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Mirabella G, Grassi M, Bernardis P. The role of task relevance in saccadic responses to facial expressions. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2024. [PMID: 39316839 DOI: 10.1111/nyas.15221] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/26/2024]
Abstract
Recent research on healthy individuals suggests that the valence of emotional stimuli influences behavioral reactions only when relevant to ongoing tasks, as they impact reaching arm movements and gait only when the emotional content cued the responses. However, it has been suggested that emotional expressions elicit automatic gaze shifting, indicating that oculomotor behavior might differ from that of the upper and lower limbs. To investigate, 40 participants underwent two Go/No-go tasks, an emotion discrimination task (EDT) and a gender discrimination task (GDT). In the EDT, participants had to perform a saccade to a peripheral target upon the presentation of angry or happy faces and refrain from moving with neutral ones. In the GDT, the same images were shown, but participants responded based on the posers' gender. Participants displayed two behavioral strategies: a single saccade to the target (92.7%) or two saccades (7.3%), with the first directed at a task-salient feature, that is, the mouth in the EDT and the nose-eyes regions in the GDT. In both cases, the valence of facial expression impacted the saccades only when relevant to the response. Such evidence indicates the same principles govern the interplay between emotional stimuli and motor reactions despite the effectors employed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giovanni Mirabella
- Department of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy
- IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, Italy
| | - Michele Grassi
- Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
| | - Paolo Bernardis
- Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
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2
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Xue X, Pourtois G. Modulatory effects of goal relevance on emotional attention reveal that fear has a distinct value. Cogn Emot 2024:1-15. [PMID: 39291972 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2405014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/06/2024] [Revised: 08/16/2024] [Accepted: 09/11/2024] [Indexed: 09/19/2024]
Abstract
Threat-related stimuli can capture attention. However, it remains debated whether this capture is automatic or not. To address this question, we compared attentional biases to emotional faces using a dot-probe task (DPT) where emotion was never goal-relevant (Experiment 1) or made directly task-relevant by means of induction trials (Experiments 2-3). Moreover, the contingency between the DPT and induction trials was either partial (Experiment 2) or full (Experiment 3). Eye-tracking was used to ascertain that the emotional cue and the subsequent target were processed with peripheral vision. Experiments 1 and 2 both showed that negative faces captured attention, with faster target processing when it appeared on the same side as the preceding fearful face (i.e. fear-valid trials) compared to the opposite side where the neutral face was shown (i.e. fear-invalid trials), but also when it appeared on the side of the preceding neutral face (i.e. happy-invalid trials) compared to the happy face (i.e. happy-valid trials). Importantly, this preferential spatial orienting to negative emotion was not observed in Experiment 3, where the goal relevance of emotion was high. However, in that experiment, fearful faces produced a specific attentional bias during the DPT, which was mostly driven by the induction trials themselves.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaojuan Xue
- Cognitive & Affective Psychophysiology Laboratory, Department of Experimental Clinical & Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Gilles Pourtois
- Cognitive & Affective Psychophysiology Laboratory, Department of Experimental Clinical & Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
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3
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Pasqualette L, Kulke L. Differences between overt, covert and natural attention shifts to emotional faces. Neuroscience 2024; 559:283-292. [PMID: 39265801 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.09.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/19/2024] [Revised: 09/03/2024] [Accepted: 09/03/2024] [Indexed: 09/14/2024]
Abstract
In daily life, individuals pay attention to emotional facial expressions and dynamically choose how to shift their attention, i.e. either overtly (with eye-movements) or covertly (without eye-movements). However, research on attention to emotional faces has mostly been conducted in controlled laboratory settings, in which people were instructed where to look. The current preregistered study co-registered EEG and eye-tracking to investigate differences in emotion-driven attention between instructed and uninstructed natural attention shifts in 48 adults. While a central stimulus was presented to the participant, a face appeared in the periphery, showing either a happy, neutral or an angry expression. In three counterbalanced blocks participants were instructed to either move their eyes overtly to the peripheral face, keep fixating the center and therefore covertly shift their attention, or freely look wherever they would like to look. We found that emotional content had stronger effects on the amplitude of the Early Posterior Negativity when participants shifted attention naturally, and that natural shifts of attention differed from instructed shifts in both saccade behavior and neural mechanisms. In summary, our results emphasize the importance of investigating modulation of attention using paradigms that allow participants to allocate their attention naturally.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Pasqualette
- Developmental Psychology with Educational Psychology, Bremen University, Bremen, Germany; Neurocognitive Developmental Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Louisa Kulke
- Neurocognitive Developmental Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.
