Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS)

Project Leader: LOBI

Laboratory of Brain Imaging

Lobi

DETAILS OF PROJECT

The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS) project is supported by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education grants (IP 2010 024070, IP 2011 033471, IP 2012 042072).

Selecting appropriate stimuli to reliably induce emotional states in an experimental setting is crucial for emotion research. Standardized datasets of stimuli are invaluable sources of information, as they allow for control and manipulation of experimental conditions. To date, few attempts have been made to provide such sets of stimuli (i.e. visual, auditory, verbal) and numerous studies have extensively validated them using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. However, some limitations of the existing datasets have recently been reported, including obsolescence and paucity of stimuli. Finally, images used as stimuli are often underspecified and their technical parameters, known to influence the processing of images, are not controlled. Therefore, we introduce the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS), which consists of 1,356 realistic, high-quality images divided into five categories (people, faces, animals, objects, and landscapes). Recently, the NAPS has been expanded with the addition of 200 erotic images. The NAPS dataset consists of standardized images, as well as normative ratings of valence and arousal. Additionally, several technical parameters have been computed for each image (width, height, luminance, contrast, complexity, entropy, and color composition) allowing for the selection of physically matching stimuli. The NAPS database is freely available to the scientific community for noncommercial use by request.

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Publications:

Marchewka A., Żurawski Ł., Jednoróg K., Grabowska A. (2014) The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS): introduction to a novel, standardized, wide-range, high-quality, realistic picture database. Behavior Research Methods, 46(2), 596–610. doi:10.3758/s13428-013-0379-1. Supplementary material

Riegel M., Żurawski Ł., Wierzba M., Moslehi A., Klocek Ł., Horvat M., Grabowska A., Michalowski J. Jednoróg K., Marchewka A. (2016) Characterization of the Nencki Affective Picture System by discrete emotional categories (NAPS BE). Behavior Research Methods, 48(2), 600-612. doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0620-1. Supplementary material

Wierzba M., Riegel M., Pucz A., Leśniewska Z., Dragan W. Ł., Gola M., Jednoróg K., Marchewka A. (2015) Erotic subset for the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS ERO): cross-sexual comparison study. Frontiers in Psychology, 6:1336. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01336 Supplementary material Data browser

Michałowski J. M., Droździel D., Matuszewski J., Koziejowski W., Jednoróg K., Marchewka A. (2016) Set of Fear Inducing Pictures (SFIP): The development and validation in fearful and non-fearful individuals. Behavior Research Methods. doi:10.3758/s13428-016-0797-y Read more Supplementary material

Moslehi A., Riegel M., Michałowski J., Żurawski Ł., Horvat M., Wypych M., Jednoróg K., Marchewka A. The Nencki Affective Picture System: A cross-cultural validation study in Iran (under review).

Horvat M., Jednoróg K., Marchewka A. Nencki Affective Picture System Search Tool (NAPSST): A Software Tool for Multifaceted Retrieval of Visual Stimuli from Nencki Affective Picture System (under review).