Emotion Labeling with Visual Stimuli: The Effects of Physiological Responses on Conditioning

Abstract

Emotion labeling occurs when one learns to identify, discriminate, and act upon internal sensations caused by external events. Often, emotion labeling is facilitated by language, in which one learns to recognize the increased heart rate and sudden perspiration caused by the sight of a grizzly bear as "fear". However, for nonverbal humans, emotion labeling is limited, and emotional competence is delayed. By using visual labels, one can facilitate emotional learning in this population, and, in turn, improve relationships with peers, social skills, and academic performance. The focus of our current study is to investigate whether or not typically developing humans can report their physiological sensations-- elicited by stimuli which predict the delivery or absence of money as a reinforcer-- using visual stimuli. Results indicated that participants failed to learn the task across experiments, and chose between labels at random. Future research should focus on increasing the salience of external and internal events, when using visual labels to facilitate emotional learning.