 So welcome everybody to week two of our virtual RSP Seminar series. We're very happy to have our first Judy Slee seminar today. So this was scheduled for semester one, but with postponed due to the current context. So it's my pleasure to welcome Erin Parker, who is the theme convener for our Judy Slee series. First of all, I'll turn to Michaela. She's just going to highlight some housekeeping for everybody. And then we'll hand over to Erin to introduce that wonderful speaker today. So thank you everybody and I hope you enjoy. Hi everyone. Thank you for joining the psychology seminar series. So yeah, just a few housekeeping rules. Just a reminder that this seminar is being recorded and will be available on the psychology events page and will also be sent by email. Upon entry of the webinar, you will be muted and we ask that you please stay muted for the duration of this seminar. If you have any questions, you can write them in the question box below at any time and we'll have question time at the end. Thank you and I'll hand off to our theme convener, Erin Parker. Thanks Michaela. Hi everybody. Thanks for coming today. Very exciting to have our first student speaker of the year actually because Neve was meant to speak earlier in the year, but we had to cancel that seminar right as the university went into lockdown. So I'll just start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land that some of us are on today. Some of us may not be the Ngunnawal people and pay our respects to the elders past, present and emerging and obviously welcome any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people that are here with us today. So very exciting to have Neve presenting as I said. Neve's research is in cognitive psychology and she's going to tell us a bit about that in general today as well as present on the results of one of her studies. So whenever you're ready Neve, I'll hand over to you to start. Okay, great. Thanks Erin. I'll just share my screen. Can everyone see that? I'm going to receive you. Okay, great. Okay. So hi everyone. My name is Neve Campbell and I'm a second year PhD student. I'm supervised by Stephanie, Mark and Amy. And today I'm going to be talking to you about what I've been working on over the past one and a half years and ultimately answering the question, does motivational intensity exist distinct from arousal and valence? So we all experience emotions and these emotions colour and flavour our everyday lives. However, the relationship between different aspects of emotion remains poorly understood. So originally emotions exist on two dimensions. The first is called arousal, which ranges from calm to aroused. And the second is called valence, which ranges from unpleasant to pleasant or negative to positive. Now when emotional picture stimuli are plotted on these two dimensions, it looks like this, which we call a U shape. So where do different emotional picture stimuli exist on this U shape? So for example, pictures of cute little puppies, these are obviously quite pleasant, but receive medium arousal ratings. Pictures of erotica and extreme sports, these are pleasant as well, but higher in arousal. And on the other end of the valence spectrum, there's pictures that depict sadness, which are quite unpleasant, but lower in arousal and then pictures of mutilated bodies and threatening animals. Obviously quite unpleasant and highly arousing and neutral stimuli. So these belong in the middle of the valence dimension, but they actually receive the lowest arousal rating. So they belong down here. So there's numerous theories that predict the relationship between emotion and cognitive scope. So how do we measure arousal and valence? And how has it been measured in the literature? So one really popular image database is the International Effective Picture System, the IAPS. So this is just a collection of a diverse set of picture stimuli, which have been rated on arousal and valence. And these ratings have been validated by physiological measures. So this is really good for valence and arousal. So there's been numerous theories that predict the relationship between emotion and cognition, in particular the broadening and narrowing of cognitive scope. So some of these theories are arousal-based. So they claim that arousal is the driver of the broadening and narrowing of cognitive scope. And some other theories are valence-based. So these claim that valence is the driver of the broadening and narrowing of cognitive scope. And this includes the famous broaden and build hypothesis. So more recently, the motivational intensity model has been introduced. So this claims that it's not about arousal or valence, but it's about the motivational intensity. So your strength of your urge to avoid or approach a stimulus, which drives the broadening and narrowing of cognitive scope. So I'm just going to give a little example on how motivational intensity is different to valence. So for example, these two pictures, which represent amusement and desire, they both are quite positive. But the motivational intensity model would predict that these have different levels of motivational intensity. So amusement has lower approach motivational intensity and desire has higher approach motivational intensity. And so this model would predict that these two different emotional states would have differing effects on the broadening and narrowing of cognitive scope. So this model has been quite influential throughout the field. So there's been links between motivational intensity and attentional breath, memory, time perception, cognitive categorization and attentional flexibility. But before we wanted to apply this model to our own research, we wanted to look at how has motivational intensity been operationalized in the literature. And this is what we found. So motivational intensity has been operationalized based on researchers intuition, whereby they've just made assumptions about where emotions exist on this dimension of motivational intensity. They've also used arousal as a proxy for motivational intensity, whereby, for example, they've taken ratings from the IAPs of arousal and use these to represent motivational intensity. And they've also used measures of discrete emotions. So for example, they'll ask participants, how sad do you feel in response to this picture? And then they'll make predictions about where sadness exists on the dimension of motivational intensity. So overall they've made a few untested assumptions about where emotions exist on the dimension of motivational intensity. So the main issues with this model is that it claims that motivational intensity is distinct from arousal and valence. And also probably the big one is that they've never explicitly collected ratings of motivational intensity on a diverse set of picture stimuli. And that means that they haven't been