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4
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Oldrati V, Bardoni A, Poggi G, Urgesi C. Development of implicit and explicit attentional modulation of the processing of social cues conveyed by faces and bodies in children and adolescents. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1320923. [PMID: 38222848 PMCID: PMC10784122 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1320923] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/16/2023] [Accepted: 12/11/2023] [Indexed: 01/16/2024] Open
Abstract
Emotions and sex of other people shape the way we interact in social environments. The influence of these dimensions on cognitive processing is recognized as a highly conditional phenomenon. While much of researches on the topic focused on adults, less evidence is available for the pediatric population. This study aimed at examining the development of the modulation of attention control on emotion and sex processing using facial and body expressions in children and adolescents (8–16 years old). In Experiment 1a, participants performed a Flanker task (probing space-based attention) in which they had to indicate either the emotion (happy/fearful) or the sex of the target stimulus while ignoring the distracting stimuli at the side. We found evidence for intrusion of the sex, but not emotion, of the stimuli during both sex and emotion recognition tasks, thus both at an explicit (i.e., task relevant) and implicit (i.e., task irrelevant) level. A control experiment consisting of an emotional Flanker task confirmed that, in contrast with previous findings in adults, emotion did not modulate attention control in children and adolescents even when task relevant (Experiment 1b). In Experiment 2 participants performed a same-or-different judgment task (probing feature-based attention) in which they indicated whether the central stimulus matched the lateral ones for emotion or sex. Results showed that emotional features exerted an implicit influence during sex judgements; likewise, sex features intruded on the processing of both faces and bodies during emotion judgments. Finally, Experiment 3 explored the development of the explicit attention modulation exerted by the sex dimension on the processing of faces and bodies. To this aim, participants performed a Flanker task in which they were asked to recognize the sex of faces and bodies. The results indicated that, while younger participants showed a task-relevant influence of sexual features when processing faces, older participants showed such influence when processing bodies. These findings point to a greater attentional modulation exerted by sex, as compared to emotion, during social processing in children and adolescents and suggest a developmental trend of the saliency of facial and bodily cues for the perception of others’ sex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Viola Oldrati
- Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy
| | | | - Geraldina Poggi
- Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy
| | - Cosimo Urgesi
- Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society, University of Udine, Udine, Italy
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5
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Wirth BE, Wentura D. Social processing modulates the initial allocation of attention towards angry faces: evidence from the N2pc component. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2023; 18:nsad070. [PMID: 37971294 PMCID: PMC10689156 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsad070] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2023] [Revised: 10/09/2023] [Accepted: 11/14/2023] [Indexed: 11/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous research has shown that attentional bias towards angry faces is moderated by the activation of a social processing mode. More specifically, reliable cueing effects for angry face cues in the dot-probe task only occurred when participants performed a task that required social processing of the target stimuli. However, cueing effects are a rather distal measure of covert shifts in spatial attention. Thus, it remains unclear whether the social processing mode modulates initial allocation of attention to or attentional disengagement from angry faces. In the present study, we used the N2pc, an event-related potential component, as an index of attentional shifts towards angry faces. Participants performed a dot-probe task with two different target conditions while the electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. In the social target condition, target stimuli were socially meaningful (schematic faces), and in the non-social target condition, they were meaningless (scrambled schematic faces). The amplitude of the N2pc component elicited by angry face cues was significantly larger in the social target condition than in the non-social target condition. This pattern also occurred for behavioural cueing effects. These results suggest that the activation of a social processing mode due to current task demands affects the initial allocation of attention towards angry faces.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benedikt Emanuel Wirth
- Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Campus A2 4, Saarbrücken 66123, Germany
- Cognitive Assistants Department, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Campus D3 1, Saarbrücken 66123, Germany
| | - Dirk Wentura
- Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Campus A2 4, Saarbrücken 66123, Germany
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6
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Maxwell JW, Sanchez DN, Ruthruff E. Infrequent facial expressions of emotion do not bias attention. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2023; 87:2449-2459. [PMID: 37258662 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-023-01844-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/13/2022] [Accepted: 05/22/2023] [Indexed: 06/02/2023]
Abstract
Despite the obvious importance of facial expressions of emotion, most studies have found that they do not bias attention. A critical limitation, however, is that these studies generally present face distractors on all trials of the experiment. For other kinds of emotional stimuli, such as emotional scenes, infrequently presented stimuli elicit greater attentional bias than frequently presented stimuli, perhaps due to suppression or habituation. The goal of the current study then was to test whether such modulation of attentional bias by distractor frequency generalizes to facial expressions of emotion. In Experiment 1, both angry and happy faces were unable to bias attention, despite being infrequently presented. Even when the location of these face cues were more unpredictable-presented in one of two possible locations-still no attentional bias was observed (Experiment 2). Moreover, there was no bottom-up influence for angry and happy faces shown under high or low perceptual load (Experiment 3). We conclude that task-irrelevant posed facial expressions of emotion cannot bias attention even when presented infrequently.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joshua W Maxwell
- Department of Psychology, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA.
