult ,Anorexia Nervosa ,Body shape ,Psychometrics ,Adolescent ,Emotions ,Anxiety ,Overweight ,Affect (psychology) ,Developmental psychology ,Young Adult ,Surveys and Questionnaires ,Body Image ,medicine ,Humans ,Biological Psychiatry ,Psychiatric Status Rating Scales ,Depression ,medicine.disease ,Affect ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Mood ,Anorexia nervosa (differential diagnoses) ,Visual Perception ,Female ,medicine.symptom ,Psychology ,Photic Stimulation ,Anxiety disorder - Abstract
In the present study we investigated the evaluation of body shapes in patients with restrictive anorexia nervosa (AN) on both automatic and controlled levels. The first aim of the study was to examine whether an ultra-thin ideal or negative attitudes toward overweight might be the motivation behind pathological restriction. The second aim was to investigate the relationship between body figure evaluations, eating disorder symptoms and mood. A Modified Affective Priming Test was used to measure implicit evaluations of body silhouettes, while a Likert scale was used to assess explicit evaluations. The study involved 35 women with restrictive anorexia nervosa and 35 age- and education-level-matched controls with normal body weight. In contrast to the control group, the patients did not show a positive attitude toward the ultra-thin body shape on the automatic level. The AN group both on the automatic and the self-reported levels evaluated the overweight body as negative. Depression and anxiety did not influence body evaluation. Strong negative evaluation of overweight appears to be a key issue in AN rather than positive evaluation of ultra-thin role models. more...
- Published
- 2010
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25. Alexithymia factors and memory performances for neutral and emotional words
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Nicolas Vermeulen and Olivier Luminet
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Recall ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Anger ,medicine.disease ,Disgust ,Developmental psychology ,Alexithymia ,Feeling ,medicine ,Personality ,Psychology ,Association (psychology) ,General Psychology ,Cognitive style ,media_common ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct, which includes difficulties in identifying and expressing feelings and an externally-oriented cognitive style. We investigated the effects of alexithymia and its subscales on recall and recognition rates for neutral, joy, disgust and anger words. We found that the alexithymia-factor difficulties identifying feelings was negatively associated with memory performance for emotion words whereas a positive association was found between the alexithymia factor externally-oriented cognitive style and recognition rates for all words (emotional and neutral). The deficit for difficulties identifying feelings was particularly strong for remember responses. Such a deficit in the ability to consciously recognize emotional concepts could be related to the observed difficulties in regulating intense feelings found in high alexithymia scorers. more...
- Published
- 2009
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26. Unintended embodiment of concepts into percepts: Sensory activation boosts attention for same-modality concepts in the attentional blink paradigm
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Olivier Corneille, Nicolas Vermeulen, Martial Mermillod, and Jimmy Godefroid
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Male ,Linguistics and Language ,Concept Formation ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Sensory system ,Fixation, Ocular ,Attentional Blink ,Vocabulary ,Language and Linguistics ,Young Adult ,Cognition ,Stimulus modality ,Perception ,Reaction Time ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,Humans ,Attentional blink ,Set (psychology) ,media_common ,Cognitive science ,Sensory stimulation therapy ,Acoustic Stimulation ,Reading ,Sensory Thresholds ,Visual Perception ,Female ,Psychology ,Priming (psychology) ,Photic Stimulation ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
This study shows that sensory priming facilitates reports of same-modality concepts in an attentional blink paradigm. Participants had to detect and report two target words (T1 and T2) presented for 53 ms each among a series of nonwords distractors at a frequency of up to 19 items per second. SOA between target words was set to 53 ms or 213 ms, with reduced attention expected for T2 under the longer SOA (attentional blink) and for T1 under the shorter SOA (lag-1 sparing). These effects were found but reduced when the sensory modality of the concepts matched that of a sensory stimulation occurring prior to the detection trial. Hence, sensory activation increased report for same-modality concepts. This finding reveals that grounded cognition effects (1) are involved in conceptual processing as soon as a word has reached the point of lexical identification and (2) occur independent of intentional access to sensory properties of concepts. more...
