Rating of Affective Pictures of Low and High Arousal Domain among Malaysian Population

Affective pictures are being used in different neuropsychology and neurophysiology studies for the assessment of cognitive function including attention and emotion. This research aims to determine the arousal domain of normative affective pictures from International Affective Picture System (IAPS) with Malaysian population using Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) then to develop and customize an additional set of affective picture database with Malaysian population using SAM. There were 72 completed data from Malaysian participants were selected to rate a total of 166 pictures in the arousal (low to high) domain of affective dimension using SAM. Rating of the arousal domain of normative affective pictures from IAPS with Malaysian population revealed Malaysian population showed higher score significantly (p<0.001), 4.67± 0.62 than North American (NA) population, 2.78 ± 0.41 with significant correlation (r = 0.254, p = 0.021) between two sample means. The rating of arousal (low to high) domain of affective picture database with Malaysian population showed the overall mean differences among all low arousal pictures, 4.67± 0.62 and all high arousal pictures, 5.06 ± 0.54 with highly significant (p<0.001). The study of affective picture rating revealed the rating of arousal value through SAM with the Malaysian population is probable and reliable, but the higher arousal value of affective pictures in Malaysian population compare to NA population which could be from large sample size in NA or could be from cross cultural variations suggesting special attention needed in using this IAPS affective pictures for research in Malaysian population.