Motivation, emotion, and learning
Description / Outline
This research area focuses on the roles of emotion and affect in the context of motivation and learning. We conceive of emotions as signals that motivated actors send to others, but that they also respond to when they perceive them in others, to attain affectively charged incentives. We conceive of affect as the immediate, "knee-jerk" hedonic response upon encountering positive and negative incentives. We study these processes using observational methods (FACS coding, computer-based emotion recognition), psychophysiological methods (e.g., electromyography, cardiovascular assessment), and methods for tracking instrumental learning Pavlovian conditioning, and episodic memory.