- Published
- 2009
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27. Neural computation as a tool to differentiate perceptual from emotional processes: The case of anger superiority effect
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Martial Mermillod, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Daniel Lundqvist
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Linguistics and Language ,Social psychology (sociology) ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Emotions ,Poison control ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Anger ,Language and Linguistics ,Connectionism ,Perception ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,Humans ,Computer Simulation ,media_common ,Cognitive science ,Facial expression ,Social perception ,Cognition ,Facial Expression ,Neural Networks, Computer ,Psychology ,Algorithms ,Photic Stimulation ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Research findings in social and cognitive psychology imply that it is easier to detect angry faces than happy faces in a crowd of neutral faces [Hansen, C. H., & Hansen, R. D. (1988). Finding the face in the crowd – An anger superiority effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 917–924]. This phenomenon has been held to have evolved over phylogenetic development because it was adaptive to quickly and accurately detect a potential threat in the environment. However, across recent studies, a controversy has emerged about the underlying perceptual versus emotional factors responsible for this so-called anger superiority effect [Juth, P., Lundqvist, D., Karlsson, A., & Ohman, A. (2005). Looking for foes and friends: Perceptual and emotional factors when finding a face in the crowd. Emotion, 5(4), 379–395; Purcell, D. G., Stewart, A. L., & Skov, R. B. (1996). It takes a confounded face to pop out of a crowd. Perception, 25(9), 1091–1108]. To tease apart emotional and perceptual processes, we used neural network analyzes of human faces in two different simulations. Results show that a perceptual bias is probably acting against faster and more accurate identification of anger faces compared to happy faces at a purely perceptual level. We suggest that a parsimonious hypothesis related to the simple perceptual properties of the stimuli might explain these behavioral results without reference to evolutionary processes. We discuss the importance of statistical or connectionist analysis for empirical studies that seek to isolate perceptual from emotional factors, but also learned vs. innate factors in the processing of facial expression of emotion. more...
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- 2009
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28. Electrophysiological correlates of the disrupted processing of anger in alcoholism
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Pierre Philippot, Eric Constant, Pierre Maurage, Salvatore Campanella, Philippe de Timary, and Olivier Luminet
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Adult ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,genetic structures ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Anger ,Stimulus (physiology) ,Audiology ,behavioral disciplines and activities ,P3a ,Discrimination, Psychological ,Physiology (medical) ,P3b ,Reaction Time ,medicine ,Humans ,Attention ,Oddball paradigm ,media_common ,Categorical perception ,Facial expression ,General Neuroscience ,Electroencephalography ,Disgust ,Facial Expression ,Alcoholism ,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology ,Evoked Potentials, Visual ,Female ,Psychology ,Photic Stimulation ,psychological phenomena and processes ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Recent studies have shown that alcoholism is characterized by a deficit in the processing of emotional facial expressions (EFE), and that this deficit could be "emotion specific". The present study explored the hypothesis that there is a specific deficit for the EFE of anger compared to another negative emotion (disgust). Moreover, on the basis of event-related potentials (ERPs), this study aimed at determining the locus of this deficit in the information-processing stream. METHODS: Fifteen patients suffering from alcoholism and fifteen matched healthy controls took part in the study, which used a "modified emotional" oddball paradigm. ERPs were recorded in response to repetitions of a particular facial expression (i.e. anger) and in response to two deviant (rare) stimuli obtained by a morphing procedure, one depicting the same emotion as the frequent stimulus, the other depicting a different emotion (i.e. disgust). The participants' task was to press a key as soon as they spotted the deviant stimulus. RESULTS: Behavioural data showed an absence of categorical perception effect for anger (but not for disgust) stimuli among alcoholic patients. Moreover, electrophysiological data revealed that alcoholism is associated with an impaired processing of anger at the attentional level (N2b/P3a complex), extending to the decisional level (P3b). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated disturbed processing of anger in alcoholism, at behavioural and electrophysiological levels. These preliminary results strengthen the proposition of a specific deficit for anger, and localize its possible origin to the attentional level (N2b/P3a complex) of the information processing stream. The clinical implications of these results are discussed. more...
- Published
- 2008
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29. Categorical perception of anger is disrupted in alexithymia: Evidence from a visual ERP study
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Salvatore Campanella, Olivier Luminet, Nicolas Vermeulen, and Mariana Cordovil de Sousa
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Facial expression ,Categorical perception ,genetic structures ,Social perception ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Cognition ,Anger ,medicine.disease ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Alexithymia ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,medicine ,Emotional expression ,Psychology ,Oddball paradigm ,Cognitive psychology ,media_common - Abstract
High and low alexithymia scorers were confronted with a modified visual oddball task that allowed the study of categorical perception of emotional expressions on faces. Participants had to quickly detect a deviant (rare) morphed face that shared or did not share the same emotional expression as the frequent one. Expected categorical perception effects, which were also neurophysiologically indexed, showed that rare stimuli were detected faster if they depicted a different emotional expression compared to rare stimuli depicting the same emotional expression than the frequent one. Even if no differences were observed at a behavioural level, high alexithymia scorers evidenced overall delayed neurophysiological responses in components related to the attentional processing of rare emotional faces. Moreover, the categorical perception effects for event-related components associated with the attentional processing were smaller in high alexithymia scorers and were even absent for anger. These results show that high alexithymia scorers present discrimination delays that are already observed at the attentional level. more...
