Negative emotional stimuli reduce contextual cueing but not response times in inefficient search

In visual search, previous work has shown that negative stimuli narrow the focus of attention and speed reaction times (RTs). This paper investigates these two effects by first asking whether negative emotional stimuli narrow the focus of attention to reduce the learning of a display context in a contextual cueing task and, second, whether exposure to negative stimuli also reduces RTs in inefficient search tasks. In Experiment 1, participants viewed either negative or neutral images (faces or scenes) prior to a contextual cueing task. In a typical contextual cueing experiment, RTs are reduced if displays are repeated across the experiment compared with novel displays that are not repeated. The results showed that a smaller contextual cueing effect was obtained after participants viewed negative stimuli than when they viewed neutral stimuli. However, in contrast to previous work, overall search RTs were not faster after viewing negative stimuli (Experiments 2 to 4). The findings are discussed in terms of the impact of emotional content on visual processing and the ability to use scene context to help facilitate search

Biased Saccadic Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Anxiety: An Antisaccade Study.

Research suggests that anxiety is maintained by an attentional bias to threat, and a growing base of evidence suggests that anxiety may additionally be associated with the deficient attentional processing of positive stimuli. The present study sought to examine whether such anxiety-linked attentional biases were associated with either stimulus driven or attentional control mechanisms of attentional selectivity. High and low trait anxious participants completed an emotional variant of an antisaccade task, in which they were required to prosaccade towards, or antisaccade away from a positive, neutral or threat stimulus, while eye movements were recorded. While low anxious participants were found to be slower to saccade in response to positive stimuli, irrespectively of whether a pro- or antisaccade was required, such a bias was absent in high anxious individuals. Analysis of erroneous antisaccades further revealed at trend level, that anxiety was associated with reduced peak velocity in response to threat. The findings suggest that anxiety is associated with the aberrant processing of positive stimuli, and greater compensatory efforts in the inhibition of threat. The findings further highlight the relevance of considering saccade peak velocity in the assessment of anxiety-linked attentional processing

Predicting the valence of a scene from observers’ eye movements

Multimedia analysis benefits from understanding the emotional content of a scene in a variety of tasks such as video genre classification and content-based image retrieval. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in applying human bio-signals, particularly eye movements, to recognize the emotional gist of a scene such as its valence. In order to determine the emotional category of images using eye movements, the existing methods often learn a classifier using several features that are extracted from eye movements. Although it has been shown that eye movement is potentially useful for recognition of scene valence, the contribution of each feature is not well-studied. To address the issue, we study the contribution of features extracted from eye movements in the classification of images into pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant categories. We assess ten features and their fusion. The features are histogram of saccade orientation, histogram of saccade slope, histogram of saccade length, histogram of saccade duration, histogram of saccade velocity, histogram of fixation duration, fixation histogram, top-ten salient coordinates, and saliency map. We utilize machine learning approach to analyze the performance of features by learning a support vector machine and exploiting various feature fusion schemes. The experiments reveal that ‘saliency map’, ‘fixation histogram’, ‘histogram of fixation duration’, and ‘histogram of saccade slope’ are the most contributing features. The selected features signify the influence of fixation information and angular behavior of eye movements in the recognition of the valence of images

Listening to music reduces eye movements

Listening to music can change the way that people visually experience the environment, probably as a result of an inwardly directed shift of attention. We investigated whether this attentional shift can be demonstrated by reduced eye movement activity, and if so, whether that reduction depends on absorption. Participants listened to their preferred music, to unknown neutral music, or to no music while viewing a visual stimulus (a picture or a film clip). Preference and absorption were significantly higher for the preferred music than for the unknown music. Participants exhibited longer fixations, fewer saccades, and more blinks when they listened to music than when they sat in silence. However, no differences emerged between the preferred music condition and the neutral music condition. Thus, music significantly reduces eye movement activity, but an attentional shift from the outer to the inner world (i.e., to the emotions and memories evoked by the music) emerged as only one potential explanation. Other explanations, such as a shift of attention from visual to auditory input, are discussed

Magnet design concepts for the 100 MeV isotope production facility

The North Port Target Facility proposal includes a 100 MeV beam line to be is built at the LANSCE accelerator. In developing cost and schedule estimates for the proposal the greatest uncertainties are associated with the kicker magnet that is needed to divert portions of the beam into the new beam line. This magnet must fit into a rigidly defined space within the transition region of the existing accelerator and must operate in synchrony with the current accelerator operations systems, In addition, it must not degrade the beam qualify when beam is directed to other areas of the complex. Because of these constraints the magnet must be specifically designed and built for this intended application. We have produced conceptual designs of a kicker-magnet and power supply that will meet all of the design requirements. The power supply design is based on a working design for the RIKI kicker magnet that switches 800 MeV beam into the PSR. This report presents the kicker-magnet and power-supply designs and cost and schedule estimates for incorporation into the EP facility proposal. The feasibility of various design alternatives are briefly discussed

Magnet design concepts for the 100-MeV isotope production facility

This is the final report of a one-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The North Port Target Facility proposal includes a 100-MeV beam line to be built at the LANSCE accelerator. In developing cost and schedule estimates for this proposal, the greatest uncertainties are associated with the kicker magnet that is needed to divert portions of the beam into the new beam line. This magnet must fit into a rigidly defined space within the transition region of the existing accelerator and must operate in synchrony with the current accelerator operations systems. In addition, it must not degrade the beam quality when beam is directed to other areas of the complex. Because of these constraints the magnet must be specifically designed and built for this intended application. The authors have produced conceptual designs of a kicker-magnet and power supply that will meet all of the design requirements. The power supply design is based on a working design for the RIKI kicker magnet that switches 800-MeV beam into the PSR. This report presents the kicker-magnet and power-supply designs and cost and schedule estimates for incorporation into the IP facility proposal. The feasibility of various design alternatives are briefly discussed