Master
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French

An emotional learning paradigm to investigate relevance detection

ContributorsCoppin, Géraldine
DirectorsSander, David
Master program titleMaîtrise universitaire en psychologie
Defense date2008
Abstract

A critical finding supporting the fear module theory (Öhman & Mineka, 2001) is the result according to which, during fear conditioning, resistance to extinction of enhanced SCRs is found towards pictures of evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli, but not towards pictures of fear-irrelevant stimuli (Öhman, Eriksson & Olofsson, 1975). The aim of the current research project was to test an alternative hypothesis, namely that the resistance to extinction is not specific to evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli but to all stimuli that are appraised as self-relevant to the organism. Therefore, in the current experiment, we established a positive conditioning procedure, and assessed the resistance to extinction for positive relevant stimuli and compared it to the positive conditioning of neutral stimuli. Our results showed a physiological response to an unconditioned positive stimulus and a change in arousal before and after the conditioning for the two conditioned stimuli. These findings are discussed in relation to emotional learning for relevant stimuli. Moreover, possible future investigations are suggested.

Keywords
  • Emotion
  • Positive conditioning
  • Fear module
  • Relevance
  • Skin conductance resistance
  • Baby
Research groups
Citation (ISO format)
COPPIN, Géraldine. An emotional learning paradigm to investigate relevance detection. Master, 2008.
Main files (1)
Master thesis
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
  • PID : unige:1411
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699downloads

Technical informations

Creation01/04/2009 10:55:00
First validation01/04/2009 10:55:00
Update14/03/2023 15:04:26
Status update14/03/2023 15:04:26
Last indexation29/10/2024 11:28:25
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