@article{MeuleKueblerBlechert2013, author = {Meule, Adrian and K{\"u}bler, Andrea and Blechert, Jens}, title = {Time course of electrocortical food-cue responses during cognitive regulation of craving}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {4}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, number = {669}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00669}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-122566}, year = {2013}, abstract = {In our current obesogenic environment, exposure to visual food-cues can easily lead to craving and overeating because short-term, pleasurable effects of food intake dominate over the anticipated long-term adverse effects such as weight gain and associated health problems. Here we contrasted these two conditions during food-cue presentation while acquiring event-related potentials (ERPs) and subjective craving ratings. Female participants (n = 25) were presented with either high-calorie (HC) or low-calorie (LC) food images under instructions to imagine either immediate (NOW) or long-term effects (LATER) of consumption. On subjective ratings for HC foods, the LATER perspective reduced cravings as compared to the NOW perspective. For LC foods, by contrast, craving increased under the LATER perspective. Early ERPs (occipital N1, 150-200 ms) were sensitive to food type but not to perspective. Late ERPs (late positive potential, LPP, 350-550 ms) were larger in the HC-LATER condition than in all other conditions, possibly indicating that a cognitive focus on negative long-term consequences induced negative arousal. This enhancement for HC-LATER attenuated to the level of the LC conditions during the later slow wave (550-3000 ms), but amplitude in the HC-NOW condition was larger than in all other conditions, possibly due to a delayed appetitive response. Across all conditions, LPP amplitudes were positively correlated with self-reported emotional eating. In sum, results reveal that regulation effects are secondary to an early attentional analysis of food type and dynamically evolve over time. Adopting a long-term perspective on eating might promote a healthier food choice across a range of food types.}, language = {en} } @article{CheethamWuPaulietal.2015, author = {Cheetham, Marcus and Wu, Lingdan and Pauli, Paul and Jancke, Lutz}, title = {Arousal, valence, and the uncanny valley: psychophysiological and self-report findings}, series = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = {6}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, number = {981}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00981}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-151519}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The main prediction of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (UVH) is that observation of humanlike characters that are difficult to distinguish from the human counterpart will evoke a state of negative affect. Well-established electrophysiological [late positive potential (LPP) and facial electromyography (EMG)] and self-report [Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM)] indices of valence and arousal, i.e., the primary orthogonal dimensions of affective experience, were used to test this prediction by examining affective experience in response to categorically ambiguous compared with unambiguous avatar and human faces (N = 30). LPP and EMG provided direct psychophysiological indices of affective state during passive observation and the SAM provided self-reported indices of affective state during explicit cognitive evaluation of static facial stimuli. The faces were drawn from well-controlled morph continua representing the UVH' dimension of human likeness (DHL). The results provide no support for the notion that category ambiguity along the DHL is specifically associated with enhanced experience of negative affect. On the contrary, the LPP and SAM-based measures of arousal and valence indicated a general increase in negative affective state (i.e., enhanced arousal and negative valence) with greater morph distance from the human end of the DHL. A second sample (N = 30) produced the same finding, using an ad hoc self-rating scale of feelings of familiarity, i.e., an oft-used measure of affective experience along the UVH' familiarity dimension. In conclusion, this multi-method approach using well-validated psychophysiological and self-rating indices of arousal and valence rejects for passive observation and for explicit affective evaluation of static faces the main prediction of the UVH.}, language = {en} }