| | - Danielle N Sanchez
- Department of Psychology, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA
| | - Eric Ruthruff
- Department of Psychology, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA
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7
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Mirajkar S, Waring JD. Aging and task design shape the relationship between response time variability and emotional response inhibition. Cogn Emot 2023; 37:777-794. [PMID: 37165853 PMCID: PMC10330716 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2023.2208860] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2022] [Revised: 04/18/2023] [Accepted: 04/25/2023] [Indexed: 05/12/2023]
Abstract
Intra-individual variability (IIV) refers to within-person variability in behavioural task responses. Several factors can influence IIV, including aging and cognitive demands. The present study investigated effects of aging on IIV of response times during executive functioning tasks. Known age-related differences in cognitive control and emotion processing motivated evaluating how varying the design of emotional response inhibition tasks would influence IIV in older and younger adults. We also tested whether IIV predicted inhibitory control across task designs and age groups. Older and younger adults (N = 237) completed one of three versions of a stop-signal task, which all displayed happy, fearful, or neutral faces in Stop trials. An independent group of older and younger adults (N = 80) completed a go/no-go task also employing happy, fearful and neutral faces. Results showed older adults had more consistent responses (lower IIV) than younger adults in the stop-signal task, but not the go/no-go task. Lower IIV predicted more efficient emotional response inhibition for fear faces in the stop-signal task, but only when attention to emotion was task-relevant. Collectively, this study clarifies effects of aging and task design on IIV and illustrates how task design impacts the relationship between IIV and emotional response inhibition in younger and older adults.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Jill D. Waring
- Department of Psychology, Saint Louis University, St Louis, MO, USA
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8
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Wang Y, Tang Z, Zhang X, Yang L. Auditory and cross-modal attentional bias toward positive natural sounds: Behavioral and ERP evidence. Front Hum Neurosci 2022; 16:949655. [PMID: 35967006 PMCID: PMC9372282 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.949655] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/21/2022] [Accepted: 06/28/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Recently, researchers have expanded the investigation into attentional biases toward positive stimuli; however, few studies have examined attentional biases toward positive auditory information. In three experiments, the present study employed an emotional spatial cueing task using emotional sounds as cues and auditory stimuli (Experiment 1) or visual stimuli (Experiment 2 and Experiment 3) as targets to explore whether auditory or visual spatial attention could be modulated by positive auditory cues. Experiment 3 also examined the temporal dynamics of cross-modal auditory bias toward positive natural sounds using event-related potentials (ERPs). The behavioral results of the three experiments consistently demonstrated that response times to targets were faster after positive auditory cues than they were after neutral auditory cues in the valid condition, indicating that healthy participants showed a selective auditory attentional bias (Experiment 1) and cross-modal attentional bias (Experiment 2 and Experiment 3) toward positive natural sounds. The results of Experiment 3 showed that N1 amplitudes were more negative after positive sounds than they were after neutral sounds, which further provided electrophysiological evidence that positive auditory information enhances attention at early stages in healthy adults. The results of the experiments performed in the present study suggest that humans exhibit an attentional bias toward positive natural sounds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yanmei Wang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
| | - Zhenwei Tang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Xiaoxuan Zhang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, Shanghai, China
| | - Libing Yang
- Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Psychological Crisis Intervention, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
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9
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Now you see it, now you don’t: Relevance of threat enhances social anxiety-linked attentional bias to angry faces, but relevance of neutral information attenuates it. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0271752. [PMID: 35901035 PMCID: PMC9333259 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271752] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2022] [Accepted: 07/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Temporary goals modulate attention to threat. We examined whether attentional bias to angry faces differs depending on whether a temporary background goal is neutral, or threat related, whilst also measuring social anxiety. Participants performed a dot probe task combined with a separate task that induced a temporary goal. Depending on the phase in this goal task, the goal made angry faces or neutral stimuli (i.e., houses) relevant. The dot probe task measured attention to combinations of angry faces, neutral but goal-relevant stimuli (i.e., houses), and neutral control stimuli. Attention was allocated to angry faces when an angry goal was active. This was more pronounced for people scoring high on social phobia. The neutral goal attenuated attention to angry faces and effects of social phobia were no longer apparent. These findings suggest that individual differences in social anxiety interact with current and temporary goals to affect attentional processes.