able to compare it with arousal and valence. So that leads us to the research question of my first study of my PhD, which was, does motivational intensity exist distinct from arousal and valence? So what did we do? We created a picture rating study. So we had participants rate 300 pictures, and this was a between subject study. So we had three groups, and it's one rated on valence, one rated on arousal and another rated on motivational intensity, but the same 300 pictures. So the first question that we set out to answer was, is there appropriate professional intensity? So as I mentioned before, we had one group of participants rate those 300 pictures on the arousal scale, so ranging from calm to aroused. And then we had a second group of participants rate those same 300 pictures on motivational intensity, ranging from avoid to approach. So as I mentioned before, arousal has been used as a proxy for motivational intensity. So they would, the model would predict that motivational intensity and arousal have a moderate relationship. So now how I'm going to walk you through this data is we wanted to analyze avoidance motivational intensity and arousal separately to approach motivational intensity and arousal as well. This is because if arousal is going to be a good proxy for motivational intensity, then it should be related to both avoidance and approach motivational intensity. So if you just look at the left side of the screen, we're just going to look at avoidance motivation and arousal first. And so here's the prediction line and this is what we found. So it was a pretty good strong relationship. So that's good for avoidance motivation and arousal. But if you look on the right side of the screen, this is what we found for approach motivation. There was no relationship. So overall, is arousal an appropriate proxy for motivational intensity? No, if you were to use a proxy for motivational intensity, it should probably not be arousal. So let's just break that down as to why. So as I said, yes, avoidance motivation and arousal were related. So that means arousal is a good proxy for avoidance motivation, but not for approach motivation. So overall, not a good proxy. Okay, so as I mentioned, the original theories are valence based. So we also wanted to test whether motivational intensity is distinct from valence. So we had a third group of participants rate those 300 pictures on valence. And then just to refresh your memory, we compared that now to the motivational intensity scale and those ratings. And this is what we found. So we found a very, very strong relationship between motivational intensity and valence. So what does this tell us? Is motivational intensity distinct from valence? So results would suggest that motivational intensity and valence are very closely related. So this almost, it brings up the question as to whether motivational intensity is distinct from valence at all. So what are the takeaways from today? Arousal is not an appropriate proxy for motivational intensity. And motivational intensity might not be distinct from valence. And this has real implications for the relationship between emotion and cognitive scope because all that research that had been completed on the relationship between motivational intensity and cognitive scope could have really been valence that was doing the driving there. So what's next? We're actually going to be doing a follow-up study where we're going to be creating a behavioral measure of motivational intensity and valence and comparing the two. Yeah. So thank you to my supervisors, Stephanie, Mark and Amy for all your help. It's been really great working with you and also to the visual cognition lab and also all the friends that I've made at RSP. And if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, that's my handle. But yeah. Any questions? Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much, Neve. That was great. One thing that I forgot to mention at the start, everybody was that we were having a short seminar today. Usually these seminars, we will have two people presenting, but I had a bit of difficulty getting a second presenter for today. So we've got plenty of time to have some questions for Neve. So if you can type your questions in the Q&A section, then I can read them out. Or Neve, you can read them if you want, because I think you can access them too. I can read them here. Yep. Okay, excellent. So do you want to read the question out and then give us your answer? Yeah. So I've got a good question here, which is, do you ever want to approach something with a negative valence? So according to the research, yes. There's been a lot of research on anger as the main emotional state that obviously is negative valence, but you want to approach. And we're going to test this in a follow-up study where we're going to be looking at whether there's any differences between motivational intensity and valence for anger after using the rating scale. Because in the research, they never operationalize motivational intensity. So that's what we're going to do. Can you please elaborate more on the behavioral measure that you will be using for your follow-up study? Okay. So it's still in the process of being created, but from what I understand, it's going to be an RT measure where we have participants complete two conditions. One for motivational intensity, one for valence, and we're going to show them all the images, and they're going to respond either avoid or approach or negative or positive. And then we'll look at the RTs for these and rank order them. And hopefully if there is no difference between motivational intensity and valence, then we'll also see a really strong correlation. But this has only been created recently. So we're still in the process of discussing it. Are there any more questions? I have a question. I just can't type it in the box, but I see ones just come through. My question is actually what are you hoping at the end of your PhD that you will be sort of the applied outcomes? Like what do you want to see coming out of your research at the end? That's a good question. So the original, like my original research question was looking at emotion and cognitive scope. So I really would, but then it turned because we were looking at the literature and realized that motivational intensity have never been operationalized. So we've more been focusing more on the emotion side so far. So at the end, I really would like to probably determine, especially looking at whether valence is the driver of cognitive scope and probably more looking at the effect on cognitive scope as well. That's what I'm thinking. But I guess, yeah, I'm still thinking about what my end goal is in all honesty. Cool. Thank you. Okay. So, but it seems that the target of anger will be important. I can be angry at historical injustices. Well, might want