Emotional and semantic networks in visual word processing: insights from ERP studies

Emotional processing of math-related words in people with math anxiety

BACKGROUND

Research exploring emotional responses to math-related words in individuals with math anxiety (MA) is scarce. Here, we examined MA participants' subjective emotional processing of math-related cues within Lang's bioinformational model of emotion to further understand the role of those cues in MA.

METHODS

In total, 41 high-MA and 32 low-MA undergraduates rated math-related words, along with neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant words, from the Affective Norms for English Words. The Self-Assessment Manikin was used to calculate valence, arousal, and dominance scores for each word.

RESULTS

The low-MA group rated math-related words as neutral on the three emotional scales, however, the high-MA group rated them lower and higher for valence and dominance than neutral and unpleasant words, respectively. Moreover, math-related words were rated as more and less activating than neutral and unpleasant words, respectively. The two groups significantly differed in scores on the three scales only for the math-related words.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide evidence that individuals with high MA show altered emotional processing of math-related words, experiencing them as moderately aversive and moderately activating. The findings emphasize that the altered emotional processing of words associated with math should be considered a symptom of MA.

ANCW: Affective norms for 4030 Chinese words

Affective information contained in words is gaining increased attention among neurolinguists and psycholinguists around the world. This study established the Affective Norms for Chinese Words (ANCW) with valence, arousal, dominance, and concreteness ratings for 4030 words that were Chinese adaptations of the CET-4 (The National College English Test Band 4) official syllabus. Despite the existing Chinese affective norms such as the Chinese Affective Words System (CAWS), the ANCW provides much more and richer Chinese vocabulary. By using 7-point (ranging from 1 to 7) Likert scales in a paper-and-pencil procedure, we obtained ratings for all variables from 3717 Chinese undergraduates. The ANCW norms possessed good response reliability and were compatible with prior normative studies in Chinese. The pairwise correlation analysis revealed quadratic relations between valence and arousal, arousal and dominance, as well as valence and concreteness. Additionally, valence and dominance, as well as arousal and concreteness, presented a linear correlation, and concreteness and dominance were correlated. The ANCW provides reliable and standardized stimulus materials for further research involving emotional language processing.

Using Event-Related Potentials to Evidence the Visual and Semantic Impact: A Pilot Study with N400 Effect and Food Packaging

Packaging design is pivotal in motivating consumer decisions, as a key communication tool from creation to purchase. Currently, the interpretation and evaluation of packaging's impact are shifting toward non-traditional methods. This pilot study evaluated the packaging perception of York Ham and Turkey Breast products. The event-related potential (ERP) technique, the methodology priming words (positive and negative), and target images (original and modified packaging) were applied. A total of 23 participants were sampled using a 32-channels scalp elastic electrode cap and viewed 200 trials of word-image matching. Participants responded whether the images and adjectives matched or not, using the two groups of images. The results demonstrate an N400 effect in the parietal area. This region was observed to show evidence of cognitive processing related to congruency or incongruency, by contrasting the priming and target of this study. The evaluation positioned the York Ham packaging as the best rated. The findings show a relevant contribution to ERPs and research related to the food packaging perception.

Is the approach avoidance compatibility effect moderated by word imageability?

The approach/avoidance (AA) compatibility effect refers to the fact that individuals respond faster by an approach movement to positive than to negative stimuli, whereas they respond faster by an avoidance movement to negative than to positive stimuli. Although this effect has been observed in many studies, the underlying mechanisms remain still unclear. On the basis of recent studies suggesting a key role of sensorimotor information in the emergence of the AA compatibility effect, the present study aimed to investigate the specific role of visual information, operationalised through word imageability, in the production of the AA compatibility effect. We orthogonally manipulated the emotional valence (positive/negative) and the imageability (low/high) of words in an incidental online-AA task (i.e., in the absence of valence processing goals) using a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 300 ms. In line with previous studies, Experiment 1 revealed an AA compatibility effect in the absence of valence processing goals. However, this effect was not moderated by word imageability. In Experiment 2, we examined whether the absence of influence of word imageability could be due to the short SOA (300 ms) used in this experiment. We used the same design as in Experiment 1 and manipulated the SOA (400 vs 600 ms). We again observed an AA compatibility effect which was not moderated by word imageability, whatever the SOA used. The results of both experiments suggest the absence of any influence of sensorimotor information in the AA compatibility effect, at least when provided by the to-be-approached/avoided stimulus.

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 cognitive neural mechanism of trait anxiety influences mind wandering: An ERP study

Converging evidence from behavioral and neuroscience studies demonstrated that our attention to the external world is influenced by emotion, especially anxiety. However, little is known about how trait anxiety influences neural and behavioral responses during mind wandering. The present study aimed to examine the neural and cognitive time courses of how trait anxiety affects mind wandering. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 20 individuals with high trait anxiety and 20 with low trait anxiety when they performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) in which they were asked to respond to frequent ''nontargets'' (digits 0-6, 8-9) but withhold responses to infrequent ''targets'' (the digit 7). We compared the behavioral performance and electroencephalographic waves between the high and low trait anxiety groups during states of "mind wandering" (fail to withhold a response to the target number) and being "on-task" (correctly withhold a response to the target number). Results showed that a larger late positive component (LPC, 400-950 ms) was elicited when participants were "on task" than when they were mind wandering. Additionally, a larger late slow waveform (LSW, 950-1050 ms) was elicited in the high trait anxiety group than in the low trait anxiety group. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between self-reported trait anxiety scores and the LSW amplitudes during mind wandering. It was proposed that the effect of trait anxiety on the cognitive neural mechanism underlying attentional processing was primarily reflected in a later process involving the redistribution of cognitive resources.

Neural correlates of word processing influenced by painful primes

The administration of painful primes has been shown to influence the perception of successively presented semantic stimuli. Painful primes lead to more negative valence ratings of pain-related, negative, and positive words than no prime. This effect was greater for pain-related than negative words. The identities of this effect's neural correlates remain unknown. In this EEG experiment, 48 healthy subjects received noxious electrical stimuli of moderate intensity. During this priming, they were presented with adjectives of variable valence (pain-related, negative, positive, and neutral). The triggered event-related potentials were analyzed during N1 (120-180 ms), P2 (170-260 ms), P3 (300-350 ms), N400 (370-550 ms), and two late positive complex components (LPC1 [650-750 ms] and LPC2 [750-1000 ms]). Larger event-related potentials were found for negative and pain-related words compared to positive words in later components (N400, LPC1, and LPC2), mainly in the frontal regions. Early components (N1, P2) were less affected by the word category but were by the prime condition (N1 amplitude was smaller with than without painful stimulation, P2 amplitude was larger with than without painful stimulation). Later components (LPC1, LPC2) were not affected by the prime condition. An interaction effect involving prime and word category was found on the behavioral level but not the electrophysiological level. This finding indicates that the interaction effect does not directly translate from the behavioral to the electrophysiological level. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.

