Capture of lexical but not visual resources by task-irrelevant emotional words: a combined ERP and steady-state visual evoked potential study

Beneficial effects of communicating intentions when delivering moral criticism: Cognitive and neural responses

People often do not accept criticism on their morality, especially when delivered by outgroup members. In two preregistered studies, we investigated whether people become more receptive to such negative feedback when feedback senders communicate their intention to help. Participants received negative feedback from ostensible others on their selfish (rather than altruistic) decisions in a donation task. We manipulated the identity of a feedback sender (ingroup vs. outgroup) and the intention that they provided for giving feedback. A sender either did not communicate any intentions, indicated the intention to help the feedback receiver improve, or communicated the intention to show moral superiority. We measured participants' self-reported responses to the feedback (Study 1, N = 44) and additionally recorded an EEG in Study 2 (N = 34). Results showed that when no intentions were communicated, participants assumed worse intentions from outgroup senders than ingroup senders (Study 1). However, group membership had no significant effect once feedback senders made their intentions explicit. Moreover, across studies, when feedback senders communicated their intention to help, participants perceived feedback as less unfair compared with when senders tried to convey their moral superiority. Complementing these results, exploratory event-related potential results of Study 2 suggested that communicating the intention to help reduced participants' attentional vigilance toward negative feedback messages on their morality (i.e., decreased P200 amplitudes). These results demonstrate the beneficial effects of communicating the intention to help when one tries to encourage others' moral growth through criticism.

The mental representation and social aspect of expressives

Despite increased focus on emotional language, research lacks for the most emotional language: Swearing. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether swear words have content distinct from function words, and if so, whether this content is emotional or social in nature. Stimuli included swear (e.g. shit, damn), negative but non-swear (e.g. kill, sick), open-class neutral (e.g. wood, lend), and closed-class neutral words (e.g. while, whom). Behaviourally, swears were recognised slower than valence- and arousal- matched negative words, meaning that there is more to the expressive dimension than merely a heightened emotional state. In ERPs, both swears and negative words elicited a larger positivity (250-550 ms) than open-class neutral words. Later, swears elicited a larger late positivity (550-750 ms) than negative words. We associate the earlier positivity effect with attention due to negative valence, and the later positivity effect with pragmatics due to social tabooness. Our findings suggest a view in which expressives are not merely function words or emotional words. Rather, expressives are emotionally and socially significant. Swears are more than what is indicated by valence ore arousal alone.

Affective Bias without Hemispheric Competition: Evidence for Independent Processing Resources in Each Cortical Hemisphere

We assessed the extent of neural competition for attentional processing resources in early visual cortex between foveally presented task stimuli and peripheral emotional distracter images. Task-relevant and distracting stimuli were shown in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams to elicit the steady-state visual evoked potential, which serves as an electrophysiological marker of attentional resource allocation in early visual cortex. A task-related RSVP stream of symbolic letters was presented centrally at 15 Hz while distracting RSVP streams were displayed at 4 or 6 Hz in the left and right visual hemifields. These image streams always had neutral content in one visual field and would unpredictably switch from neutral to unpleasant content in the opposite visual field. We found that the steady-state visual evoked potential amplitude was consistently modulated as a function of change in emotional valence in peripheral RSVPs, indicating sensory gain in response to distracting affective content. Importantly, the facilitated processing for emotional content shown in one visual hemifield was not paralleled by any perceptual costs in response to the task-related processing in the center or the neutral image stream in the other visual hemifield. Together, our data provide further evidence for sustained sensory facilitation in favor of emotional distracters. Furthermore, these results are in line with previous reports of a “different hemifield advantage” with low-level visual stimuli and are suggestive of independent processing resources in each cortical hemisphere that operate beyond low-level visual cues, that is, with complex images that impact early stages of visual processing via reentrant feedback loops from higher order processing areas.

Expectation Gates Neural Facilitation of Emotional Words in Early Visual Areas

The current study examined whether emotional expectations gate attention to emotional words in early visual cortex. Color cues informed about word valence and onset latency. We observed a stimulus-preceding negativity prior to the onset of cued words that was larger for negative than for neutral words. This indicates that in anticipation of emotional words more attention was allocated to them than to neutral words before target onset. During stimulus presentation the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), elicited by flickering words, was attenuated for cued compared to uncued words, indicating sharpened sensory activity, i.e., expectation suppression. Most importantly, the SSVEP was more enhanced for negative than neutral words when these were cued. Uncued conditions did not differ in SSVEP amplitudes, paralleling previous studies reporting lexico-semantic but not early visual effects of emotional words. We suggest that cueing mediates re-entrant engagement of visual resources by providing an early “affective gist” of an upcoming word. Consequently, visual single-word studies may have underestimated attentional effects of emotional words and their anticipation during reading.

