Supplemental Materials

The Body Language: The Spontaneous Influence of Congruent Bodily Arousal on the

Awareness of Emotional Words

by A. Kever et al., 2015, JEP: Human Perception and Performance

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000055

Method

Participants

Seventy-three French-speaking students (39 men and 34 women) from the Université

catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) took part in our study in return for a

monetary reward (10 euro). Their ages ranged from 18 to 29 years (M = 21.80; SD = 2.40).

Only healthy participants presenting no contra-indications to the practice of a moderate-

intensity physical exercise were recruited. All subjects gave informed consent and were tested

individually.

Stimuli

In order to create a battery of neutral, high arousal, and low arousal words, 316 French

words were partly selected from previous attentional blink studies (Anderson, 2005;

Vermeulen et al., 2009) and partly chosen by means of an online French synonyms

dictionary1. In a subsequent step, the selected words were rated on valence and arousal value

by 32 and 48 independent raters respectively (i.e., 21 men and 59 women who did not

participate in the study). For valence, words were rated on a 7-point Likert scale from -3 (very

negative) to 3 (very positive) and for arousal on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (not arousing at

all) to 7 (very arousing). On the basis of these ratings, 189 neutral (e.g., chair, pen), 58 high

1 http://dico.isc.cnrs.fr/dico/fr/chercher

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arousal (e.g., orgasm, herpes) and 59 low arousal (e.g., beauty, failure) words were chosen.

Importantly, the number of positive and negative words was nearly equal in the high and low

arousal category (i.e., high arousal: 28 positive, 30 negative; low arousal: 29 positive, 30

negative).

Results of the pre-test showed that high arousal words were significantly more arousing (M =

4.92; SE = 0.70) than low arousal words (M = 3.61; SE = 0.90), F (4, 258) = 282.20, p

< .001). Later on, 156 pairs of targets (T1-T2), paired for length, were created. In order to

hide the aim of the present study, half the time, emotional targets appeared in the first position

(T1), and the other half in the second “blinked” position (T2). More precisely, 3 blocks of 52

trials including the following T1-T2 pairs were created: 10 high arousal T1- neutral T2, 10

low arousal T1 - neutral T2, 10 neutral T1 - high arousal T2, 10 neutral T1 - low arousal T2,

and 12 neutral T1 - neutral T2. However, to test our hypotheses, we focused only on neutral

T1 targets that were either associated with a neutral T2, with a low arousal or with a high

arousal T2 (cf. appendix for the complete list of T1-T2 pairs used). Finally, distractor items

consisted of random strings of symbols and digits of the same length as the targets of each

trial (e.g., 2, %,*,$,&, @).

Procedure and design

Upon their arrival to the experimental room, participants were invited to take a seat in

front of the computer screen, received the necessary explanations regarding the main task

(i.e., AB paradigm) and gave informed written consent for their participation. Thereafter, the

moistened belt of the Polar RS800CX heart rate monitor was placed around their chest (just

below the pectoral muscles) in order to assure optimal heart rate recording. Once the belt

placed, the experimenter initiated heart rate measurement by pushing the start button on the

Polar watch that displays and records participants’ actual heart rate. As the watch is equipped

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with a function allowing for marking different time lapses during continuous recording, heart

rate data could be easily synchronized with task timing. Concretely, a new time laps was

initiated before and after every part of the experiment (e.g., cycling session, relaxation

session) making it possible to accurately determine average heart rate for every experimental

task separately (within the Polar ProTrainer Software displaying heart rate recordings as a

graph).

Participants were then invited to complete a series of emotional control measures,

namely the computerized French version of the French version of the Toronto Alexithymia

Scale – 20 (TAS-20; Loas et al., 2001; Loas, Parker, Otmani, Verrier, & Fremaux, 1997), of

the Positive Affectivity Negative Affectivity Schedule (PANAS; Gaudreau, Sanchez, &

Blondin, 2006) and of the Spielberger’s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Bruchon-

Schweitzer, & Paulhan, 1993). Heart rate recordings during questionnaire completion served

as a baseline measure of physiological arousal. Participants started by completing two blocks

of AB (i.e., AB training session). The first training block consisted of 30 pairs of target words,

including first names, car brands, animal names, and colors. It was followed by a second

(more ecological) AB training block that included neutral T1 and neutral, high arousal, and

low arousal T2 words. Thereafter, participants were randomly assigned either to complete a

cycling session first (then relaxation), or to take part in a relaxation session first (then

cycling).

Arousal manipulation: Cycling and relaxation session.

During the cycling session, participants pedaled on a bicycle ergometer (Pro-form 748

EKG model produced by ICON Health & Fitness, Ldt.) for 7:30 min to ensure attainment and

maintaining of a moderate level of physiological arousal. The target heart rate was set at 65%

of estimated maximal heart rate (i.e., 65% of [220 (beats per minute) minus the age]). The

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experimenter monitored the participant’s heart rate by pointing out to him/her if he/she should

increase or decrease the pace of his/her cycling. Once the cycling session finished,

participants were instructed to evaluate on a 10-point Likert scale whether they felt “relaxed”

(1 = very relaxed) or “activated” (10 = very activated) and whether the session was

“unpleasant” (1= very unpleasant) or “pleasant” (10= very pleasant). Subsequently, they were

invited to complete a new AB block.

