Stimulus Set PSAP-C (fMRI paradigm)

The Passive Separation-Anxiety-Projective for Children (PSAP-C) is a fMRI paradigm to investigate neural processing of attachment-relevant stimuli. Each item consists of combinations of a picture and an associated audio stimulus, and is assigned to an experimental (i.e., attachment) or a control condition, each consisting of 12 different stimuli. The attachment condition contains pictorial representations of a child’s separation from their primary caregiver, modelled after the Separation Anxiety Test (SAT; Hansburg, 1972) and the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP; Buchheim et al. 2003). The control condition depicts situations with no explicit dyadic relationships or affective cues. Associated audio stimuli consist of a recorded sentence describing the scene.

The PSAP-C stimulus set contains 24 picture and respective sentences used for audio stimuli.

The PSAP-C stimulus set (12 per condition) was tested in an independent behavioral pilot study (N = 20) for differences between conditions (Attachment vs. Control) regarding valence, arousal, and visual complexity on a 9-point Likert scale. Picture stimuli of the attachment condition were rated as more negative (M=4.12, SD=1.26) than pictures of the control condition (M=6.62, SD=.72) using the Self Assessment Manikin (SAM; Bradley & Lang, 1994; p < .001). Picture stimuli did differ marginally, but not statistically between conditions with respect to arousal (C: M=4.47, SD=.51; A: M=5.21, SD=1.22; p=.079) and subjectively rated visual complexity (C: M=2.88, SD=.76; A: M=3.70, SD=1.18; p=.053). Audio stimuli were not statistically different between conditions with respect to word-length (in letters; p = .6), word frequency (based on norms by Brysbaert et al., 2011; p = .25), or orthographic word familiarity (determined using the orthographic Levenstein distance following Yarkoni et al., 2008; p = .10)