Dissociating different temporal stages of emotional word processing by feature-based attention

Negative emotional content is prioritized across different stages of information processing as reflected by different components of the event-related potential (ERP). In this preregistered study (N = 40), we investigated how varying the attentional focus allows us to dissociate the involvement of specific ERP components in the processing of negative and neutral words. Participants had to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto the words, the word type (adjective/noun), or the emotional content (negative/neutral). Thus, attention was either not focused on words (distraction task), non-emotional aspects, or the emotional relevance of words. Regardless of the task, there were no significant differences between negative and neutral words for the P1, N1, or P2 components. In contrast, interactions between emotion and task were observed for the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP). EPN differences were absent during the distraction task but were present in the other two tasks. LPP emotion differences were found only when attention was directed to the emotional content of words. Our study adds to the evidence that early ERP components do not reliably separate negative and neutral words. However, results show that mid-latency and late stages of emotion processing are separable by different attention tasks. The EPN represents a stage of attentional enhancement of negative words given sufficient attentional resources. Differential activations during the LPP stage are associated with more elaborative processing of the emotional meaning of words.

Beyond facial expressions: A systematic review on effects of emotional relevance of faces on the N170

The N170 is the most prominent electrophysiological signature of face processing. While facial expressions reliably modulate the N170, there is considerable variance in N170 modulations by other sources of emotional relevance. Therefore, we systematically review and discuss this research area using different methods to manipulate the emotional relevance of inherently neutral faces. These methods were categorized into (1) existing pre-experimental affective person knowledge (e.g., negative attitudes towards outgroup faces), (2) experimentally instructed affective person knowledge (e.g., negative person information), (3) contingency-based affective learning (e.g., fear-conditioning), or (4) the immediate affective context (e.g., emotional information directly preceding the face presentation). For all categories except the immediate affective context category, the majority of studies reported significantly increased N170 amplitudes depending on the emotional relevance of faces. Furthermore, the potentiated N170 was observed across different attention conditions, supporting the role of the emotional relevance of faces on the early prioritized processing of configural facial information, regardless of low-level differences. However, we identified several open research questions and suggest venues for further research.

Processing emotions from faces and words measured by event-related brain potentials

Affective aspects of a stimulus can be processed rapidly and before cognitive attribution, acting much earlier for verbal stimuli than previously considered. Aimed for specific mechanisms, event-related brain potentials (ERPs), expressed in facial expressions or word meaning and evoked by six basic emotions - anger, disgust, fear, happy, sad, and surprise - relative to emotionally neutral stimuli were analysed in a sample of 116 participants. Brain responses in the occipital and left temporal regions elicited by the sadness in facial expressions or words were indistinguishable from responses evoked by neutral faces or words. Confirming previous findings, facial fear elicited an early and strong posterior negativity. Instead of expected parietal positivity, both the happy faces and words produced significantly more negative responses compared to neutral. Surprise in facial expressions and words elicited a strong early response in the left temporal cortex, which could be a signature of appraisal. The results of this study are consistent with the view that both types of affective stimuli, facial emotions and word meaning, set off rapid processing and responses occur very early in the processing stage.

On the dynamics of gain and loss: Electrophysiological evidence from associative learning

Associated relevance affects the sensory encoding of low-level visual features of symbolic stimuli. It is unclear, however, which dimension of low-level visual features benefits from prioritized processing, and how these effects develop throughout the course of relevance acquisition. Moreover, previous evidence is inconclusive regarding the preservation of processing advantage once the association is no longer relevant, as well as its generalization to perceptually similar but novel stimuli. The present study addresses these questions by employing an associative learning paradigm. In two experiments (N = 24 each, between-subject design), different dimensions of low-level visual features of symbolic stimuli were associated with monetary gain, loss, or zero outcome. In a consecutive old/new decision task, associated stimuli were presented together with perceptually similar but novel stimuli. Event-related brain potentials (P1, EPN, LPC) were measured throughout both sessions. Early sensory encoding (P1) was boosted by loss association and appeared to be sensitive to the dimension of the associated low-level visual features. Gain association influenced post-perceptual processing stages (LPC), arising over the course of the learning phase, and are preserved even when the associated outcome was no longer relevant. Gain association also resulted in EPN modulations similar to the effects observed in the case of emotional words. None of the observed effects generalized to perceptually similar stimuli. These results show that acquired relevance can influence the sensory processing of specific dimensions of low-level visual features. Moreover, this study extends previous evidence of a dissociation of early and late neural effects of associated motivational relevance.

Attentional tuning of valent word forms

Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we tested the hypothesis of valent word forms (Kissler et al., 2006, Prog Brain Res) stating that the mere visual shapes of emotional words acquire valence through numerous co-occurrences with affective activation over an experienced reader's life. Thereby, associations between neuronal representations of visual word forms and affect are strengthened. If so, selective attention to a specific level of the valence of single visual words should not only pre-activate neuronal representations of that level of valence, but this activation should also spread to the associated word forms. This should improve their processing and/or affective discrimination. In a valence-detection task, N = 53 participants made speeded responses only to words of the current target level of valence (negative, neutral, or positive), which varied across separate blocks. We focused on posterior visual P1 and N170 components, two well-established ERP markers of low-level and structural word form processing, respectively. P1 increased from negative over neutral to positive words; this effect was stronger in target compared to nontarget words. N170 was larger for emotional compared to neutral target words, whereas nontarget words showed a strong reverse pattern. The P1 effect for target words and the N170 effect for nontarget words both were driven by good task performers in terms of fast hit responses. Results support the idea of valent word forms that can be tuned by selective attention to valence, which implies both, facilitated affective discrimination and processing of target words, and inhibition of the processing of nontarget words.

Neural correlates of emotional valence for faces and words

Stimuli with negative emotional valence are especially apt to influence perception and action because of their crucial role in survival, a property that may not be precisely mirrored by positive emotional stimuli of equal intensity. The aim of this study was to identify the neural circuits differentially coding for positive and negative valence in the implicit processing of facial expressions and words, which are among the main ways human beings use to express emotions. Thirty-six healthy subjects took part in an event-related fMRI experiment. We used an implicit emotional processing task with the visual presentation of negative, positive, and neutral faces and words, as primary stimuli. Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) of the fMRI data was used to test effective brain connectivity within two different anatomo-functional models, for the processing of words and faces, respectively. In our models, the only areas showing a significant differential response to negative and positive valence across both face and word stimuli were early visual cortices, with faces eliciting stronger activations. For faces, DCM revealed that this effect was mediated by a facilitation of activity in the amygdala by positive faces and in the fusiform face area by negative faces; for words, the effect was mainly imputable to a facilitation of activity in the primary visual cortex by positive words. These findings support a role of early sensory cortices in discriminating the emotional valence of both faces and words, where the effect may be mediated chiefly by the subcortical/limbic visual route for faces, and rely more on the direct thalamic pathway to primary visual cortex for words.

