Standardized Emotion Elicitation Databases (SEEDs) allow studying emotions in laboratory settings by replicating real-life emotions in a controlled environment. The International Affective Pictures System (IAPS), containing 1182 coloured images as stimuli, is arguably the most popular SEED. Since its introduction, multiple countries and cultures have validated this SEED, making its adoption on the study of emotion a worldwide success. For this review, 69 studies were included. Results focus on the discussion of validation processes by combining self-report and physiological data (Skin Conductance Level, Heart Rate Variability and Electroencephalography) and self-report only. Cross-age, cross-cultural and sex differences are discussed. Overall, IAPS is a robust instrument for emotion elicitation around the world.

Collaborative robots (cobots) could help humans in tasks that are mundane, dangerous or where direct human contact carries risk. Yet, the collaboration between humans and robots is severely limited by the aspects of the safety and comfort of human operators. In this paper, we outline the use of extended reality (XR) as a way to test and develop collaboration with robots. We focus on virtual reality (VR) in simulating collaboration scenarios and the use of cobot digital twins. This is specifically useful in situations that are difficult or even impossible to safely test in real life, such as dangerous scenarios. We describe using XR simulations as a means to evaluate collaboration with robots without putting humans at harm. We show how an XR setting enables combining human behavioral data, subjective self-reports, and biosignals signifying human comfort, stress and cognitive load during collaboration. Several works demonstrate XR can be used to train human operators and provide them with augmented reality (AR) interfaces to enhance their performance with robots. We also provide a first attempt at what could become the basis for a human–robot collaboration testing framework, specifically for designing and testing factors affecting human–robot collaboration. The use of XR has the potential to change the way we design and test cobots, and train cobot operators, in a range of applications: from industry, through healthcare, to space operations.

Mind-wandering is widely assumed to impair ongoing task performance, yet findings from creative cognition research suggest that it can be beneficial under some conditions - an inconsistency rooted in coarse mental state classifications and low-ecological-validity tasks. We tested whether mind-wandering during active creative production facilitates or impairs real-time creative output in the ecologically valid setting of live jazz improvisation. 52 musicians performed a musical improvisation task while random thought-probes sampled ongoing mental states: focused attention, mind-wandering, mind-blanking, and task-related interference. Expert judges rated each performance for creativity and overall improvisational quality. Mental states were phenomenologically distinct across dimensions of intentionality and meta-awareness, and critically, this phenomenological heterogeneity translated into functional heterogeneity in their associations with creative output. Mind-wandering predicted higher creativity than focused attention, task-related interference suppressed creativity, and mind-blanking was neutral to modestly positive. Overall quality was mainly driven by expertise. State × expertise interactions revealed that the creative benefits of mind-wandering were strongest for less- and mid-experienced improvisers. These findings show that during improvisatory creative action, mind-wandering need not derail performance. Instead, it may mark adaptive loosening of cognitive control that supports generative spontaneity and flexibility crucial to creative expression.