Open AccessThe goal-relevance of affective stimuli is dynamically represented in affective experience
Author(s) -
Erkin Asutay,
Daniel Västfjäll
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
royal society open science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.84
H-Index - 51
ISSN - 2054-5703
DOI - 10.1098/rsos.211548
Subject(s) - cognitive psychology , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , affect (linguistics) , relevance (law) , task (project management) , perception , context (archaeology) , dynamics (music) , communication , neuroscience , paleontology , management , biology , pedagogy , political science , law , economics
Affect is a continuous and temporally dependent process that represents an individual's ongoing relationship with its environment. However, there is a lack of evidence on how factors defining the dynamic sensory environment modulate changes in momentary affective experience. Here, we show that goal-dependent relevance of stimuli is a key factor shaping momentary affect in a dynamic context. Participants ( N = 83) viewed sequentially presented images and reported their momentary affective experience after every fourth stimulus. Relevance was manipulated through an attentional task that rendered each image either task-relevant or task-irrelevant. Computational models were fitted to trial-by-trial affective responses to capture the key dynamic parameters explaining momentary affective experience. The findings from statistical analyses and computational models showed that momentary affective experience was shaped by the temporal integration of the affective impact of recently encountered stimuli, and that task-relevant stimuli, independent of stimulus affect, prompted larger changes in experienced pleasantness compared with task-irrelevant stimuli. These findings clearly show that dynamics of affective experience reflect goal-relevance of stimuli in our surroundings.