Dataset_MSE_philtrans from Mapping the mental space of emotional concepts through kinematic measures of decision uncertainty

Emotional concepts and their mental representations have been extensively studied. Yet, some ecologically relevant aspects, such as how they are processed in ambiguous contexts (e.g., in relation to other emotional stimuli that share similar characteristics), are incompletely known. We employed a similarity judgement of emotional concepts and manipulated the contextual congruency of the responses along the two main affective dimensions of hedonic valence and physiological activation, respectively. Behavioural and kinematics (mouse-tracking) measures were combined to gather a novel ‘similarity index’ between emotional concepts, to derive topographical maps of their mental representations. Self-report (interoceptive sensibility, positive–negative affectivity, depression) and physiological measures (heart rate variability, HRV) have been collected to explore their possible association with emotional conceptual representation. Results indicate that emotional concepts typically associated with low arousal profit by contextual congruency, with faster responses and reduced uncertainty when contextual ambiguity decreases. The emotional maps recreate two almost orthogonal axes of valence and arousal, and the similarity measure captures the smooth boundaries between emotions. The emotional map of a subgroup of individuals with low positive affectivity reveals a narrower conceptual distribution, with variations in positive emotions and in individuals with reduced arousal (such as those individuals with reduced HRV). Our work introduces a novel methodology to study emotional conceptual representations, bringing the behavioural dynamics of decision-making processes and choice uncertainty into the affective domain.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences’.

情绪概念及其心理表征已得到广泛研究。然而，部分生态相关的维度——例如情绪概念在模糊情境下的加工方式（如与其他具有相似特征的情绪刺激相关的加工过程）——仍未被完全阐明。本研究采用情绪概念相似性判断任务，并分别基于快感效价（hedonic valence）与生理唤醒（physiological activation）这两大核心情绪维度，对反应的情境一致性进行操纵。研究结合行为学与运动学（鼠标追踪（mouse-tracking））测量手段，构建了情绪概念间的新型“相似性指数”，以此推导情绪概念心理表征的拓扑图谱。此外，本研究还收集了自我报告量表数据（涵盖内感受敏感性（interoceptive sensibility）、正负情绪性（positive–negative affectivity）与抑郁症状）以及生理测量数据（心率变异性（heart rate variability, HRV）），以探究这些指标与情绪概念表征的潜在关联。研究结果显示，通常与低唤醒度相关的情绪概念会从情境一致性中获益：当情境模糊性降低时，被试的反应速度更快，决策不确定性也随之降低。所得情绪拓扑图谱复现了效价与唤醒度这两条近乎正交的维度，且相似性指数能够精准捕捉情绪间的平滑边界。针对低积极情绪性个体的亚组分析显示，其情绪概念拓扑图谱的概念分布更为狭窄，该分布特征与积极情绪维度及低唤醒个体（如心率变异性降低的个体）的表现存在显著关联。本研究提出了一种用于探究情绪概念表征的新型研究方法，将决策过程的行为动态与选择不确定性纳入情绪研究范畴。本文属于“互动中的概念：社会参与与内在体验”专题栏目文章。