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10
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The role of temporal attention in the processing of facial expression: Evidence from attentional blink paradigm. CURRENT PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s12144-021-02500-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
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11
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Dou H, Liang L, Ma J, Lu J, Zhang W, Li Y. Irrelevant task suppresses the N170 of automatic attention allocation to fearful faces. Sci Rep 2021; 11:11754. [PMID: 34083660 PMCID: PMC8175742 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-91237-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/03/2020] [Accepted: 05/21/2021] [Indexed: 02/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Recent researches have provided evidence that stimulus-driven attentional bias for threats can be modulated by top-down goals. However, it is highlight essential to indicate whether and to what extent the top-down goals can affect the early stage of attention processing and its early neural mechanism. In this study, we collected electroencephalographic data from 28 healthy volunteers with a modified spatial cueing task. The results revealed that in the irrelevant task, there was no significant difference between the reaction time (RT) of the fearful and neutral faces. In the relevant task, we found that RT of fearful faces was faster than that of neutral faces in the valid cue condition, whereas the RT of fearful faces was slower than that of neutral faces in the invalid cue condition. The N170 component in our study showed a similar result compared with RT. Specifically, we noted that in the relevant task, fearful faces in the cue position of the target evoked a larger N170 amplitude than neutral faces, whereas this effect was suppressed in the irrelevant task. These results suggest that the irrelevant task may inhibit the early attention allocation to the fearful faces. Furthermore, the top-down goals can modulate the early attentional bias for threatening facial expressions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haoran Dou
- grid.412600.10000 0000 9479 9538Institute for Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, 610068 China ,grid.9681.60000 0001 1013 7965Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, 40014 Finland
| | - Limei Liang
- grid.440818.10000 0000 8664 1765Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, 116029 China
| | - Jie Ma
- grid.263785.d0000 0004 0368 7397School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631 Guangdong China
| | - Jiachen Lu
- grid.263785.d0000 0004 0368 7397School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631 Guangdong China
| | - Wenhai Zhang
- grid.412101.70000 0001 0377 7868College of Education Science, Hengyang Normal University, Hengyang, 421002 China
| | - Yang Li
- grid.413856.d0000 0004 1799 3643School of Psychology, Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, 610500 China
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Wise S, Huang-Pollock C, Pérez-Edgar K. Implementation of the diffusion model on dot-probe task performance in children with behavioral inhibition. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2021; 86:831-843. [PMID: 34047824 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-021-01532-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/07/2021] [Accepted: 05/12/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Attentional bias to threat, the process of preferentially attending to potentially threatening environmental stimuli over neutral stimuli, is positively associated with behavioral inhibition (BI) and trait anxiety. However, the most used measure of attentional bias to threat, the dot-probe task, has been criticized for demonstrating poor reliability. The present study aimed to assess whether utilizing a sequential sampling model to describe performance could detect adequate test-retest reliability for the dot-probe task, demonstrate stronger cueing effects, and improve the association with neural signals of early attention. One hundred and twenty children aged 9-12 years completed the dot-probe task twice. During the second administration, event-related potentials (ERPs) were obtained as time-sensitive neural markers of attention. BI was not associated with traditional or diffusion model measures of performance. Traditional and diffusion model measures of performance were also not associated with N1, P2, or N2 ERP amplitude. There were main effects of Visit, in which RTs were faster and standard deviation of RT smaller during the second administration due to an increase in drift rate and a decrease in non-decision time. The traditional RT bias score (r = 0.06) and bias scores formed via diffusion model parameters (all r's < 0.40) all demonstrated poor reliability. Results confirm recommendations to move away from using the dot-probe task as the primary or sole index of attentional bias.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shane Wise
- Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, USA.
| | | | - Koraly Pérez-Edgar
- Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, USA
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13
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Matias J, Quinton JC, Colomb M, Izaute M, Silvert L. Reward history modulates perceptual load effects. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2021; 212:103217. [PMID: 33310345 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103217] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2020] [Revised: 09/07/2020] [Accepted: 11/12/2020] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The reward history of a stimulus can yield strong attentional selection biases. Indeed, attentional capture can be triggered by previously rewarded items which are neither salient nor relevant for the ongoing task, even when selection is clearly counter-productive to actually obtain the reward outcome. Therefore, value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) has been argued to be an automatic attention mechanism. Our study aimed at putting the VDAC automaticity directly to the test. For this purpose, the Load Theory offers a comprehensive framework where distraction is observed under low but not high perceptual load condition. Nevertheless, if VDAC is indeed automatic, distraction by reward-stimuli should be observed on both perceptual load conditions. We used a feature vs. conjunction discrimination of a go/no-go cue to manipulate perceptual load. As expected, our results revealed that perceptual load decreased interference produced by low-reward distractor. However, this effect was not significant for high-reward distractor, giving support to VDAC automaticity. We discussed our results in light of the Load Theory literature and we strongly encourage to consider reward history along with perceptual load in determining attentional capture.