Rapid sensory gain with emotional distracters precedes attentional deployment from a foreground task

The steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), an electrophysiological marker of attentional resource allocation, has recently been demonstrated to serve as a neural signature of emotional content extraction from a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). SSVEP amplitude was reduced for streams of emotional relative to neutral scenes passively viewed at 6 Hz (~167 ms per image), but it was enhanced for emotional relative to neutral scenes when viewed as 4 Hz RSVP (250 ms per image). Here, we investigated whether these seemingly contradictory observations may be related to different dynamics in the allocation of attentional resources as a consequence of stimulation frequency. To this end, we advanced our distraction paradigm by presenting a visual foreground task consisting of randomly moving squares flickering at 15 Hz superimposed on task-irrelevant RSVP streams shown at 6 or 4 Hz, which could unpredictably switch from neutral to unpleasant content during the trial or remained neutral. Critically, our findings demonstrate that affective distractors captured attentional resources more strongly than their neutral counterparts, irrespective of whether they were presented at 6 or 4 Hz rate. Moreover, the emotion-dependent attentional deployment from the foreground task was temporally preceded by sustained sensory facilitation in response to emotional background images. Together, present findings provide evidence for rapid sustained visual facilitation but a rather slow attentional bias in favor of emotional distractors in early visual areas.

An evil face? Verbal evaluative multi-CS conditioning enhances face-evoked mid-latency magnetoencephalographic responses

Humans have a remarkable capacity for rapid affective learning. For instance, using first-order US such as odors or electric shocks, magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies of multi-CS conditioning demonstrate enhanced early (<150 ms) and mid-latency (150–300 ms) visual evoked responses to affectively conditioned faces, together with changes in stimulus evaluation. However, particularly in social contexts, human affective learning is often mediated by language, a class of complex higher-order US. To elucidate mechanisms of this type of learning, we investigate how face processing changes following verbal evaluative multi-CS conditioning. Sixty neutral expression male faces were paired with phrases about aversive crimes (30) or neutral occupations (30). Post conditioning, aversively associated faces evoked stronger magnetic fields in a mid-latency interval between 220 and 320 ms, localized primarily in left visual cortex. Aversively paired faces were also rated as more arousing and more unpleasant, evaluative changes occurring both with and without contingency awareness. However, no early MEG effects were found, implying that verbal evaluative conditioning may require conceptual processing and does not engage rapid, possibly sub-cortical, pathways. Results demonstrate the efficacy of verbal evaluative multi-CS conditioning and indicate both common and distinct neural mechanisms of first- and higher-order multi-CS conditioning, thereby informing theories of associative learning.

Auditory attention enhances processing of positive and negative words in inferior and superior prefrontal cortex

Visually presented emotional words are processed preferentially and effects of emotional content are similar to those of explicit attention deployment in that both amplify visual processing. However, auditory processing of emotional words is less well characterized and interactions between emotional content and task-induced attention have not been fully understood. Here, we investigate auditory processing of emotional words, focussing on how auditory attention to positive and negative words impacts their cerebral processing. A Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study manipulating word valence and attention allocation was performed. Participants heard negative, positive and neutral words to which they either listened passively or attended by counting negative or positive words, respectively. Regardless of valence, active processing compared to passive listening increased activity in primary auditory cortex, left intraparietal sulcus, and right superior frontal gyrus (SFG). The attended valence elicited stronger activity in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left SFG, in line with these regions' role in semantic retrieval and evaluative processing. No evidence for valence-specific attentional modulation in auditory regions or distinct valence-specific regional activations (i.e., negative > positive or positive > negative) was obtained. Thus, allocation of auditory attention to positive and negative words can substantially increase their processing in higher-order language and evaluative brain areas without modulating early stages of auditory processing. Inferior and superior frontal brain structures mediate interactions between emotional content, attention, and working memory when prosodically neutral speech is processed.

Emotional words facilitate lexical but not early visual processing

Background

Emotional scenes and faces have shown to capture and bind visual resources at early sensory processing stages, i.e. in early visual cortex. However, emotional words have led to mixed results. In the current study ERPs were assessed simultaneously with steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) to measure attention effects on early visual activity in emotional word processing. Neutral and negative words were flickered at 12.14 Hz whilst participants performed a Lexical Decision Task.

