The present study tests the effects of top-down processing, in particular the influence of contextual knowledge, on the emotional interpretation of sounds. This is done by priming auditory stimuli with affective labels designed to elicit certain implicit and explicit emotional responses. Subjects are grouped into three conditions wherein they see either positive labels, negative labels, or neutral labels for each of eighteen sounds from the International Affective Digitized Sounds (six pleasant, six unpleasant, and six neutral). Electrodermal activity and facial muscle activity are recorded in order to measure the physiological responses to each label-sound pair as a means of investigating implicit responses. Subjects also provide their ratings of each sound’s valence and arousal in order to measure explicit emotional responses. It is hypothesized that subjects would exhibit physiological responses typically evoked by pleasant stimuli (e.g., increased zygomaticus activity) in the positive label condition, and responses typically evoked by unpleasant stimuli (e.g., increased corrugator activity) in the negative label condition, both regardless of sound valence. An assessment of the influence on subjects’ reactions to particular combinations of both label and sound valences will also take place.