- Published
- 2008
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30. Dynamics of Sensori-motor Interactions in Embodied Cognition
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Lionel Brunel, Nicolas Vermeulen, Guillaume T. Vallet, and Benoit Riou
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Cognitive science ,Action (philosophy) ,Embodied cognition ,Dynamics (music) ,Situated cognition ,Perception ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Grounded cognition ,Psychology ,media_common - Published
- 2016
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31. A mood moderation of the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task
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Olivier Corneille, Olivier Luminet, and Nicolas Vermeulen
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Social Psychology ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,050109 social psychology ,medicine.disease ,050105 experimental psychology ,Developmental psychology ,Sadness ,Optimism ,Mood ,Alexithymia ,Positive affectivity ,medicine ,Anxiety ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Implicit attitude ,medicine.symptom ,Big Five personality traits ,Psychology ,media_common - Abstract
Using an Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST), we provide the first‐ever systematic examination of the role of affective states (negative and positive affectivity, depression, anxiety) and personality traits (alexithymia, optimism) in automatic evaluation effects. Results revealed that the EAST effect was negatively associated with depressive mood even if others affective states and traits were simultaneously entered in a regression model. These findings could reflect a preference for a systematic information processing style elicited during sadness. More generally, the present findings suggest that implicit attitudes measures that capitalise on automatic evaluation effects may lack validity when measuring attitudes of individuals who have negative emotional states. Individual measures relating to affective differences may thus contribute to better predicting the implicit attitude‐behaviour link. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. more...
- Published
- 2007
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32. Switching Between Sensory and Affective Systems Incurs Processing Costs
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Olivier Luminet, Paula M. Niedenthal, Laboratoire de psychologie sociale et de psychologie cognitive (LAPSCO), Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 (UBP)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Veyssiere, Delphine more...
- Subjects
Cognitive science ,Modalities ,Modality (human–computer interaction) ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,050109 social psychology ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Cognition ,050105 experimental psychology ,Stimulus modality ,Artificial Intelligence ,Embodied cognition ,Concept learning ,Perception ,[SCCO.PSYC] Cognitive science/Psychology ,[SCCO.PSYC]Cognitive science/Psychology ,Conceptual system ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Psychology ,Cognitive psychology ,media_common - Abstract
Recent models of the conceptual system hold that concepts are grounded in simulations of actual experiences with instances of those concepts in sensory-motor systems (e.g., Barsalou, 1999, 2003; Solomon & Barsalou, 2001). Studies supportive of such a view have shown that verifying a property of a concept in one modality, and then switching to verify a property of a different concept in a different modality generates temporal processing costs similar to the cost of switching modalities in perception. In addition to non-emotional concepts, the present experiment investigated switching costs in verifying properties of positive and negative (emotional) concepts. Properties of emotional concepts were taken from vision, audition, and the affective system. Parallel to switching costs in neutral concepts, the study showed that for positive and negative concepts, verifying properties from different modalities produced processing costs such that reaction times were longer and error rates were higher. Importantly, this effect was observed when switching from the affective system to sensory modalities, and vice-versa. These results support the embodied cognition view of emotion in humans. more...
- Published
- 2007
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33. Switching Between Sensory and Affective SystemsIncurs Processing Costs
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Olivier Luminet
- Subjects
Artificial Intelligence ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology - Published
- 2007
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34. Dynamics of Sensorimotor Interactions in Embodied Cognition
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Benoit Riou, Lionel Brunel, Guillaume T. Vallet, and Nicolas Vermeulen
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Situated cognition ,media_common.quotation_subject ,grounded cognition ,lcsh:BF1-990 ,Numerical cognition ,emotion ,Mouse tracking ,perception ,050105 experimental psychology ,memory ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Perception ,Psychology ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Cognitive skill ,situated cognition ,General Psychology ,media_common ,05 social sciences ,Cognition ,lcsh:Psychology ,Editorial ,embodied cognition ,Embodied cognition ,action ,sensorimotor interactions ,Social psychology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Biological motion ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
The concept of incorporating the current situation and the body state within cognitive processes, referred to as embodiment, has revolutionized cognitive research (Glenberg et al., 2013). Interest in this approach has grown substantially in the last few decades. Embodied cognition has now been demonstrated across a wide range of topics, from babies (e.g., Smith and Gasser, 2005) to elderly adults (e.g., Vallet et al., 2013a), from normal cognition to neuropsychology (e.g., Vallet et al., 2013b) as well as in emotion (e.g., Vermeulen et al., 2007), and in neuroscience as a whole (e.g., Pulvermuller, 2013). Nevertheless, there is yet much to discover in order to better understand embodiment. One of the striking arguments of embodiment is that sensori-motor features are at the core of mental processes (Pecher and Zwaan, 2005; Barsalou, 2010). Their relationship should also be considered to be dynamic. In the embodied cognition approaches, perception, memory, and action are no longer regarded as (relatively) independent functions, but rather as closely interacting components. Some authors even argue for an overlap within these processes (Brunel et al., 2009, 2015; Vermeulen et al., 2009) that would rely on the same neural code (e.g., Hommel). One key direction in embodiment that needs to be further explored is the dynamic interaction between the sensory and motor components across the different cognitive functions. The present Research Topic aims to shed new light on this issue. The importance of studying this problematic is well presented in Dijkstra and Post's critical review. Their article highlights the crucial role of sensorimotor simulation across several cognitive activities (e.g., reasoning, evaluating) and how the interaction between the current situation and the simulation