Affective calculus: The construction of affect through information integration over time.

Abstract

Humans receive a constant stream of input that potentially influence their affective experience. Despite intensive research on affect, it is still largely unknown how various sources of information are integrated into the single, unified affective features that accompany consciousness. Here, we aimed to investigate how a stream of evocative input we receive is dynamically represented in self-reported affect. In 4 experiments, participants viewed a number of sequentially presented images and reported their momentary affective experience on valence and arousal scales. The number and duration of images in a trial varied across studies. In Study 4, we also measured participants’ physiological responses while they viewed images. We formulated and compared several models with respect to their capacity to predict self-reported affect based on normative image ratings, physiological measurements, and prior affective experience (measured in the previous trial). Our data best supported a model incorporating a temporally sensitive averaging mechanism for affective integration that assigns higher weights to affectively more potent and recently represented stimuli. Crucially, affective averaging of sensory information and prior affect accounted for distinct contributions to currently experienced affect. Taken together, the current study provides evidence that prior affect and integrated affective impact of stimuli partly shape currently experienced affect.

Same but different: New insights on the correspondence between subjective affective experience and physiological responses from representational similarity analyses

“…Several aspects need to be considered when interpreting the present results. The evaluation of affect in terms of valence and arousal may fluctuate from moment to moment and depend on the previously encoded material (Asutay et al, 2019), as well as on whether the stimulus is novel (i.e. seen for the first time) or familiar (i.e.…”

The continuous and changing impact of affect on risky decision-making

“…These contextual influences suggest that risky decision-making is fundamentally dynamic and temporally dependent on the impact of previous events. Affect, reflecting the individual's ongoing relationship with its surroundings, represents the cumulative impact of previous events [14,15]. Hence, it is a critical mechanism through which recent events influence subsequent behavior.…”

“…Hence, it is a dynamic and temporally dependent mental process. Previous research has shown that momentary affective experience is shaped by a temporal integration of the currently active information and previously experienced affect [15,16]. Furthermore, it has been shown that moment-tomoment happiness ratings during risky decision-making depends on the prediction error history [17].…”

Expected Valence Predicts Choice in a Recurrent Decision Task

“…We found that self-reported current arousal indeed varied between good and bad symbols, however, it did not predict subsequent choices. As self-reported arousal ratings might be unreliable, it might be useful to simultaneously assess physiological arousal measures to enhance predictive power (Asutay et al, 2019). Future studies should further examine these findings and include physiological measures of autonomous activity instead of selfreported arousal in their choice prediction models.…”

“…Studying how these changes in experimental design affect subsequent gambling decisions could elucidate how current and expected affect work together and which is causal for decisions. Moreover, we would like to point out that self-reported arousal might not be the best way to measure an emotional arousal component as it produces inconsistent results (Asutay et al, 2019). It might be better to additionally use physiological arousal measures.…”