to I approach, I can be angry at you and want to approach you. Basically, my point is that you might find different types of findings as a function of the type of angry inducing picture you present, which means that there is a third variable at play. Yes, this is a good point. So in our new study, which I haven't explained, we're actually trying to find the best. We're doing it like a pilot study, I guess, where we're trying to find the best stimuli that represent the different emotions that we're interested in. And one of them is anger. So that's what we're running at the moment. We're presenting a lot of different pictures that might be angry, like represent anger to different participants and will be selecting the pictures that get the highest ratings on anger to go into the next study. I don't know if that answers the question. But yeah, sort of. That's okay. We can talk about it later if you want. We can actually get Michael unmuted too. And that way you can answer the question. You can ask the question verbally, Michael. Where is he? I don't know how to get it. Michaela will give you. Yeah, Michaela. I've just given you controls, Michael. Okay, can you hear me? Yeah. Can you? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's so I'm just I'm just kind of pushing the point just for just for the sake of it. Yeah. I can imagine you doing a pilot test and getting and showing, you know, both a historical injustice and interpersonal violation, I suppose, and they both invoking equal amounts of high intensity anger. And then you including both of them in the in the final study. I suppose to me if isn't, I would want to in the interpersonal violation, I would want to the anger might lead me to approach you. I guess I guess the issue for me is it's not apparent it's not self evident to me. Anger is an it has an approach motivation associated with it. I can imagine when it does. And I can imagine when it doesn't, even though they're equal intensity anger feelings, which means that there's something else going on here. Maybe. I don't actually know. Well, no, I think I'm trying to think why would I want to approach you, for example, if I'm angry. Well, I would want to approach you to somehow rectify it to invoke to to to write a wrong to tell you how pissed off I am or something like that to seek vengeance or to whatever. But if I'm angry at a historical injustice, I might want to approach somebody or I might just wallow in my anger because there's really no, I don't know what I would approach. Hmm. And so I do think and yet they can be both highly intense anger. So it's not. It's a if. Yeah, so I'm just, I do think it's really the negative emotion approach condition is it is a challenging one, I think for you. That's all I want to say. No, I definitely agree. It's definitely going to be a challenge. I think we're still trying like we've thought about all of these things as well and had many discussions on the confusion of anger. And, um, but yeah, I guess that's why we're going to test it or try our best to. Yeah, cool. Any other questions from anyone. I'll ask another question me. Okay. What are the other just out of curiosity. What are the other emotions that you'll be focusing on in that follow up stone. Okay, so that. Okay, so there's, there's five emotions that we'll be studying focusing on sorry. I think I actually have another slide from my TPR on this, but I probably don't need it. Um, there's five emotions. So there's three from the literature already that have been shown that there might be divergences between motivational intensity and valence. So those are all like as in a w e the emotion, um, anger and what was the third one. Amusement. So those are the three in the literature and then to in our study where we found minor divergences was desire and sadness. So desire, for example, um, people wanted to approach these on a sorry for the erotic stimuli, people didn't want to approach these, but they found them positive. For example, with the sad pictures, people wanted to approach these, but they found them negative. So that's just two examples. Thank you. What could be interesting practical implications of your findings. Um, can you elaborate more on this what what like what in terms of looking at cognitive scope or Diana. I think talking's permitted permitted. Oh, don't have a microphone. Oh no. I guess the real implications. I'm not really sure about practical implications. Um, but the real implications are I guess on cognitive scope as I mentioned, it could be valence extremities of valence. After all that was driving narrowing and broadening just photos that you use or do you use videos as well. Yeah, that's a good question. So at the moment we've only used photos but people and I'm sure we probably will try in the future to use videos or you can use emotional recalls or you can try and induce people into emotional states by reading little blurbs and Yeah, blurbs and stuff about different kind of experiences. But yeah, we're just trying to test pictures at the moment. So with that follow up study, if that pilot test if we can't get because at the moment we're measuring the discrete emotion. So for example, how angry does this make you feel if we can't get enough stimuli from that then we might like say for example with anger. A lot of the time, not really sure how possible it'll be to get angry from pictures. So we might need to use films or something else for that. I guess if there's no more questions we can probably finish it sure. Hi, Aaron. Yeah. Thanks. Is there more? I guess you can. A minute ago you mentioned the Q&A box. Um, no, there haven't. That's my internet. Yeah. Um, no, there hasn't been unless, nope. There's none. So it's open answered dismissed. It's like Aaron might be having some issues with her internet. So it sounds like there's no more questions. So I will just speak on behalf of Aaron. I think you did a wonderful job me and I think you engage with those questions really well. It sounds like you've got a really interesting research project and program ahead. And we would love to have you back to share. How you go with your next project? I'll sign you up for 2021. Yeah, I'll come back. Um, so I wanted to say thank you very much. Um, and if anybody has any further questions or comments, I'm sure me would be very happy for you to contact her and further that conversation. Um, as we go forward. So I think we can leave it there and thank everybody. We hope you have a lovely rest of your lunch. Um, and we look forward to seeing you next week. We have a presentation featuring Dr Amy Dall and Liz Miller that we all have. We're all looking forward to. So from the cognitive theme. So have a lovely day everybody and thank you very much. A big virtual clap for you. Um, and we wish you all the best for the next week everyone. Thanks so much everyone.