The Effect Of One' S State Of Mind And Materials Of Emotional Mode On Cognitive Processing

Many researches have indicated that emotion influences cognition in many ways not only in quantity but also in cognitional construction. The affective priming paradigm, which has two aspects including mood-congruent effect, null and incongruent effects is usually used in the research of the affection of emotion to cognition. In order to explain the contradictory phenomena such as mood-congruent effect, null and incongruent effects, Forgas advanced a theory called affect infusion model. So whatever is the instant process about the affection of emotion to cognition? What interactions do one's state of mind and emotional mode of the materials make in cognitive process? How about the efficiency of researching the relationship between emotion and cognition by eye movements? These are all what we are interested in and also the starting point of this research.Eye tracking and mood induction procedures were applied to explore the affection of one's state of mind and materials of emotional mode (emotional pictures, emotional texts) to the cognitive processing. This research has two stages including the preparatory experiment and the formal experiment. The purpose of the preparatory experiment is to choose materials for the formal experiment and to check the effectiveness of the mood inductions. The formal experiment consists of two experiments which are all 2(subjects'state of mind: positive, negative)×2(materials of emotional mode: positive, negative) within-subject designs. Thirty-five undergraduate students were selected by random from Liaoning Normal University. All of them are between twenty and twenty-six, fifteen of them are boys. Everyone has good vision and didn't have eye movement experiment experience.The results are as follows:(1) When viewing the pictures, the average fixation duration of positive emotion is longer than that the negative emotion significantly; The pupil diameter of negative emotion is larger than that of that positive emotion, and so is the number of fixations. When viewing the positive pictures , the total fixation duration , the gaze numbers and the average fixation duration are all more than viewing the negative picture significantly; and the pupil diameter of viewing the negative pictures is larger than viewing the positive pictures. There is an interaction effect among the pupil diameter, total fixation duration , the numbers of gaze duration in the emotion condition and the material emotion pattern. (2) When reading texts, the pupil diameter of positive emotion is bigger than that the negative emotion, the numbers of gaze duration are more,. The pupil diameter, total fixation duration, average fixation duration, number of fixations and numbers of gaze of negative texts are more and longer than reading positive texts. Saccade distances of reading negative texts are larger than reading positive texts. There is an interaction effect among the total fixation duration, the number of fixations and the numbers of gaze duration in the emotion condition and the material emotion pattern .Conclusions: (1)When viewing the picture, the individuals of positive emotional state tend to choose the model of reducing the numbers of fixation and prolonging each time of fixation as an effective strategy of information processing; The individuals of negative emotional state tend to choose the strategy that more numbers of fixation to process information effectively. (2)When the subjects are in negative emotion, they are more sensitive to the emotional patterns. Negative emotions facilitate negative article processing. (3)Positive emotions play a facilitating role in choosing right strategies of problem solution. (4)The pupil size is a sensitive indicator reflecting the emotion. (5)Validate the AIM. (6)There was synergy effect on cognitive processing from one's state of mind and materials of emotional mode, which could be reflected by the eye movement indices.