情绪对表象扫描眼动的影响

The Effect of Emotion on the Eye Movement of Image Scanning

通过两个实验探讨情绪效价对表象扫描时眼动的影响。结果发现,在积极情绪下,表象扫描的注视点个数会减少,注视点平均持续时间会缩短,眼跳距离和眼跳时间却会增大;消极情绪下的眼动则刚好相反。说明不同情绪效价会使表象扫描产生规律性的眼动分化,佐证了眼动在表象扫描中的功能性假设。

Visual imagery is an important visuo-spatial representation, which has the same brain and psychological mechanisms with visual perception （Pearson ＆ Kosslyn, 2015）. This study investigates whether positive emotions can expand the spatial scales of visual imagery processing as visual perception. Because the visual imagery has no external information input, the visual attention is the only endogenous factor of simultaneous eye movements, the differences of endogenous visual attention will cause the change of visual behaviors. Based on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions （Harmon-Jones, Gable, ＆ Price, 2013; Schmitz, De Rosa ＆ Anderson, 2009; Fredrickson, 2005）, it is hypothesis that there will be faster saccade and shorter fixation duration, and an increase in the number of fixation in scanning the path imagery with positive emotions to ensure more things to be seen per unit time, and the intervals between saccade will be increased to ensure broaden the cognitive perspective. For Experiment 1, twenty-two participants （10 female; age M=21.79, SD=2.02） were recruited, gave informed consent and were paid for their participation. All participants should complete the mental scanning in three emotion value conditions, For Experiment 2, another twenty participants （10 female; age M=23.05, SD=1.67） were recruited likewise. All participants didn＇t know the purpose, of the experiment and had normal or corrected-to- normal vision. Stimulus presentation and data collection were controlled by two microcomputers. Eye movements were recorded by means of the Eye Tracking Device made by ASL with a sample frequency of 240Hz. The mental scanning paths was abstract, neutral emotional value, and meaningless in experiment. Experiment 1 set three image scanning paths started by arrows facing the right in three directions 0°, 60° and 300°, and the simultaneous eye movements of the participants were recorded on line when they scan the image paths. In Experiment 2, the tip arrow starters facing and the spatial structure of scanning image paths were further manipulated, in order to control the possible mental rotation in image paths scanning within different directions, and the mechanisms of the eye movements during imagery scanning which were affected by positive emotions were examined and tested deeply. The results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2indicate that when completing the same tasks of image scanning, compared with the subjects with negative emotions, those with positive emotions have less number of fixation, shorter fixation duration, and longer average intervals of saccade. It indicates that positive emotions can expand the visual attention in visual imagery scanning. That is to say, Fredrickson＇ broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions is also found to exist in visual imagery representation, and we can see from another perspective that there is functional equivalence between visual imagery and visual perception which demonstrated by the experiments.