Probing picture perception: Activation and emotion

When acoustic startle probes are presented during picture viewing, the blink reflex is augmented for unpleasant foreground stimuli and reduced during pleasant stimuli. The present experiment assessed the hypothesis that this affect-startle effect increases as pictures are judged to be more arousing. Eyeblinks elicited by startle probes of three different intensities were recorded while subjects viewed pictures varying in both pleasure (pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant) and arousal(low, moderate, and high). Both blink potentiation during unpleasant content and blink diminution during pleasant content were clearly strongest for picture contents high in arousal. The effect was present for all probe intensities tested.