Neural correlates of understanding emotional words in late childhood

Prior studies involving adults have shown that words can elicit emotional processing, with emotion-label (e.g., happiness) and emotion-laden words (e.g., gift) having distinct processes. However, limited studies have explored the developmental changes in these processes in relation to emotional valence. To address this question, this exploratory study measured event-related potentials (ERPs) in 11-14-year-old children/adolescents (N = 25) and adults (N = 23) while performing an emotional categorization task. The stimuli used were two-character Chinese words, with factors for word type (emotion-label versus emotion-laden) and valence (positive versus negative). To confirm word emotionality, neutral words were also included and compared with all emotional words. The results showed that adults exhibited reduced N400 amplitudes to emotion-label words compared to emotion-laden ones in both positive and negative valence contexts. The differentiation was only sustained for negative valence in the late positive component (LPC). Similar scalp distributions of the effects of word type were found in children/adolescents; however, they exhibited a more prolonged processing of all emotional words than adults. These results suggest that the processing of emotion-label and emotion-laden words are distinct in late childhood, and this discrepancy varies with emotional valence and increasing age.

Therapist reactions to patient personality: A pilot study of clinicians’ emotional and neural responses using three clinical vignettes from in treatment series

Introduction

Therapists’ responses to patients play a crucial role in psychotherapy and are considered a key component of the patient–clinician relationship, which promotes successful treatment outcomes. To date, no empirical research has ever investigated therapist response patterns to patients with different personality disorders from a neuroscience perspective.

Methods

In the present study, psychodynamic therapists (N = 14) were asked to complete a battery of instruments (including the Therapist Response Questionnaire) after watching three videos showing clinical interactions between a therapist and three patients with narcissistic, histrionic/borderline, and depressive personality disorders, respectively. Subsequently, participants’ high-density electroencephalography (hdEEG) was recorded as they passively viewed pictures of the patients’ faces, which were selected from the still images of the previously shown videos. Supervised machine learning (ML) was used to evaluate whether: (1) therapists’ responses predicted which patient they observed during the EEG task and whether specific clinician reactions were involved in distinguishing between patients with different personality disorders (using pairwise comparisons); and (2) therapists’ event-related potentials (ERPs) predicted which patient they observed during the laboratory experiment and whether distinct ERP components allowed this forecast.

Results

The results indicated that therapists showed distinct patterns of criticized/devalued and sexualized reactions to visual depictions of patients with different personality disorders, at statistically systematic and clinically meaningful levels. Moreover, therapists’ late positive potentials (LPPs) in the hippocampus were able to determine which patient they observed during the EEG task, with high accuracy.

Discussion

These results, albeit preliminary, shed light on the role played by therapists’ memory processes in psychotherapy. Clinical and neuroscience implications of the empirical investigation of therapist responses are discussed.

Neuroaesthetic exploration on the cognitive processing behind repeating graphics

Repeating graphics are common research objects in modern design education. However, we do not exactly know the attentional processes underlying graphic artifacts consisting of repeating rhythms. In this experiment, the event-related potential, a neuroscientific measure, was used to study the neural correlates of repeating graphics within graded orderliness. We simulated the competitive identification process of people recognizing artifacts with graded repeating rhythms from a scattered natural environment with the oddball paradigm. In the earlier attentional processing related to the P2 component around the Fz electrode within the 150-250 ms range, a middle-grade repeating rhythm (Target 1) did not show a difference from a high-grade repeating rhythm (Target 2). However, in the later cognitive processes related to the P3b component around the Pz electrode within the 300-450 ms range, Target 1 had longer peak latency than Target 2, based on similar waveforms. Thus, we may suppose that the arrangement of the repeating graphics did not influence the earlier attentional processing but affected the later cognitive part, such as the categorization task in the oddball paradigm. Furthermore, as evidenced by the standard deviation wave across the trials, we suggest that the growing standard deviation value might represent the gradual loss of attentional focus to the task after the stimulus onset and that the zero-growth level may represent similar brain activity between trials.

Emotional Attractors in Subject-Verb Number Agreement

Considering the crosstalk between brain networks that contain linguistic and emotional information and that no studies have examined the impact of semantic information of affective nature on subject-verb number agreement, the present Event Related Potential (ERP) study investigated the extent to which emotional local nouns whose number mismatched that of subject head nouns might be considered by the parser during comprehension of grammatically correct sentences. To this end, twenty-eight Spanish native speakers were tested on a self-paced reading task while their brain activity was recorded. The experimental materials consisted of 120 sentences where the valence (negative vs. neutral) and number (singular vs. plural) of the local noun of the singular subject noun-phrase (NP) were manipulated; El gorro de aquel/aquellos cazador(es)/mecánico(s) era… [The hat of that/those hunter(s)/mechanic(s) was…]. ERP results measured in the local noun position showed that valence and number interacted in the 300–500 ms (negative component) and 780–880 ms (late positivity) time windows. In the (target) verb position, the two factors only interacted in the late 780–880 ms time window, revealing an “ungrammatical illusion” for plural marked neutral words. Our findings suggest that number agreement is sensitive to affective meaning but that the emotional information of an attractor is considered in different operations and at different stages during grammatical sentence processing; it can affect lexical and syntactic representation retrieval of a subject-NP and impact agreement encoding only at late stages of processing, during verb agreement and feature integration.

Sex-Specific Causes and Consequences of White Matter Damage in a Middle-Aged Cohort

Objective

To evaluate potential sex-specific effects of multiple cardiovascular risk factors on white matter pathology in normal aging men and women, as well as potential sex-differences in the association of white matter pathology and cognitive functions.

Methods

We analyzed cross-sectional data of 581 participants (median age: 53 years, 54% women) of the population-based cohort of the BiDirect Study who completed clinical examinations, five neuropsychological tests, and an 3T MRI examination. White matter pathology was determined by the extent of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) on FLAIR images as well as the magnitude of global fractional anisotropy (FA) based on diffusion tensor imaging. Main effects, interaction as well as sex-stratified generalized linear regression models were used to evaluate the moderating effect of sex on the association of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking, and obesity with WMH and FA, respectively. Associations of imaging markers with cognitive test results were determined with linear regression models.

Results

Hypertension showed stronger associations with more extensive WMH and less FA in women compared to men. Current smoking was associated with more severe WMH in women only. Adjusted for age and education, WMH were not significantly associated with cognitive tests, but higher FA was associated with better performance in motor function in both sexes and with executive functions in men, even after adjustment for cardiovascular risk factors.

Conclusion

We observed a stronger association of hypertension and smoking with white matter damage in women, suggesting a higher susceptibility for vascular pathology in women. However, there was no association of WMH with cognition, and FA was associated with executive function tests only in men, suggesting a higher cognitive reserve in women.