of past sensorimotor states mediates the emergence of adaptive behavior. This is possible since perception and memory interact closely and share processes and resources (e.g., Vermeulen et al., 2008; Riou et al., 2011; Rey et al., 2014). In other words, “direct” perception of an object and the mental simulation of this object involve common sensorimotor units. Heurley and Ferrier argue in their perspective that these interactions serve to plan and control actions to interact with well-known objects in non-optimal perceptual conditions, thus producing adaptive behavior. The idea that cognitive activities are strongly influenced by the given social and physical environment is referred to as situated cognition. Rey et al. demonstrate that motor simulation relies on the relevance of the object as a function of the task. Further evidence also supports the hypothesis that sensorimotor simulation is heavily influenced by situational aspects (Kapoula et al.). For instance, Amorim et al. have demonstrated that the visual angle and screen orientation along with contextual information modulates the resulting movement. The reverse is also applicable, since sensorimotor simulation shapes our perception of, as well as our interaction with, our environment. Grade et al. found that similar action simulation underlies both reachability and egocentric distance perception. This effect can be generalized across individuals and possibly incorporate the role of social environment in cognition. In accordance, Quesque and Coello show that during reach-to-grasp actions, participants unconsciously modify their trajectory curvature based on their partner's eye level. This adaptation to biological motion is one the key component of social interaction, but human movements are so complex that they might be described as mathematically chaotic. Nonetheless, children quickly develop the ability to coordinate gaze, and in some respect posture, in response to complex chaotic motion structures (Haworth et al.). The dynamics of sensorimotor interactions allows for situational behavioral adaptation in reaching and grasping, but also in more complex evaluative processes. For instance, associations between handedness and valence have previously been found (e.g., Casasanto, 2011). de la Vega et al. extend this finding by showing that strong right-footers respond to positive words faster with the dominant foot. The association between valence and laterality, however, becomes less clear when motor fluency is taken into account. Brouillet et al. observe that most participants prefer choosing stable supports for “good” items, regardless of side and handedness. The space-valence association could also be reported for the vertical axis. Xie et al. demonstrate that the processing of affective valence concepts activated the vertical spatial axis (positive in the up position). The association between cognition and space in the context of emotion is well documented, but it is not restricted to this cognitive domain. Hartmann et al. report that simple arithmetics are associated with gaze shifting along the vertical axis. Interestingly, operand magnitude partly modulated horizontal gaze position as well. The reciprocal influence of motor components on numerical cognition may also provide the opportunity to assess numerical cognition with methods such as mouse tracking. In their perspective, Fischer and Hartmann point out important insight and methodological considerations on conceptual aspects related to numeric cognition. This perspective has been further elaborated by Faulkenberry and Rey. These recent reports offer a new perspective on cognitive functioning, one that combines sensorimotor dynamics with contextual and body information. These new concepts provide new opportunities to explore related domains such as motivation (Shalev) and anticipation (Raab) and offer a new framework to interpret well-known and sometimes contradictory results in fields such as short-term memory (Macken et al.) or healthy cognitive aging (Vallet). more...
- Published
- 2015
35. Alexithymia and levels of processing: Evidence for an overall deficit in remembering emotion words
- Author
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R. Michael Bagby, Olivier Luminet, Catherine Demaret, Graeme J. Taylor, and Nicolas Vermeulen
- Subjects
Social Psychology ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Cognition ,Autonoetic consciousness ,medicine.disease ,Developmental psychology ,Alexithymia ,Perception ,medicine ,Semantic memory ,Personality ,Construct (philosophy) ,Levels-of-processing effect ,Psychology ,General Psychology ,Cognitive psychology ,media_common - Abstract
Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct that is thought to reflect a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotions. The effects of low vs. high Alexithymia, neutral vs. positive vs. negative words processed, and perceptual vs. semantic processing on memory were investigated in a group of 82 students using the levels of processing paradigm and the Remember/Know procedure. No differences were observed between low and high Alexithymia students when neutral material was considered. However, for both levels of processing, high Alexithymia students recalled fewer emotion words (both positive and negative) when "Remember" responses were considered. "Know" responses were comparable across Alexithymia groups. The deficit in the ability to consciously access emotional material (the "Remember" responses) may help explain the impaired regulation of intense emotional states by high Alexithymia individuals. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. more...
- Published
- 2006
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36. Alexithymia and the automatic processing of affective information: Evidence from the affective priming paradigm
- Author
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Olivier Luminet, Olivier Corneille, and Nicolas Vermeulen
- Subjects
media_common.quotation_subject ,Information processing ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Cognition ,medicine.disease ,Negative affectivity ,Developmental psychology ,Nonverbal communication ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Feeling ,Alexithymia ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,medicine ,Psychology ,Priming (psychology) ,Cognitive style ,media_common ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
In Study 1, we examined the moderating impact of alexithymia (i.e., a difficulty identifying and describing feelings to other people and an externally oriented cognitive style) on the automatic processing of affective information. The affective priming paradigm was used, and lower priming effects for high alexithymia scorers were observed when congruent (incongruent) pairs involving nonverbal primes (angry face) and verbal target were presented. The results held after controlling for participants' negative affectivity. The same effects were replicated in Studies 2 and 3, with trait anxiety and depression entered as additional covariates. In Study 3, no moderating impact of alexithymia was found for verbal-facial pairs suggesting that the results cannot be merely explained in terms of transcoding limitations for high alexithymia scorers. Overall, the present results suggest that alexithymia could be related to a difficulty in processing and automatically using high arousal emotional information to respond to concomittant behavioural demands. more...
