Learning situated emotions

Abstract

From the perspective of constructivist theories, emotion results from learning assemblies of relevant perceptual, cognitive, interoceptive, and motor processes in specific situations. Across emotional experiences over time, learned assemblies of processes accumulate in memory that later underlie emotional experiences in similar situations. A neuroimaging experiment guided participants to experience (and thus learn) situated forms of emotion, and then assessed whether participants tended to experience situated forms of the emotion later. During the initial learning phase, some participants immersed themselves in vividly imagined fear and anger experiences involving physical harm, whereas other participants immersed themselves in vividly imagined fear and anger experiences involving negative social evaluation. In the subsequent testing phase, both learning groups experienced fear and anger while their neural activity was assessed with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A variety of results indicated that the physical and social learning groups incidentally learned different situated forms of a given emotion. Consistent with constructivist theories, these findings suggest that learning plays a central role in emotion, with emotion adapted to the situations in which it is experienced.

Keywords: Constructivist theories; Emotion; Learning; Situated cognition; Situated conceptualization.

Figure 1

Overview of the two learning sessions and the scanning session.

Figure 2

Percentages of situationally unique and shared voxels for fear (A) and anger (B) across the physical and social learning groups from conjunction analyses (voxel frequencies are shown in italics). Unique activations in the physical learning group (red), unique activations in the social learning group (blue), shared activations across both groups (yellow), and activations for auditory processing (green) are shown for fear (C) and anger (D). Voxel percentages and frequencies in Panels A and B do not include shared voxels for auditory processing. Tables 2 and 3 provide full listings of activations, and Table 6 provides full listings of the voxel counts. The two activation maps entered into each conjunction analysis were obtained in random effects analyses of the 3 sec mental state phase (excluding activations from the subsequent situation phase), using an independent voxel threshold of p<.005 and cluster extent threshold of 221 voxels (corrected significance, p<.05).

Figure 3

Total voxels significantly active for fear, anger, plan, and observe in physical vs. social situations, after removing voxels associated with auditory processing. Tables 2 and 3 provide full listings of activations, and Table 6 provides full listings of the voxel counts. The two activation maps entered into each conjunction analysis were obtained in random effects analyses of the 3 sec mental state phase (excluding activations from the subsequent situation phase), using an independent voxel threshold of p<.005 and cluster extent threshold of 221 voxels (corrected significance, p<.05).

Figure 4

Within the unique voxels for each situated mental state at the 221-voxel threshold (Table 6), the total voxels active in Yeo et al.’s (2011) visual network, somatomotor network, frontoparietal control (FPC), dorsal attention (DAN), ventral attention (VAN), default mode network (DMN), limbic network (Limbic 1), and in a more complete limbic network (Limbic 2).

Figure 5

Percentages of shared voxels for fear and anger in the physical learning group (A) and in the social learning group (B) from a conjunction analysis (voxel frequencies are shown in italics). Unique fear activations (turquoise), unique anger activations (purple), shared activations across both emotions (yellow), and activations for auditory processing (green) are shown for the physical learning group (C) and for the social learning group (D). Voxel percentages and frequencies in Panels A and B do not include shared voxels for auditory processing. Supplemental Tables S4, S5, and S6 provide full listings of activations and voxel counts. The two activation maps entered into each conjunction analysis were obtained in random effects analyses of the 3 sec mental state phase (excluding activations from the subsequent situation phase), using an independent voxel threshold of p<.005 and cluster extent threshold of 221 voxels (corrected significance, p<.05).