During the relaxation session, participants were comfortably seated in an armchair while

listening for 7:30 min to an audio program in which a man was calmly and slowly describing

a landscape. Participants were simply instructed to relax as much as possible. Next, similarly

to the cycling sessions, they evaluated their subjective feeling of activation as well as the

pleasure felt during relaxation, before completing a new AB block.

Attentional Blink Task.

Each AB trial began with a central fixation cross appearing for 500 ms. It was followed

by a blank screen for 240 ms which was immediately replaced by the RSVP stream of

distracters and targets. Between three and five distractors preceded the appearance of T1,

whereas T2 was always followed by two distractors. Within a trial, the same distractor was

never repeated. Target words (T1 and T2) were presented for 67 ms with a stimulus onset

asynchrony (SOA) set to 268 ms (3 distractors between T1 and T2) in order to induce a blink

of T2. Stimuli were presented using E-Prime 1.1.4.1 on a Dell PC with Intel-Pentium IV 2.3

GHz/256Mb SDRAM computer with a 17-inch monitor with a refresh rate of 75 Hz. Each

item in the stream was presented in black uppercase letters (i.e., Courier New 18-point bold)

on a white background. The display resolution was 1024 x 768 pixels, and visual angles

varied between 0.95 and 2.86 degree, depending on stimuli length (1-3 cm).

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After each RSVP, participants were instructed to type the first word they saw (T1), followed

by the second word they saw (T2). When target identification was not possible, they were

instructed to press the spacebar. No feedback was provided and the next trial started 1000 ms

after the decision on the second target was made. Performance on each word in the pair was

scored separately. Misspelled words and blanks were counted as errors, whereas T1-T2 order

reversals were considered as correct (e.g., Davenport & Potter, 2005; Olivers & Meeter,

2008). Correct target reports were scored as 1 and omissions and errors as 0. On the basis of

these scorings, the proportion of accurately reported targets was calculated. Since we were

interested in evaluating the report of the second target in relation to its arousal value, our

statistical analysis focused on trials comprising a neutral T1 and various types of T2 (i.e.,

neutral, high arousal, or low arousal).

Target accuracy data were submitted to an analysis of variance with repeated measures

(MANOVA) with a 2 (arousal level: cycling vs relaxation) x 3 (T2 arousal value: neutral vs

high arousal vs low arousal) design.

Heart rate variability.

Heart rate variability (HRV) data were subjected to a series of regression analyses. HRV

corresponds to a measure of the continuous interplay between the sympathetic and the

parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system that influences cardiac activity.

HRV thus provides information about autonomic flexibility and thereby represents a

physiological index of emotion regulation ability (Appelhans & Luecken, 2006). In fact, a

growing body of empirical evidence supports the idea of HRV being associated with the

capacity for adaptive and regulated emotional responding. For instance, high resting HRV has

been shown to be inversely correlated with indexes of personal distress in grade school

children watching an upsetting film (Fabes, Eisenberg, & Eisenbud, 1993). Further findings

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suggest a link between adaptive coping strategies and HRV. For example, women with lower

HRV level reported greater use of defensive coping during experimentally-induced fear states

(Pauls & Stemmler, 2003). In the present research, HRV was evaluated by one of the most

commonly used measures of overall heart rate variability, namely RMSSD indexes (i.e., the

root mean square of successive R-R differences). RMSSD indexes relate to the variability of

the beat-to-beat alterations in heart rate (expressed in ms) and correspond to a time domain

measure of HRV (for review, see Thayer, Åhs, Fredrikson, Sollers, & Wager, 2012).

Results

T1 (emotional) and T2 (neutral) reports

With regard to the reports of neutral, high arousal and low arousal T1 (with neutral

T2), statistical analyses reveal a main effect of T1 arousal value, F (2, 71) = 10.30, p < .001,

η² = .23, with high arousal T1 reported more accurately (M = .91 ; SE = .01) than low arousal

(M = .86 ; SE = .01), t(72) = 4.04, p < .001, and neutral T1 reported more accurately (M

= .90 ; SE = .01), than low arousal T1, t(72) = 4.17, p < .001.

There was no main effect of participants’ level of physiological arousal (cycling vs relaxation)

and no significant interaction between the physiological arousal conditions and the type of T1

reported.

As for neutral T2 reports (with emotional T1), results show a main effect of T1 arousal value

on the report of Neutral T2, F (2, 71) = 10.02, p < .001, η² = .23, with neutral T2 better

reported following high arousal T1 (M = .66; SE = .03) than following low arousal T1 (M

= .58; SE = .03), t(72) = 4.39, p < .001, and neutral T1 (M = .60 ; SE = .03), t(72) = 3.25, p

< .001.

Participants’ level of physiological arousal (cycling vs relaxation) did not influence T2

reports.

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Emotional state and trait control measures

In order to control for alternative explanatory variables, correlations between

participants’ levels of alexithymia (TAS-20), trait and state anxiety (STAI), positive and

negative affect (PANAS), and the interaction magnitude index were calculated. Results

showed that the interaction index did not correlate with any of the control measures; p >.6.

This suggests that the above mentioned effects are not influenced by participants’ affective

states and traits.

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