Attention to affect 2.0: Multiple effects of emotion and attention on event-related potentials of visual word processing in a valence-detection task

Here we continue recent work on the specific mental processes engaged in a valence-detection task. Fifty-seven participants responded to one predefined target level of valence (negative, neutral, or positive), and ignored the remaining two levels. This enables more precise fine-tuning of neuronal pathways, compared to valence categorization where attention is divided between different levels of valence. Our group recently used valence detection with emotional words. Posterior P1 and N170 effects in the event-related potential (ERP) supported the idea of valent word forms that can be tuned by selective attention to valence. Here we report findings on three distinct posterior N2 components, P300, N400, and the late positive potential (LPP). Target but not nontarget words showed an arousal effect (emotional > neutral) on left-side early posterior negativity (180-280 ms). In contrast, an arousal effect on a sharp N2 deflection in left-minus-right difference ERPs (230-270 ms), suggesting facilitation of lexical access for emotional words, was independent of target status. This also applied to increased medial parieto-occipital N2 (260-300 ms) specific to negative words, indicating attentional capture. Medial-central N400 was specifically enhanced for negative nontarget words, further supporting attentional capture. The typical LPP arousal effect was observed, being stronger and more left-lateralized in target words. An exploratory finding concerned a broad component-overarching ERP valence effect (250-650 ms). Independent of target status, ERPs were more positive for positive than negative words. Combined with our previous results, data suggest multiple loci of emotion-attention interactions in valence detection.

Gender Differences in Emotional Connotative Meaning of Words Measured by Osgood's Semantic Differential Techniques in Young Adults

Semantic differential techniques are a useful, well-validated tool to assess affective processing of stimuli and determine how that processing is impacted by various demographic factors, such as gender. In this paper, we explore differences in connotative word processing between men and women as measured by Osgood's semantic differential and what those differences imply about affective processing in the two genders. We recruited 94 young participants (47 men, 47 women, ages 18-39) using an online survey and collected their affective ratings of 120 words on three rating tasks: Evaluation (E), Potency (P), and Activity (A). With these data, we explored the theoretical and mathematical overlap between Osgood's affective meaning factor structure and other models of emotional processing commonly used in gender analyses. We then used Osgood's three-dimensional structure to assess gender-related differences in three affective classes of words (words with connotation that is Positive, Neutral, or Negative for each task) and found that there was no significant difference between the genders when rating Positive words and Neutral words on each of the three rating tasks. However, young women consistently rated Negative words more negatively than young men did on all three of the independent dimensions. This confirms the importance of taking gender effects into account when measuring emotional processing. Our results further indicate there may be differences between Osgood's structure and other models of affective processing that should be further explored.

The Relative Importance of Vascular Risk Factors on Early Cognitive Aging Varies Only Slightly Between Men and Women

Objective

To investigate the sex-specific course and impact of vascular risk factors on cognitive aging in a rather young and healthy community-dwelling cohort.

Methods

We used data from a population-based cohort study, collected three times during 6 years, comprising 1,911 examinations from 798 participants aged 35–66 years at baseline. Cognitive performance on the Color-Word-Interference-Test, the Trail Making Tests (TMT) A&B, the Word Fluency Test, a 12-item word list, the Purdue Pegboard Test and a principal component global score were used as outcomes in linear mixed models. We evaluated (1) sex differences in cognitive trajectories, (2) the mediating role of hypertension, diabetes, smoking and obesity [body mass index (BMI) > 30] on sex differences and (3) in sex-stratified analyses, potential sex-specific effects of these risk factors on cognition.

Results

For all cognitive tests, we observed cognitive decline with age. Rates of decline slightly differed across sexes, showing a later but steeper decline for women in tests of memory (word list) and word fluency, but a steeper decline for men in tests of psychomotor speed and mental set shifting (TMT A&B) in older age. Women generally scored better on cognitive tests, but the slightly higher prevalence of classical vascular risks factors in men in our cohort could not explain these sex differences. Sex-stratified analyses revealed a generally small, concordantly negative, but quantitatively slightly different impact of diabetes, smoking and obesity on cognitive functions but mixed effects for arterial hypertension, depending on the blood pressure values, the treatment status and the duration of arterial hypertension.

Conclusion

Cognitive sex differences in this rather young and healthy cohort could not be explained by a differing prevalence of vascular risks factors across sexes. The association of cardiovascular risk factors with cognition, however, slightly differed between men and women, whereby effects were generally small. Whereas longtime diabetes, obesity and smoking had a sex-specific, but concordantly negative impact on psychomotor speed, executive and motor functions, we found some opposing effects for arterial hypertension. Our results can help to identify sex-specific susceptibilities to modifiable risk factors, to attract attention to potential information bias and to stimulate further research into alternative causes and mechanism of sex differences in cognitive aging.

Neural Mechanisms of Subliminal Mentor-Student Relationship Stimuli Processing: An ERP Study

In educational contexts, mentorship roles often complicate the mentor-student relationship because mentors act not only as the closest academic ally of graduate students but also their program supervisors who can affect their timely graduation. This study examines how graduate students react to their mentors’ names when subliminally presented. A total of 63 graduate students (31 male; Mean Age = 23.450) were asked to perform an irrelevant color judgment task of valenced words (positive vs. negative relationship words) after a subliminal presentation of three different types of names (i.e., mentors, authorities, and friends). Results show that mentor and friend names elicit a greater P2 peak than authority names, whereas mentor names evoke a reduced N2 and P3 amplitude than friend and authority names. In addition, participants with a history of abusive supervision tend to have an overall decline in P2 amplitude. These event-related potential (ERP) findings suggest that mentors are perceived by students as familiar while attention-inducing figures.

Self-referential Processing in Remitted Depression: An Event-Related Potential Study

Background

Identifying mechanisms of major depressive disorder that continue into remission is critical, as these mechanisms may contribute to subsequent depressive episodes. Biobehavioral markers related to depressogenic self-referential processing biases have been identified in adults with depression. Thus, we investigated whether these risk factors persisted during remission as well as contributed to the occurrence of stress and depressive symptoms over time.

Methods

At baseline, adults with remitted depression (n = 33) and healthy control subjects (n = 33) were administered diagnostic and stress interviews as well as self-report symptom measures. In addition, participants completed a self-referential encoding task while electroencephalography data were acquired. Stress interviews and self-report symptom measures were readministered at the 6-month follow-up assessment.

Results

Drift diffusion modeling showed that compared with healthy individuals, adults with remitted depression exhibited a slower drift rate to negative stimuli, indicating a slower tendency to reject negative stimuli as self-relevant. At the 6-month follow-up assessment, a slower drift rate to negative stimuli predicted greater interpersonal stress severity among individuals with remitted depression but not healthy individuals while controlling for both baseline depression symptoms and interpersonal stress severity. Highlighting the specificity of this effect, results were nonsignificant when predicting noninterpersonal stress. For self-relevant positive words endorsed, adults with remitted depression exhibited smaller left- than right-hemisphere late positive potential amplitudes; healthy control subjects did not show hemispheric differences.