- Published
- 2006
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37. Facial, vocal and musical emotion recognition is altered in paranoid schizophrenic patients
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Xavier De Longueville, Nicolas Vermeulen, Catherine De Graeuwe D’Aoust, Pierre Maurage, B. Gillain, Pierre Philippot, Séverine Samson, Benoît Delatte, Aline De Jaegere, Eric Constant, Isabelle Peretz, Anne Weisgerber, UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute, UCL - SSS/IONS - Institute of NeuroScience, UCL - SSS/IONS/NEUR - Clinical Neuroscience, and UCL - (SLuc) Service de psychiatrie adulte more...
- Subjects
Male ,Happiness ,Emotions ,Face (sociological concept) ,Musical ,Anger ,Emotion recognition ,Content (Freudian dream analysis) ,Middle aged ,Accuracy ,Priority journal ,Visual stimulation ,Neuroleptic agent ,Schizophrenia, Paranoid ,Fear ,Middle Aged ,humanities ,Facial Expression ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Schizophrenia ,Paranoid schizophrenia ,Speech Perception ,Female ,Stimulus response ,Psychology ,Auditory stimulation ,Cognitive psychology ,Human ,Adult ,Facial expression ,Clinical article ,Article ,Young Adult ,Social cognition ,Sadness ,medicine ,Humans ,Social Behavior ,Biological Psychiatry ,Emotion ,Recognition, Psychology ,medicine.disease ,Acoustic Stimulation ,Face ,Voice ,Perception ,Atypical antipsychotic agent ,Controlled study ,Music ,Photic Stimulation - Abstract
Disturbed processing of emotional faces and voices is typically observed in schizophrenia. This deficit leads to impaired social cognition and interactions. In this study, we investigated whether impaired processing of emotions also affects musical stimuli, which are widely present in daily life and known for their emotional impact. Thirty schizophrenic patients and 30 matched healthy controls evaluated the emotional content of musical, vocal and facial stimuli. Schizophrenic patients are less accurate than healthy controls in recognizing emotion in music, voices and faces. Our results confirm impaired recognition of emotion in voice and face stimuli in schizophrenic patients and extend this observation to the recognition of emotion in musical stimuli. © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. more...
- Published
- 2014
38. Emotion-specific load disrupts concomitant affective processing
- Author
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Olivier Corneille, Marie Bayot, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Gordy Pleyers
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Male ,Adolescent ,Physiology ,Emotions ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Sensory system ,Affect (psychology) ,Task (project management) ,Young Adult ,Neuroimaging ,Physiology (medical) ,Reaction Time ,Humans ,General Psychology ,Facial expression ,Analysis of Variance ,Working memory ,General Medicine ,Facial Expression ,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology ,Memory, Short-Term ,Pattern Recognition, Visual ,Face ,Identity (object-oriented programming) ,Female ,Conceptual processing ,Psychology ,Photic Stimulation ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Findings in the neuroimaging literature suggest that separate brain circuitries are involved when individuals perform emotional compared to nonemotional working memory (WM) tasks. Here we test this hypothesis with behavioural measures. We predicted that the conceptual processing of affect would be disrupted more by concurrent affective than nonaffective load. Participants performed a conceptual task in which they verified affective versus sensory properties of concepts, and a second, concurrent, working memory ( n-back) task in which the target stimuli were facial expressions. Results revealed that storing and updating affective (as compared with identity) features of facial expressions altered performance more for affective than for sensory properties of concepts. The findings are supportive of the ideas that affective resources exist and that these resources are specifically used during the processing and representation of affective properties of objects and events. more...
- Published
- 2014
39. THEORETICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL LIMITATIONS IN SIMULATING 3- TO 4-MONTH-OLD INFANTS' CATEGORIZATION PROCESSES
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G. Kaminsky, Edouard Gentaz, Nicolas Vermeulen, Patrick Bonin, and Martial Mermillod
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Categorization ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Artificial intelligence ,computer.software_genre ,business ,Machine learning ,computer ,Natural language processing - Published
- 2013
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40. Memory for words representing modal concepts. Resource sharing with same-modality perceptsis spontaneously required
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Olivier Corneille, Nicolas Vermeulen, Martial Mermillod, Betty P. I. Chang, Gordy Pleyers, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry]), and Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) more...
