Affective Context Effect

Affective Context Effect

Another prominent bias characterizing anxiety is in interpretation or processing of the uncertain and the unknown. We encounter ambiguous situations in our life daily, but what differs is our subjective interpretation and processing of that situation. Anxious individuals find themselves to be uneasy all the time, the main culprits being their thoughts and perceptions about themselves and the world, which are revealed by the way they process and resolve ambiguity. In an ambiguous situation, processing in anxiety could be mood–congruent or context–related (Richards, Holmes, Pell & Bethell, 2013). Bower (1981) and Blanchette, Richards and Cross, (2007) have found evidence for mood congruent hypothesis whereas evidence to support a context effect ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...However, most studies investigating the context effect, presented the context concurrently with the stimuli (Richards, Blanchette & Munjiza, 2007; Blanchette & Richards 2003). Thus, the chances of it affecting the processing of information were not certain. A particular experimental paradigm used to study context effect is the adaptation paradigm, which ensures complete influence of the context. Adaptation can be defined as a change in response of the sensory system to a constant stimulus. The classic experiment of adaptation after–effect was of color, where a red square gives a green perception after adapting to it for a few seconds (Clifford & Rhodes, 2005). This adaptation after–effect is also found with all the different identities and facial expressions (Fox & Barton, 2007) but the magnitude of effect depends on congruence of identity (Pell & Richards, 2013), duration (Rhodes, Jeffery, Clifford & Leopold, 2007) and familiarity of the faces (Carbon et al., 2007). Adaptation effect is strongest when the adaptor is presented for a longer period of time, when the identity of the target and adaptor are congruent and when the face used is a familiar one. The fact that the strength of this effect is present across various dimensions like gender, expressions and identity, shows that adaptation is strategic and occurs at a higher level of visual and perceptual processing (Watson & Clifford, 2003). One of the explanations for the adaptation phenomenon is "response suppression" which refers to the reduced firing rate of the neurons in response to repeated stimuli (Desimone., 1996; Huber & O'Reilly 2003). Wiggs and Martin (1998) advanced this idea and suggested that when a

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