Conclusions

Self-referential processing deficits persist into remission. In line with the stress generation framework, these biases predicted the occurrence of interpersonal stress, which may provide insight about a potential pathway for the re-emergence of depressive symptoms.

Mother-infant convergence of event-related potentials elicited by face and object processing

Prior work has provided conceptual support for developmental changes in face and object processing, such that: face processing, as captured by the N290 event-related potential (ERP) component in infancy, may develop into the N170 in adulthood; and motivated attention, as captured by the negative central (Nc) in infancy, may develop into the late positive potential (LPP). The present study examined these neural correlates in 12-month-old infants and their mothers (N = 33 dyads). Dyads completed a viewing task consisting of familiar and novel face and toy stimuli while electroencephalography was recorded. Results suggest that for mothers, the N170 was larger for faces than toys, regardless of familiarity, and the LPP was largest for familiar faces. In infants, the N290 was somewhat larger for faces than toys (p < .10); the Nc did not vary by condition. Adult ERPs demonstrated fair to good reliability; reliability of infant ERPs was lower and was influenced by looking behaviors. Intergenerational associations were strongest between the LPP and Nc, particularly when electrode and time window were taken into account. Refinement of data handling and ERP scoring procedures for infant ERPs are crucial next steps for estimation of intergenerational associations and further examination of developmental changes in face and object processing.

The role of selective attention in the positivity offset: Evidence from event related potentials

Some research suggests that positive and negative valence stimuli may be processed differently. For example, negative material may capture and hold attention more readily than equally arousing positive material. This is called the negativity bias, and it has been observed as both behavioural and electroencephalographic (EEG) effects. Consequently, it has been attributed to both automatic and elaborative processes. However, at the lowest levels of arousal, faster reaction times and stronger EEG responses to positive material have been observed. This is called the positivity offset, and the underlying cognitive mechanism is less understood. To study the role of selective attention in the positivity offset, participants completed a negative affective priming (NAP) task modified to dissociate priming for positive and negative words. The task required participants to indicate the valence of a target word, while simultaneously ignoring a distractor. In experiment 1, a behavioural facilitation effect (faster response time) was observed for positive words, in stark contrast to the original NAP task. These results were congruent with a previously reported general categorization advantage for positive material. In experiment 2, participants performed the task while EEG was recorded. In additional to replicating the behavioural results from experiment 1, positive words elicited a larger Late Positive Potential (LPP) component on ignored repetition relative to control trials. Surprisingly, negative words elicited a larger LPP than positive words on control trials. These results suggest that the positivity offset may reflect a greater sensitivity to priming effects due to a more flexible attentional set.

Can ambient odors influence the recognition of emotional words? A behavioral and event-related potentials study

Odor context can affect the recognition of facial expressions. However, there is no evidence to date that odor can regulate the processing of emotional words conveyed by visual words. An emotional word recognition task was combined with event-related potential technology. Briefly, 49 adults were randomly divided into three odor contexts (pleasant odor, unpleasant odor, and no odor) to judge the valence of emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral). Both behavioral and Electroencephalography (EEG) data were collected. Both the pleasant odor and unpleasant odor contexts shortened the response time of the subjects to emotional words. In addition, negative words induced greater amplitudes of early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) than the positive and neutral words. However, the neutral words induced a larger N400 amplitude than the positive and negative words. More importantly, the processing of emotional words was found to be modulated by external odor contexts. For example, during the earlier (P2) processing stages, pleasant and unpleasant odor contexts induced greater P2 amplitudes than the no odor context. In the unpleasant odor context, negative words with the same odor valence induced greater P2 amplitudes than the positive words. During the later (N400) stages, various regions of the brain regions exhibited different results. For example, in the left and right frontal areas of the brain, exposure to positive words in a pleasant odor context resulted in a smaller N400 amplitude than exposure to neutral words in the same context. Meanwhile, in the left and right central regions, emotional words with the same valence as pleasant or unpleasant odor contexts elicited the minimum N400 amplitude. Individuals are very sensitive to emotional information. With deeper processing, different cognitive processes are reflected and they can be modulated by external odors. In the early and late stages of word processing, both pleasant and unpleasant odor contexts exhibited an undifferentiated dominance effect and could specifically modulate affectively congruent words.

Emotional and Attentional Bias in Fibromyalgia: A Pilot ERP Study of the Dot-Probe Task

Introduction

The present research investigates the neural correlates of attentional bias in fibromyalgia (FM) with a dot-probe task performed during an electroencephalogram (EEG) recording.

Methods

For this purpose, 30 female participants were recruited, divided into two groups: a group of patients with FM (FM, n = 15, M_age = 51.87) and a healthy control group (HC) (HC, n = 15, M_age = 46.13).

Results

The results did not show behavioral differences between groups, but the EEG results showed that healthy controls had larger P300 amplitudes than patients with FM. Regarding late positive potentials (LPP), we found that patients with FM had larger amplitudes than healthy controls in a later time window.

Conclusion

In summary, while the P300 results suggest that patients allocate less attentional resources to the task, the increased amplitudes of their LPP suggest augmented emotional processing of the target stimuli. Altogether, our results seem to support the thesis of generalized attentional deficits in FM.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic musculoskeletal pain condition. There has been discussion in the scientific literature as to whether patients with FM suffer from a generalized attentional deficit or an attentional bias—preferentially selecting pain-related information. Attentional bias in FM patients has been studied as hypervigilance, which refers to early detection of pain-related information or innocuous information. Thus, the aim of this study was to test whether there is a generalized attentional deficit or attentional bias in relation to pain in patients with FM, by studying the neural activity underlying cognitive processes, specifically with evoked potentials (P300 and late positive potential—LPP). The P300 has been related to the use of attentional resources and the LPP to affective modulation. For this purpose, we studied two groups: a group of patients with FM and a healthy control group. Our hypotheses considered that FM patients, compared to healthy controls, would show an attentional bias for pain-related words (1) reflected in higher hits and shorter reaction time when detecting the target of a cognitive task (dot-probe), and (2) manifested by increased amplitudes of P300 and LPP evoked potentials while performing the task. The electrophysiological results suggest that FM patients may have a generalized attentional deficit and, despite this being the case, FM patients are more emotionally involved in the task.

Feel Thine Own Self – Mood Congruency Evaluation of Emotional State Adjectives

Abstract. The goal of the study was to explore event-related potential (ERP) differences during the processing of emotional adjectives that were evaluated as congruent or incongruent with the current mood. We hypothesized that the first effects of congruence evaluation would be evidenced during the earliest stages of semantic analysis. Sixty mood adjectives were presented separately for 1,000 ms each during two sessions of mood induction. After each presentation, participants evaluated to what extent the word described their mood. The results pointed to incongruence marking of adjective’s meaning with current mood during early attention orientation and semantic access stages (the P150 component time window). This was followed by enhanced processing of congruent words at later stages. As a secondary goal the study also explored word valence effects and their relation to congruence evaluation. In this regard, no significant effects were observed on the ERPs; however, a negativity bias (enhanced responses to negative adjectives) was noted on the behavioral data (RTs), which could correspond to the small differences traced on the late positive potential.

Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words: Behavioural and Electrophysiological Evidence

Abstract and concrete words differ in their cognitive and neuronal underpinnings, but the exact mechanisms underlying these distinctions are unclear. We investigated differences between these two semantic types by analysing brain responses to newly learnt words with fully controlled psycholinguistic properties. Experimental participants learned 20 novel abstract and concrete words in the context of short stories. After the learning session, event-related potentials (ERPs) to newly learned items were recorded, and acquisition outcomes were assessed behaviourally in a range of lexical and semantic tasks. Behavioural results showed better performance on newly learnt abstract words in lexical tasks, whereas semantic assessments showed a tendency for higher accuracy for concrete words. ERPs to novel abstract and concrete concepts differed early on, ~150 ms after the word onset. Moreover, differences between novel words and control untrained pseudowords were observed earlier for concrete (~150 ms) than for abstract (~200 ms) words. Distributed source analysis indicated bilateral temporo-parietal activation underpinning newly established memory traces, suggesting a crucial role of Wernicke’s area and its right-hemispheric homologue in word acquisition. In sum, we report behavioural and neurophysiological processing differences between concrete and abstract words evident immediately after their controlled acquisition, confirming distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning these types of semantics.

The Double Framing Effect of Emotive Metaphors in Argumentation

In argumentation, metaphors are often considered as ambiguous or deceptive uses of language leading to fallacies of reasoning. However, they can also provide useful insights into creative argumentation, leading to genuinely new knowledge. Metaphors entail a framing effect that implicitly provides a specific perspective to interpret the world, guiding reasoning and evaluation of arguments. In the same vein, emotions could be in sharp contrast with proper reasoning, but they can also be cognitive processes of affective framing, influencing our reasoning and behavior in different meaningful ways. Thus, a double (metaphorical and affective) framing effect might influence argumentation in the case of emotive metaphors, such as “Poverty is a disease” or “Your boss is a dictator,” where specific “emotive words” (disease, dictator) are used as vehicles. We present and discuss the results of two experimental studies designed to explore the role of emotive metaphors in argumentation. The studies investigated whether and to what extent the detection of a fallacious argument is influenced by the presence of a conventional vs. novel emotive metaphor. Participants evaluated a series of verbal arguments containing either “non-emotive” or “emotive” (positive or negative) metaphors as middle terms that “bridge” the premises of the argument. The results show that the affective coherence of the metaphor's vehicle and topic plays a crucial role in participants' reasoning style, leading to global heuristic vs. local analytical interpretive processes in the interplay of the metaphorical and the affective framing effects.

The Automatic but Flexible and Content-Dependent Nature of Syntax

Syntactic processing has often been considered an utmost example of unconscious automatic processing. In this line, it has been demonstrated that masked words containing syntactic anomalies are processed by our brain triggering event related potential (ERP) components similar to the ones triggered by conscious syntactic anomalies, thus supporting the automatic nature of the syntactic processing. Conversely, recent evidence also points out that regardless of the level of awareness, emotional information and other relevant extralinguistic information modulate conscious syntactic processing too. These results are also in line with suggestions that, under certain circumstances, syntactic processing could also be flexible and context-dependent. However, the study of the concomitant automatic but flexible conception of syntactic parsing is very scarce. Hence, to this aim, we examined whether and how masked emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral masked adjectives) containing morphosyntactic anomalies (half of the cases) affect linguistic comprehension of an ongoing unmasked sentence that also can contain a number agreement anomaly between the noun and the verb. ERP components were observed to emotional information (EPN), masked anomalies (LAN and a weak P600), and unmasked ones (LAN/N400 and P600). Furthermore, interactions in the processing of conscious and unconscious morphosyntactic anomalies and between unconscious emotional information and conscious anomalies were detected. The findings support, on the one hand, the automatic nature of syntax, given that syntactic components LAN and P600 were observed to unconscious anomalies. On the other hand, the flexible, permeable, and context-dependent nature of the syntactic processing is also supported, since unconscious information modulated conscious syntactic components. This double nature of syntactic processing is in line with theories of automaticity, suggesting that even unconscious/automatic, syntactic processing is flexible, adaptable, and context-dependent.

Neurophysiological Markers Related to Negative Self-referential Processing Differentiate Adolescent Suicide Ideators and Attempters

Background

Adolescent suicide is a major public health concern, and presently, there is a limited understanding of the neurophysiological correlates of suicidal behaviors. Cognitive models of suicide indicate that negative views of the self are related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and this study investigated whether behavioral and neural correlates of self-referential processing differentiate suicide ideators from recent attempters.

Methods

Adolescents with depression reporting current suicidal ideation and no lifetime suicide attempts (suicide ideators, n = 30) and past-year suicide attempts (recent attempters, n = 26) completed a self-referential encoding task while high-density electroencephalogram data were recorded. Behavioral analyses focused on negative processing bias (i.e., tendency to attribute negative information as being self-relevant) and drift rate (i.e., slope of reaction time and response type that corresponds to how quickly information is accumulated to make a decision about whether words are self-referent). Neurophysiological markers probing components reflecting early semantic monitoring (P2), engagement (early late positive potential), and effortful encoding (late late positive potential) also were tested.

Results

Adolescent suicide ideators and recent suicide attempters reported comparable symptom severity, suicide ideation, and mental disorders. Although there were no behavioral differences, compared with suicide ideators, suicide attempters exhibited greater P2 amplitudes for negative versus positive words, which may reflect enhanced attention and arousal in response to negative self-referential stimuli. There were no group differences for the early or late late positive potential.

Conclusions

Enhanced sensory arousal in response to negative stimuli-that is, attentional orienting to semantic, emotional, and self-relevant features-differentiates adolescent suicide attempters from ideators and thus may signal risk for suicidal behavior.

Exploring Affective Priming Effect of Emotion-Label Words and Emotion-Laden Words: An Event-Related Potential Study

In order to explore the affective priming effect of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words, the current study used unmasked (Experiment 1) and masked (Experiment 2) priming paradigm by including emotion-label words (e.g., sadness, anger) and emotion-laden words (e.g., death, gift) as primes and examined how the two kinds of words acted upon the processing of the target words (all emotion-laden words). Participants were instructed to decide the valence of target words, and their electroencephalogram was recorded at the same time. The behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) results showed that positive words produced a priming effect whereas negative words inhibited target word processing (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, the inhibition effect of negative emotion-label words on emotion word recognition was found in both behavioral and ERP results, suggesting that modulation of emotion word type on emotion word processing could be observed even in the masked priming paradigm. The two experiments further supported the necessity of defining emotion words under an emotion word type perspective. The implications of the findings are proffered. Specifically, a clear understanding of emotion-label words and emotion-laden words can improve the effectiveness of emotional communications in clinical settings. Theoretically, the emotion word type perspective awaits further explorations and is still at its infancy.