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Male ,Process (engineering) ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Context (language use) ,Sensory system ,050105 experimental psychology ,Memorization ,03 medical and health sciences ,Young Adult ,0302 clinical medicine ,Cognition ,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) ,Memory ,Perception ,ComputerApplications_MISCELLANEOUS ,Humans ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,General Psychology ,media_common ,Cognitive science ,Modality (human–computer interaction) ,05 social sciences ,General Medicine ,Shared resource ,Semantics ,Modal ,Auditory Perception ,Visual Perception ,[SDV.NEU]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC] ,Female ,Psychology ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
International audience; The recent grounded cognition literature suggests that modal perception and conceptual representations share common modal systems and modal resources. We sought to show that memory and memory of words predominantly related to a visual modality (e.g., Light) or to an auditory modality (e.g., Song) are hindered more by sensory interference from a related than an unrelated modality. This result cannot be explained by semantic interference, because the present study manipulated interference using meaningless stimuli. Rather, we suggest that people spontaneously access conceptual sensory attributes when detecting words and when trying to memorize words, and that this process comes with modality-specific costs. We discuss this finding in the broader context of grounded cognition and compare it to previous findings using closely related sensory-conceptual designs. more...
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- 2013
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41. Joint effect of alexithymia and mood on the categorization of nonverbal emotional vocalizations
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Nathalie Lefèvre, Gordy Pleyers, Ilios Kotsou, Nicolas Vermeulen, Disa Sauter, Marie Bayot, Amsterdam Interdisciplinary Centre for Emotion (AICE, Psychology, FMG), and Sociale Psychologie (Psychologie, FMG) more...
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Male ,Laughter ,Emotions ,Recognition, Psychology ,Crying ,medicine.disease ,Negative affectivity ,Developmental psychology ,Psychiatry and Mental health ,Nonverbal communication ,Affect ,Young Adult ,Mood ,Positive affectivity ,Categorization ,Alexithymia ,Emotion perception ,medicine ,Humans ,Female ,Nonverbal Communication ,Psychology ,Biological Psychiatry ,Cognitive style ,Personality - Abstract
The role of stable factors, such as alexithymia (i.e., difficulties identifying and expressing feelings, externally oriented cognitive style), or temporary factors, such as affective states (mood), on emotion perception has been widely investigated in the literature. However, little is known about the separate or joint effect of the alexithymia level and affective states (positive affectivity, negative affectivity) on the recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations (NEV) (e.g., laughs, cries, or sighs). In this study, participants had to categorize NEV communicating 10 emotions by selecting the correct verbal emotional label. Results show that the level of alexithymia is negatively correlated to the capacity to accurately categorize negative vocalizations, and more particularly sad NEV. On the other hand, negative affectivity appeared negatively correlated with the ability to accurately categorize NEV in general, and negative vocalizations in particular. After splitting the results by the alexithymia level (high vs. low scorers), significant associations between mood and accuracy rates were found in the group of high alexithymia scorers only. These findings support the idea that alexithymic features act across sensory modalities and suggest a mood-interference effect that would be stronger in those individuals. more...
- Published
- 2013
42. Alexithymia is associated with an augmenter profile, but not only: evidence for anticipation to arousing music
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Delphine, Grynberg, Dmitry M, Davydov, Nicolas, Vermeulen, and Olivier, Luminet
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Adult ,Emotions ,Galvanic Skin Response ,Anticipation, Psychological ,Young Adult ,Acoustic Stimulation ,Heart Rate ,Surveys and Questionnaires ,Auditory Perception ,Humans ,Female ,Affective Symptoms ,Arousal ,Music - Abstract
It has been suggested that high alexithymia scorers have an 'augmenter' profile which amplifies their physiological and subjective responses to highly arousing stimuli. The aim of this study was to test this theory using several physiological measures. Participants listened to musical excerpts either in a 'weak-to-strong' or a 'strong-to-weak' order of arousing levels of stimuli. The results show that alexithymia was associated with an augmenter profile for subjective reports for the most arousing stimulus and with stronger skin conductance level responses in the 'strong-to-weak' order. These results partially support the augmenter profile and reveal that alexithymia may be associated with higher anticipation for the most arousing excerpt. more...
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- 2012
43. Chapitre 9. Les émotions
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Damien Devaux, Martial Mermillod, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Laetitia Silvert
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Psychology - Published
- 2012
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44. Amplification of attentional blink by distress-related facial expressions: relationships with alexithymia and affectivity
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Delphine, Grynberg, Nicolas, Vermeulen, and Olivier, Luminet
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Adult ,Male ,Emotions ,Pain ,Fear ,Anger ,Attentional Blink ,Facial Expression ,Young Adult ,Pattern Recognition, Visual ,Humans ,Attention ,Female ,Affective Symptoms - Abstract
The present studies aimed to analyse the modulatory effect of distressing facial expressions on attention processing. The attentional blink (AB) paradigm is one of the most widely used paradigms for studying temporal attention, and is increasingly applied to study the temporal dynamics of emotion processing. The aims of this study were to investigate how identifying fear and pain facial expressions (Study 1) and fear and anger facial expressions (Study 2) would influence the detection of subsequent stimuli presented within short time intervals, and to assess the moderating influence of alexithymia and affectivity on this effect. It has been suggested that high alexithymia scorers need more attentional resources to process distressing facial expressions and that negative affectivity increases the AB. We showed that fear, anger and pain produced an AB and that alexithymia moderated it such that difficulty in describing feelings (Study 1) and externally oriented thinking (Study 2) were associated with higher interference after the processing of fear and anger at short time presentations. These studies provide evidence that distressing facial expressions modulate the attentional processing at short time intervals and that alexithymia influences the early attentional processing of fear and anger expressions. Controlling for state affect did not change these conclusions. more...
