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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Mar 20.
Published in final edited form as: J Cogn Neurosci. 2013 Jan 30;25(4):547–557. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00363

Table 1.

Results of Stimulus-matching Procedure for IAPS Scenes

Negative Pictures Ambiguous Pictures Positive Pictures
Mean (SEM) valence 2.39 (0.08) 5.19 (0.26) 7.93 (0.07)
Mean (SEM) arousal 5.36 (0.20) 4.99 (0.18) 4.96 (0.18)

Valence scores are based on the normative 9-point scale (1 = very unpleasant, 9 = very pleasant). There was a significant difference between each condition of pictures (F(2, 10) = 1469.44, p < .001, η2 = .95), such that positive pictures were rated as more positive than ambiguous and negative pictures, and negative pictures were rated as more negative than ambiguous pictures (all ps < .001).

Arousal was also based on the normative 9-point scale (1 = low arousal, 9 = high arousal). Arousal was equated across these three conditions (F(2, 10) = 1.56, p = .26, η2 = .10).