Emotion-Antecedent Appraisal Checks: EEG and EMG datasets for Novelty and Pleasantness

The Electroencaphalography (EEG) and facial Electromyography (EMG) signals included in this data set were collected in the context of a previous study conducted by van Peer, Grandjean and Scherer (2014). That study addressed three fundamental questions regarding the mechanisms underlying the appraisal process: Whether appraisal criteria are processed (a) in a fixed sequence, (b) independent of each other, and (c) by different neural structures or circuits. In that study, an oddball paradigm with affective pictures was used to experimentally manipulate novelty and intrinsic pleasantness appraisals. EEG was recorded during task performance, together with facial EMG, to measure, respectively, cognitive processing and efferent responses stemming from the appraisal manipulations. The data set made here publicly available contains the exact same data used by Coutinho, Gentsch, van Peer, Scherer and Schuller (to appear). The only difference in relation to the original data is that the some of the pre-processing steps (i.e., the processing of the raw data) were changed in order to improve the detection of artifacts. The full details of the original study, data collected, pre-processing steps and final data set are included in the paper distributed with the data (study1_dataset.pdf).

References

Coutinho E, Gentsch k, van Peer JM, Scherer KR & Schuller BW (to appear). Evidence of Emotion-Antecedent Appraisal Checks in Electroencephalography and Facial Electromyography. PloS One.

van Peer JM, Grandjean D, Scherer KR (2014). Sequential unfolding of appraisals: EEG evidence for the interaction of novelty and pleasantness. Emotion, 14(1), 51-63.