Tune in to your emotions: a robust personalized affective music player

The emotional power of music is exploited in a personalized affective music player (AMP) that selects music for mood enhancement. A biosignal approach is used to measure listeners’ personal emotional reactions to their own music as input for affective user models. Regression and kernel density estimation are applied to model the physiological changes the music elicits. Using these models, personalized music selections based on an affective goal state can be made. The AMP was validated in real-world trials over the course of several weeks. Results show that our models can cope with noisy situations and handle large inter-individual differences in the music domain. The AMP augments music listening where its techniques enable automated affect guidance. Our approach provides valuable insights for affective computing and user modeling, for which the AMP is a suitable carrier application

Affective regulation of cognitive-control adjustments in remitted depressive patients after acute tryptophan depletion

Negative affect in healthy populations regulates the appraisal of demanding situations, which tunes subsequent effort mobilization and adjustments in cognitive control. In the present study, we hypothesized that dysphoria in depressed individuals similarly modulates this adaptation, possibly through a neural mechanism involving serotonergic regulation. We tested the effect of dysphoria induced by acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) in remitted depressed patients on conflict adaptation in a Simon task. ATD temporarily lowers the availability of the serotonin precursor L-Tryptophan and is known to increase depressive symptoms in approximately half of remitted depressed participants. We found that depressive symptoms induced by ATD were associated with increased conflict adaptation. Our finding extends recent observations implying an important role of affect in regulating conflict-driven cognitive control

Towards estimating computer users' mood from interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse

The purpose of this exploratory research was to study the relationship between the mood of computer users and their use of keyboard and mouse to examine the possibility of creating a generic or individualized mood measure. To examine this, a field study (n = 26) and a controlled study (n = 16) were conducted. In the field study, interaction data and self-reported mood measurements were collected during normal PC use over several days. In the controlled study, participants worked on a programming task while listening to high or low arousing background music. Besides subjective mood measurement, galvanic skin response (GSR) data was also collected. Results found no generic relationship between the interaction data and the mood data. However, the results of the studies found significant average correlations between mood measurement and personalized regression models based on keyboard and mouse interaction data. Together the results suggest that individualized mood prediction is possible from interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomena can be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions—a framework for human affective research. In this capstone paper for the special issue “Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Human Affectome”, we gather the tiered purpose of human affective phenomena to synthesize assumptions that account for human affective phenomena collectively. This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research

Exploring the hardship of ease : subjective and objective effort in the ease-of-processing paradigm

Numerous studies examined the role of processing effort in judgments using the “ease-of-processing” paradigm in which participants generate or retrieve few or many issue-relevant thoughts. Because earlier studies only assessed the subjective effort, it is unclear if this paradigm also mobilizes objective effort, and how such effort relates to subjective effort. These questions were addressed in two experiments modeled on standard tasks from the processing effort literature: “ease of argument generation” (Study 1) and “ease of retrieval” (Study 2). In both experiments we simultaneously measured subjective effort (via self-report) and objective effort (via cardiovascular reactivity). The results showed that processing ease manipulations (generation or retrieval of few vs. many exemplars) influence not only subjective effort, but also objective effort, as reflected especially by increases of systolic blood pressure in the many exemplars condition. However, only subjective effort was related to judgment. In the discussion, we consider the role of various forms of effort and other relevant variables in “processing ease” effects

Bounded Effort Automaticity: A Drama in Four Parts

This chapter proposes a new theoretical perspective on the self-regulation of effort. In the first part, we discuss research on motivational intensity and cardiovascular adjustments. The sympathetic impact on the heart via beta-adrenergic receptors is proportional to task engagement. This beta-adrenergic impact becomes especially evident in shortened cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP). PEP thus serves as a “gold standard” measure of effort mobilization. Most research on effort mobilization has supported some form of resource conservation principle, or the notion that people prefer to minimize effort to attain their goals. This research has especially supported the predictions of motivational intensity theory that posits that people mobilize effort proportionally to task demand as long as success is possible and justified. However, research from the automaticity literature suggests that people can also be directly primed to mobilize their effort, and that such priming also influences PEP. This raises the question if automatic priming processes operate independently of the resource conservation principle. To resolve this problem, we propose a bounded effort automaticity approach, which integrates automaticity research with the resource conservation principle. In this approach, priming action and inaction during task performance automatically leads to effort mobilization, but only as long as success is possible and justified. In support of our approach, we discuss studies showing that automatic priming increases mobilized effort but only as long as success is possible and justified. These findings confirm that effort mobilization can be influenced automatically, but only within boundary conditions

Effort Mobilization when the Self is Involved: Some Lessons from the Cardiovascular System

In this article it is proposed that the principles of motivational intensity theory (Brehm & Self, 1989) apply to effort mobilization for challenges with consequences for performers' self-esteem and selfdefinition (i.e., self-involvement). Accordingly, involvement of the self makes success important and thus justifies the mobilization of high resources. However, up to this level of maximally justified resources, actual effort is mobilized in correspondence to subjective task difficulty as long as success is possible. We report a series of experimental studies that have operationalized effort intensity as cardiovascular reactivity during task performance and used multiple manipulations of self-involvement (social evaluation, self-awareness, ego involvement, personal goals) and task difficulty. The empirical evidence clearly supports the idea that the principles of motivational intensity theory apply to performance conditions that have direct consequences for self-definition and self-esteem and challenges a number of other theoretical accounts