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- 2011
45. THE IMPORTANCE OF LOW SPATIAL FREQUENCIES FOR CATEGORIZATION OF EMOTIONAL FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
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L. Lopez, Nicolas Vermeulen, Martial Mermillod, Alain Méot, and Patrick Bonin
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Facial expression ,Artificial neural network ,Categorization ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Human visual system model ,Supervised learning ,Pattern recognition ,Spatial frequency ,Artificial intelligence ,Cognitive neuroscience ,business ,Field (geography) - Abstract
The decomposition by the human visual system of visual scenes into a range of spatial frequencies is necessary for the categorization of the objects present in the visual scene. This decomposition of spatial frequencies may be particularly important for the processing of emotions. Experiments in the field of behavioral (Schyns & Oliva, 1999) and cognitive neuroscience (Vuilleumier, Armony, Driver, & Dolan, 2003) suggest that low spatial frequencies (LSF) are better than high spatial frequencies (HSF) for the categorization of emotional facial expressions (EFE). The aim of this study was to determine whether LSF information is more useful than HSF information for the categorization of emotions. We tested this hypothesis using artificial neural networks (ANN) subject to both unsupervised and supervised learning. The results indicated better emotion categorization with LSF information, thus suggesting that the HSF signal, which is also present in the BSF signal, acts as a source of noisy information during classification tasks in artificial neural systems. more...
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- 2011
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46. Embodiment of emotion concepts
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Piotr Winkielman, Nicolas Vermeulen, Laurie Mondillon, and Paula M. Niedenthal
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Male ,Sociology and Political Science ,Social Psychology ,Emotion classification ,Concept Formation ,Word processing ,Emotions ,Facial Muscles ,Models, Psychological ,Two-factor theory of emotion ,Humans ,Facial expression ,Electromyography ,Verbal Behavior ,Affective science ,Cognition ,Recognition, Psychology ,Somatosensory Cortex ,Facial Expression ,Social Perception ,Embodied cognition ,Mental representation ,Imagination ,Visual Perception ,Female ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,Psychomotor Performance ,Follow-Up Studies ,Muscle Contraction - Abstract
Theories of embodied cognition hold that higher cognitive processes operate on perceptual symbols and that concept use involves partial reactivations of the sensory-motor states that occur during experience with the world. On this view, the processing of emotion knowledge involves a (partial) reexperience of an emotion, but only when access to the sensory basis of emotion knowledge is required by the task. In 2 experiments, participants judged emotional and neutral concepts corresponding to concrete objects (Experiment 1) and abstract states (Experiment 2) while facial electromyographic activity was recorded from the cheek, brow, eye, and nose regions. Results of both studies show embodiment of specific emotions in an emotion-focused but not a perceptual-focused processing task on the same words. A follow up in Experiment 3, which blocked selective facial expressions, suggests a causal, rather than simply a correlational, role for embodiment in emotion word processing. Experiment 4, using a property generation task, provided support for the conclusion that emotions embodied in conceptual tasks are context-dependent situated simulations rather than associated emotional reactions. Implications for theories of embodied simulation and for emotion theories are discussed. more...
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- 2009
47. Chapitre 8. Corrélats physiologiques, neuroanatomiques et neurophysiologiques de l'alexithymie
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Philippe de Timary, Olivier Luminet, and Ralf Schäfer
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- 2008
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48. Sensory load incurs conceptual processing costs
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Olivier Corneille
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Male ,Linguistics and Language ,Visual perception ,Property (programming) ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Short-term memory ,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology ,Language and Linguistics ,Young Adult ,Stimulus modality ,Cognition ,Perception ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,Reaction Time ,Humans ,media_common ,Cognitive science ,Modality (human–computer interaction) ,Memory, Short-Term ,Acoustic Stimulation ,Auditory Perception ,Visual Perception ,Female ,Psychology ,Energy Metabolism ,Cognitive load ,Photic Stimulation ,Psychomotor Performance ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Theories of grounded cognition propose that modal simulations underlie cognitive representation of concepts [Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(4), 577-660; Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617-645]. Based on recent evidence of modality-specific resources in perception, we hypothesized that verifying properties of concepts encoded in different modalities are hindered more by perceptual short-term memory load to the same versus different sensory modality as that used to process the property. We manipulated load to visual and auditory modalities by having participants store one or three items in short-term memory during property verification. In the high (but not low) load condition, property verification took longer when the property (e.g., yellow) involved the same modality as that used by the memory load (e.g., pictures). Interestingly, similar interference effects were obtained on the conceptual verification and on the memory task. These findings provide direct support for the view that conceptual processing relies on simulation in modality-specific systems. more...
