Adaptation of the international affective picture system (IAPS) for european portuguese

This study presents the results of the adaptation of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008) for European Portuguese (EP). Following the original procedure of Lang et al. (1995-2008), 2,000 native speakers of EP rated the 1,182 pictures of the last version of the IAPS set on the three affective dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance, using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Results showed that the normative values of the IAPS for EP are properly distributed in the affective space of valence and arousal, showing the typical boomerang-shaped distribution observed in previous studies. Results also points to important differences in the way Portuguese females and males react to affective pictures that should be taken into consideration when planning and conducting research with Portuguese samples. Furthermore, the results from the cross-cultural comparisons between the EP ratings and the ratings from the American (Lang et al., 2008), Spanish (Moltó et al., 1999; Vila et al., 2001), Brazilian (Lasaitis et al., 2008; Ribeiro et al., 2005), Belgium (Verschuere et al., 2001), Chilean (Dufey et al., 2011; Silva, 2011), Indian (Lohani et al., 2013) and Bosnian-Herzegovina (Drače et al., 2013) standardizations, showed that in spite of the fact that IAPS stimuli elicited affective responses that are similar across countries and cultures (at least in Western cultures), there are differences in the way Portuguese individuals react to IAPS pictures that strongly recommends the use of the normative values presented in this work. They can be downloaded as a supplemental archive at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental or at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases. Ana Paula Soares is also Director of the Human Cognition Laboratory (HCL) of the School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal, and the Main Researcher of the Research Group of Psycholinguistics (RGP) hosted at the HCL. This work is part of the research project “Procura Palavras (P-Pal): A software program for deriving objective and subjective psycholinguistic indices for European Portuguese words” (PTDC/PSI-PCO/104679/2008), funded by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia), and FEDER (Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional) through the European programs QREN (Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional), and COMPETE (Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade). It was also supported by Grant PTDC/PSI-PCL/116626/2010 from FCT a