Mood Induction Differently Affects Early Neural Correlates of Evaluative Word Processing in L1 and L2

We investigate how mood inductions impact the neural processing of emotional adjectives in one's first language (L1) and a formally acquired second language (L2). Twenty-three student participants took part in an EEG experiment with two separate sessions. Happy or sad mood inductions were followed by series of individually presented positive, negative, or neutral adjectives in L1 (German) or L2 (English) and evaluative decisions had to be performed. Visual event-related potentials elicited during word processing were analyzed during N1 (125-200 ms), Early Posterior Negativities (EPN, 200-300 ms and 300-400 ms), N400 (350-450 ms), and the Late Positive Potential (LPP, 500-700 ms). Mood induction differentially impacted word processing already on the N1, with stronger left lateralization following happy than sad mood induction in L1, but not in L2. Moreover, regardless of language, early valence modulation was found following happy but not sad mood induction. Over occipital areas, happy mood elicited larger amplitudes of the mood-congruent positive words, whereas over temporal areas mood-incongruent negative words had higher amplitudes. In the EPN-windows, effects of mood and valence largely persisted, albeit with no difference between L1 and L2. N400 amplitude was larger for L2 than for L1. On the LPP, mood-incongruent adjectives elicited larger amplitudes than mood-congruent ones. Results reveal a remarkably early valence-general effect of mood induction on cortical processing, in line with previous reports of N1 as a first marker of contextual integration. Interestingly, this effect differed between L1 and L2. Moreover, mood-congruent effects were found in perceptual processing and mood-incongruent ERP amplification in higher-order evaluative stages.

Spanish affective normative data for 1,406 words rated by children and adolescents (SANDchild)

Most research on the relationship between emotion and language in children relies on the use of words whose affective properties have been assessed by adults. To overcome this limitation, in the current study we introduce SANDchild, the Spanish affective database for children. This dataset reports ratings in the valence and the arousal dimensions for a large corpus of 1406 Spanish words rated by a large sample of 1276 children and adolescents from four different age groups (7, 9, 11 and 13 years old). We observed high inter-rater reliabilities for both valence and arousal in the four age groups. However, some age differences were found. In this sense, ratings for both valence and arousal decreased with age. Furthermore, the youngest children consider more words to be positive than adolescents. We also found sex differences in valence scores since boys gave higher valence ratings than girls, while girls considered more words to be negative than boys. The norms provided in this database will allow us to further extend our knowledge on the acquisition, development and processing of emotional language from childhood to adolescence. The complete database can be downloaded from https://psico.fcep.urv.cat/exp/files/SANDchild.xlsx .

Could L2 Lexical Attrition Be Predicted in the Dimension of Valence, Arousal, and Dominance?

The current study attended to predict L2 lexical attrition by means of a Decision Tree model (DT model) in three emotional dimensions, that is, the valence dimension, the arousal dimension, and the dominance dimension. A sample of 188 participants whose L1 was Chinese and L2 was English performed a recognition test of 500 words for measuring the L2 lexical attrition. The findings explored by the Decision Tree model indicated that L2 lexical attrition could be predicted in all the three emotional dimensions in two aspects: (1) among the three emotional dimensions, the valence dimension was the most powerful in predicting L2 lexical attrition, followed successively by the dominance dimension and the arousal dimension; (2) most of the neutral words in the three emotional dimensions were predicted to be inferior to emotional words in L2 attrition. In addition, the modified Revised Hierarchical Model for emotion could be adopted to justify the modulation of the emotion–memory effects upon L2 lexical attrition.

Attentional Bias Deficits in Adolescent Suicide Attempters During an Emotional Stroop Task: An ERP Study

There is increasing evidence that, in adolescence, attentional bias plays a critical role in the vulnerability for suicidal behaviour. No studies to date have investigated the neurophysiological correlates of attentional bias in adolescent suicidality. The present study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate such processing in inpatient adolescents admitted for an acute suicide crisis using an Emotional Stroop Task (EST). In this task, participants are asked to name the colour of words varying in emotional valence (positive, negative, neutral, suicide-related). Suicidal individuals are hypothesised to be more preoccupied by the context of the suicide-related stimuli, which may interfere with their ability to perform the colour naming task. Seventeen adolescents with acute suicidal behaviour and 17 age- and gender-matched healthy controls performed an EST while ERPs were recorded. Suicide attempters showed increased reaction times to suicide-related words compared to other emotion categories, while the controls did not. The amplitude of the early posterior negativity (EPN) was not significantly different across groups or emotional valence. A double peak P3 (early-P3 and late-P3) was observed in both groups. Both the early- and late-P3 were significantly reduced in amplitude in the suicide attempter group compared to the control group, regardless of emotional valence. The late-P3 latency was also significantly delayed in the suicide attempters compared to controls. The behavioural findings support the attentional bias theories of suicide attempters and extend these findings to adolescents. Furthermore, large early- and late-P3 provide evidence that cognitive strategies employed by two groups did markedly differ.

Investigating the roles of age, sex, depression, and anxiety for valence and arousal ratings of words: a population-based study

BACKGROUND

The perception of the affective quality of stimuli with regard to valence and arousal has mostly been studied in laboratory experiments. Population-based research may complement such studies by accessing larger, older, better balanced, and more heterogeneous samples. Several characteristics, among them age, sex, depression, or anxiety, were found to be associated with affective quality perception. Here, we intended to transfer valence and arousal rating methods from experimental to population-based research. Our aim was to assess the feasibility of obtaining and determining the structure of valence and arousal ratings in the setting of the large observational BiDirect Study. Moreover, we explored the roles of age, sex, depression, and anxiety for valence and arousal ratings of words.

METHODS

704 participants provided valence and arousal ratings for 12 written nouns pre-categorized as unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant. Predictors of valence and arousal ratings (i.e. age, sex, depression, and anxiety) were analyzed for six outcomes that emerge by combining two affective dimensions with three words categories. Data were modeled with multiple linear regression. Relative predictor importance was quantified by model-explained variance decomposition.

RESULTS

Overall, average population-based ratings replicated those found in laboratory settings. The model did not reach statistical significance in the valence dimension. In the arousal dimension, the model explained 5.4% (unpleasant), 4.6% (neutral), and 3.5% (pleasant) of the variance. (Trend) effects of sex on arousal ratings were found in all word categories (unpleasant: increased arousal in women; neutral, pleasant: decreased arousal in women). Effects of age and anxiety (increased arousal) were restricted to the neutral words.

CONCLUSIONS

We report results of valence and arousal ratings of words in the setting of a large, observational, population-based study. Method transfer yielded acceptable data quality. The analyses demonstrated small effects of the selected predictors in the arousal dimension.