Results

Emotional word content did not modulate the 12.14 Hz SSVEP amplitude, neither did word lexicality. However, emotional words affected the ERP. Negative compared to neutral words as well as words compared to pseudowords lead to enhanced deflections in the P2 time range indicative of lexico-semantic access. The N400 was reduced for negative compared to neutral words and enhanced for pseudowords compared to words indicating facilitated semantic processing of emotional words. LPC amplitudes reflected word lexicality and thus the task-relevant response.

Conclusion

In line with previous ERP and imaging evidence, the present results indicate that written emotional words are facilitated in processing only subsequent to visual analysis.

Neural correlates of an early attentional capture by positive distractor words

Exogenous or automatic attention to emotional distractors has been observed for emotional scenes and faces. In the language domain, however, automatic attention capture by emotional words has been scarcely investigated. In the current event-related potentials study we explored distractor effects elicited by positive, negative and neutral words in a concurrent but distinct target distractor paradigm. Specifically, participants performed a digit categorization task in which task-irrelevant words were flanked by numbers. The results of both temporo-spatial principal component and source location analyses revealed the existence of early distractor effects that were specifically triggered by positive words. At the scalp level, task-irrelevant positive compared to neutral and negative words elicited larger amplitudes in an anterior negative component that peaked around 120 ms. Also, at the voxel level, positive distractor words increased activity in orbitofrontal regions compared to negative words. These results suggest that positive distractor words quickly and automatically capture attentional resources diverting them from the task where attention was voluntarily directed.

Exogenous (automatic) attention to emotional stimuli: a review

Current knowledge on the architecture of exogenous attention (also called automatic, bottom-up, or stimulus-driven attention, among other terms) has been mainly obtained from studies employing neutral, anodyne stimuli. Since, from an evolutionary perspective, exogenous attention can be understood as an adaptive tool for rapidly detecting salient events, reorienting processing resources to them, and enhancing processing mechanisms, emotional events (which are, by definition, salient for the individual) would seem crucial to a comprehensive understanding of this process. This review, focusing on the visual modality, describes 55 experiments in which both emotional and neutral irrelevant distractors are presented at the same time as ongoing task targets. Qualitative and, when possible, meta-analytic descriptions of results are provided. The most conspicuous result is that, as confirmed by behavioral and/or neural indices, emotional distractors capture exogenous attention to a significantly greater extent than do neutral distractors. The modulatory effects of the nature of distractors capturing attention, of the ongoing task characteristics, and of individual differences, previously proposed as mediating factors, are also described. Additionally, studies reviewed here provide temporal and spatial information-partially absent in traditional cognitive models-on the neural basis of preattention/evaluation, reorienting, and sensory amplification, the main subprocesses involved in exogenous attention. A model integrating these different levels of information is proposed. The present review, which reveals that there are several key issues for which experimental data are surprisingly scarce, confirms the relevance of including emotional distractors in studies on exogenous attention.

Oscillatory brain dynamics associated with the automatic processing of emotion in words

This study examines the automaticity of processing the emotional aspects of words, and characterizes the oscillatory brain dynamics that accompany this automatic processing. Participants read emotionally negative, neutral and positive nouns while performing a color detection task in which only perceptual-level analysis was required. Event-related potentials and time frequency representations were computed from the concurrently measured EEG. Negative words elicited a larger P2 and a larger late positivity than positive and neutral words, indicating deeper semantic/evaluative processing of negative words. In addition, sustained alpha power suppressions were found for the emotional compared to neutral words, in the time range from 500 to 1000ms post-stimulus. These results suggest that sustained attention was allocated to the emotional words, whereas the attention allocated to the neutral words was released after an initial analysis. This seems to hold even when the emotional content of the words is task-irrelevant.

Emotion processing in words: a test of the neural re-use hypothesis using surface and intracranial EEG

This study investigates the spatiotemporal brain dynamics of emotional information processing during reading using a combination of surface and intracranial electroencephalography (EEG). Two different theoretical views were opposed. According to the standard psycholinguistic perspective, emotional responses to words are generated within the reading network itself subsequent to semantic activation. According to the neural re-use perspective, brain regions that are involved in processing emotional information contained in other stimuli (faces, pictures, smells) might be in charge of the processing of emotional information in words as well. We focused on a specific emotion-disgust-which has a clear locus in the brain, the anterior insula. Surface EEG showed differences between disgust and neutral words as early as 200 ms. Source localization suggested a cortical generator of the emotion effect in the left anterior insula. These findings were corroborated through the intracranial recordings of two epileptic patients with depth electrodes in insular and orbitofrontal areas. Both electrodes showed effects of disgust in reading as early as 200 ms. The early emotion effect in a brain region (insula) that responds to specific emotions in a variety of situations and stimuli clearly challenges classic sequential theories of reading in favor of the neural re-use perspective.