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- 2007
49. Reduction of interference effect by low spatial frequency information priming in an emotional Stroop task
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Amélie Bret, Martial Mermillod, Brice Beffara, María Jesús Funes Molina, Marc Ouellet, Bruno Wicker, Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition (LPNC), Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry])-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone (INT), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Laboratoire de psychologie sociale et de psychologie cognitive (LAPSCO), Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 (UBP)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Department of Experimental Psychology, Universidad de Granada = University of Granada (UGR), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche (M.E.N.E.S.R.), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 (UPMF)-Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry]), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 (UBP), University of Granada [Granada], and UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute more...
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Male ,Visual perception ,genetic structures ,Emotions ,Object (grammar) ,spatial frequencies ,visual perception ,computer.software_genre ,Young Adult ,Reaction Time ,Humans ,top-down prediction ,emotional Stroop ,emotional facial expressions ,Facial expression ,Sensory Systems ,Facial Expression ,Ophthalmology ,Information extraction ,Pattern Recognition, Visual ,Stroop Test ,Pattern recognition (psychology) ,Female ,[SDV.NEU]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC] ,Spatial frequency ,Psychology ,computer ,Priming (psychology) ,Psychomotor Performance ,Stroop effect ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
International audience; The affective prediction hypothesis assumes that visual expectation allows fast and accurate processing of emotional stimuli. The prediction corresponds to what an object is likely to be. It therefore facilitates its identification by setting aside what the object is unlikely to be. It has then been suggested that prediction might be inevitably associated with the inhibition of irrelevant possibilities concerning the object to identify. Several studies highlighted that the facilitation of emotional perception depends on low spatial frequency (LSF) extraction. However, most of them used paradigms in which only the object to identify was present in the scene. As a consequence, there have yet been no studies investigating the efficiency of prediction in the visual perception of stimuli among irrelevant information. In this study, we designed a novel priming emotional Stroop task in which participants had to identify emotional facial expressions (EFEs) presented along with a congruent or incongruent word. To further investigate the role of early extraction of LSF information in top-down prediction during emotion recognition, the target EFE was primed with the same EFE filtered in LSF or high spatial frequency (HSF). Results reveal a reduction of the Stroop interference in the LSF compared to the HSF priming condition, which supports that visual expectation, depending on early LSF information extraction, facilitates the inhibition of irrelevant information during emotion recognition. more...
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- 2015
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50. Categorical perception of anger and disgust facial expression is affected by non-clinical social anxiety: an ERP study
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Nicolas Vermeulen, Salvatore Campanella, Mandy Rossignol, Catherine Anselme, and Pierre Philippot
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Adult ,Adolescent ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Emotions ,Anger ,Neuropsychological Tests ,behavioral disciplines and activities ,Developmental psychology ,medicine ,Reaction Time ,Humans ,Social Behavior ,Molecular Biology ,Evoked Potentials ,media_common ,Facial expression ,Categorical perception ,General Neuroscience ,Social anxiety ,Cognition ,medicine.disease ,Anxiety Disorders ,Disgust ,Pattern Recognition, Visual ,Face ,Anxiety ,Female ,Neurology (clinical) ,medicine.symptom ,Psychology ,Anxiety disorder ,Photic Stimulation ,Developmental Biology ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Anxiety has been associated with a bias for interpreting threatening information. Faces expressing anger seem to be more easily detected by socially anxious individuals than by non-anxious individuals. Similarly, disgust on a face may also reflect a negative social judgment. We tested the hypothesis that individuals displaying non-clinical social anxiety would be as sensitive to disgust as to anger interpretation by comparing individuals scoring high or low on the fear of social evaluation scale (FNE, Watson and Friend, 1969). Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded in response to repetitions of a particular facial expression (e.g. anger) and in response to two deviating (rare) stimuli obtained by a morphing procedure, where one depicted the same emotion as the frequent stimulus, while the other depicted a different facial expression (e.g. disgust). The classic effect of categorical perception was reproduced: at a behavioral level, people detected more easily rare faces depicting a different emotion than faces depicting the same emotion. ERP results suggest that deviant faces depicting a different emotion evoked an earlier attentional N2b/P3a wave complex, together with an earlier and enhanced P3b. More interestingly, participants with non-clinical social anxiety manifested a reduced N2b wave when they had to detect a change in intensity of anger presentation. However, these individuals did not show facilitation to disengage from disgust when they have to detect angry faces, which was displayed by control participants. Implications and suggestions for further research about the role played by anger and disgust in psychopathology are outlined. more...
- Published
- 2005
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