Tune in to the right frequency: Theta changes when distancing from emotions elicited by unpleasant images and words

Emotion regulation allows humans to successfully modulate their reactions to life events. Whether regulation strategies may alter brain oscillatory activity and how they are influenced by format and emotional dimensions is still under debate. We investigated oscillatory brain dynamics during the implementation of the strategy of Distancing and during the regulation of the emotions elicited by neutral and unpleasant pictures and, for the first time, words. When implementing the strategy, an early increase in theta band in posterior regions was observed (Effect of Strategy). We interpret this effect as a marker of emotion regulation, and we suggest an integrative framework of the role of theta on regulatory processes. When regulating the emotional impact elicited by stimuli, a decrease in the theta and beta bands in posterior regions for pictures, but not for words, was observed (Effect of Regulation). Behaviorally, the Effect of Regulation was evident for both pictures and words and more pronounced for Valence than for Arousal. These results contribute to better understand the neural and behavioral features of Distancing (both Effect of Strategy and of Regulation), and open up the possibility to clarify which strategy works better to modulate specific stimulus types and emotional dimensions.

Attention please: ERP evidence for prime-target resource competition in the neutral-target variant of affective priming

Using event-related potentials we examined the mechanisms that underlie the influence of affective context information on evaluative judgments in affective priming (AP). Participants (N = 44) evaluated a priori neutral target ideographs that were preceded by 800-ms negative, neutral or positive prime pictures. We observed a significant AP effect (APE), with more positive target ratings for targets following positive versus negative primes, with neutral primes lying in between. A greater individual APE was associated with increased attention for the primes, indicated by larger amplitudes of parietal positive slow wave (PSW) and more pronounced prime affect discrimination mirrored in affect-specific variations of parieto-occipital prime P1 and parietal prime P2, P300, and PSW amplitudes. This confirms previous theoretical and empirical work suggesting that the size of the APE critically depends on the extent of prime-elicited affective activation. Furthermore, a greater individual APE was related to generally reduced depth of target processing as mirrored in smaller overall amplitudes of attention-sensitive target-related P1, P2, P300, and PSW. In addition, in the total sample P2, P300, and PSW were smaller for targets following AP eliciting, attention-capturing emotional, as compared to neutral primes. Based on the observed coincidence of increased processing of affective versus neutral primes, and specifically reduced processing of those targets that followed affective primes, we propose prime-target resource competition as an additional, not yet described process contributing to AP in the neutral-target paradigm.

From Abstract Symbols to Emotional (In-)Sights: An Eye Tracking Study on the Effects of Emotional Vignettes and Pictures

Reading is known to be a highly complex, emotion-inducing process, usually involving connected and cohesive sequences of sentences and paragraphs. However, most empirical results, especially from studies using eye tracking, are either restricted to simple linguistic materials (e.g., isolated words, single sentences) or disregard valence-driven effects. The present study addressed the need for ecologically valid stimuli by examining the emotion potential of and reading behavior in emotional vignettes, often used in applied psychological contexts and discourse comprehension. To allow for a cross-domain comparison in the area of emotion induction, negatively and positively valenced vignettes were constructed based on pre-selected emotional pictures from the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS; Marchewka et al., 2014). We collected ratings of perceived valence and arousal for both material groups and recorded eye movements of 42 participants during reading and picture viewing. Linear mixed-effects models were performed to analyze effects of valence (i.e., valence category, valence rating) and stimulus domain (i.e., textual, pictorial) on ratings of perceived valence and arousal, eye movements in reading, and eye movements in picture viewing. Results supported the success of our experimental manipulation: emotionally positive stimuli (i.e., vignettes, pictures) were perceived more positively and less arousing than emotionally negative ones. The cross-domain comparison indicated that vignettes are able to induce stronger valence effects than their pictorial counterparts, no differences between vignettes and pictures regarding effects on perceived arousal were found. Analyses of eye movements in reading replicated results from experiments using isolated words and sentences: perceived positive text valence attracted shorter reading times than perceived negative valence at both the supralexical and lexical level. In line with previous findings, no emotion effects on eye movements in picture viewing were found. This is the first eye tracking study reporting superior valence effects for vignettes compared to pictures and valence-specific effects on eye movements in reading at the supralexical level.

Neural dynamics of sentiment processing during naturalistic sentence reading

When we read, our eyes move through the text in a series of fixations and high-velocity saccades to extract visual information. This process allows the brain to obtain meaning, e.g., about sentiment, or the emotional valence, expressed in the written text. How exactly the brain extracts the sentiment of single words during naturalistic reading is largely unknown. This is due to the challenges of naturalistic imaging, which has previously led researchers to employ highly controlled, timed word-by-word presentations of custom reading materials that lack ecological validity. Here, we aimed to assess the electrical neural correlates of word sentiment processing during naturalistic reading of English sentences. We used a publicly available dataset of simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG), eye-tracking recordings, and word-level semantic annotations from 7129 words in 400 sentences (Zurich Cognitive Language Processing Corpus; Hollenstein et al., 2018). We computed fixation-related potentials (FRPs), which are evoked electrical responses time-locked to the onset of fixations. A general linear mixed model analysis of FRPs cleaned from visual- and motor-evoked activity showed a topographical difference between the positive and negative sentiment condition in the 224-304 ​ms interval after fixation onset in left-central and right-posterior electrode clusters. An additional analysis that included word-, phrase-, and sentence-level sentiment predictors showed the same FRP differences for the word-level sentiment, but no additional FRP differences for phrase- and sentence-level sentiment. Furthermore, decoding analysis that classified word sentiment (positive or negative) from sentiment-matched 40-trial average FRPs showed a 0.60 average accuracy (95% confidence interval: [0.58, 0.61]). Control analyses ruled out that these results were based on differences in eye movements or linguistic features other than word sentiment. Our results extend previous research by showing that the emotional valence of lexico-semantic stimuli evoke a fast electrical neural response upon word fixation during naturalistic reading. These results provide an important step to identify the neural processes of lexico-semantic processing in ecologically valid conditions and can serve to improve computer algorithms for natural language processing.

Personality Traits and Emotional Word Recognition: An ERP Study

Recent research has investigated how personality trait differences influence the processing of emotion conveyed by pictures, but limited research has examined the emotion conveyed by words. The present study investigated whether extraversion (extroverts vs. introverts) and neuroticism (high neurotics vs. low neurotics) influence the processing of positive, neutral, and negative words that were matched for arousal. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from healthy participants while they performed a lexical decision task. We found that personality traits influenced emotional word recognition at N400 (300-450 ms) and LPC (450-800 ms). At the earlier (N400) stage, the more extraverted and neurotic a participant was, the more reduced the N400s for the positive words relative to neutral words were. This suggests that the extroverts and high neurotics (i.e., high impulsivity) identified positive content in words during lexical feature retrieval, which facilitated such retrieval. At the later (LPC) stage, both the introverts and high neurotics (i.e., high anxiety) showed greater LPCs to negative than neutral words, indicating their sustained attention and elaborative processing of negative information. These results suggest that extraversion and neuroticism collectively influence different stages of emotional word recognition in a way that is consistent with Gray's biopsychological theory of personality.