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14
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Kuehl LK, Deuter CE, Nowacki J, Ueberrueck L, Wingenfeld K, Otte C. Attentional bias in individuals with depression and adverse childhood experiences: influence of the noradrenergic system? Psychopharmacology (Berl) 2021; 238:3519-3531. [PMID: 34605959 PMCID: PMC8629860 DOI: 10.1007/s00213-021-05969-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2021] [Accepted: 08/19/2021] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
RATIONALE Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a severe mental disorder with affective, cognitive, and somatic symptoms. Mood congruent cognitive biases, including a negative attentional bias, are important for development, maintenance, and recurrence of depressive symptoms. MDD is associated with maladaptive changes in the biological stress systems such as dysregulations of central noradrenergic alpha2-receptors in the locus coeruleus-noradrenergic system, which can affect cognitive processes including attention. Patients with adverse childhood experiences (ACE), representing severe stress experiences in early life, might be particularly affected. OBJECTIVES With an experimental design, we aimed to gain further knowledge about the role of noradrenergic activity for attentional bias in MDD patients with and without ACE. METHODS We tested the effect of increased noradrenergic activity induced by the alpha2-receptor blocker yohimbine on attentional bias in a placebo-controlled repeated measures design. Four groups were included as follows: MDD patients with and without ACE, and healthy participants with and without ACE (total N = 128, all without antidepressant medication). RESULTS A significant effect of MDD on attentional bias scores of sad face pictures (p = .037) indicated a facilitated attentional processing of sad face pictures in MDD patients (compared to non-MDD individuals). However, we found no such effect of ACE. For attentional bias of happy face pictures, we found no significant effects of MDD and ACE. Even though a higher increase of blood pressure and salivary alpha-amylase following yohimbine compared to placebo indicated successful noradrenergic stimulation, we found no significant effects of yohimbine on attentional bias of happy or sad face pictures. CONCLUSIONS Our results are consistent with the hypothesis of a negative attentional bias in MDD patients. However, as we found no effect of ACE or yohimbine, further research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which ACE increases the risk of MDD and to understand the biological basis of the MDD-related negative attentional bias.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linn K Kuehl
- Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany.
- Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, MSB Medical School Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
| | - Christian E Deuter
- Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany
| | - Jan Nowacki
- Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lisa Ueberrueck
- Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany
| | - Katja Wingenfeld
- Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany
| | - Christian Otte
- Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany
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15
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Williams SE, Lenze EJ, Waring JD. Positive information facilitates response inhibition in older adults only when emotion is task-relevant. Cogn Emot 2020; 34:1632-1645. [PMID: 32677540 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2020.1793303] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
Emotional information is integral to everyday life and impacts a variety of cognitive abilities including response inhibition, a critical skill for maintaining appropriate and flexible behaviour. However, reported effects of emotion on response inhibition are inconsistent in younger adults, and very limited in older adults. Effects of aging are especially relevant because emotion regulation improves with aging despite declining inhibitory control over neutral information. Across three studies, we assessed the impact of emotional facial expressions on response inhibition in younger and older adults while manipulating attention to task stimuli. Emotional faces (versus neutral faces) altered response inhibition only when task instructions required explicit attention to emotional attributes of the faces. When directly comparing fear faces to happy faces, both age groups had better response inhibition to happy faces. Age further influenced differences across conditions, in that happy faces enhanced response inhibition relative to neutral faces in older adults but not younger adults. Thus, emotional response inhibition for task-relevant (but not task-irrelevant) positive information is enhanced in late life compared to early adulthood. The present work extends the nascent literature on emotional response inhibition in aging, and proffers a framework to reconcile the mixed literature on this topic in younger adults.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Eric J Lenze
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Jill D Waring
- Department of Psychology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA
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Oldrati V, Bardoni A, Poggi G, Urgesi C. Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms. Front Psychol 2020; 10:2971. [PMID: 32038372 PMCID: PMC6985560 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02971] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/17/2019] [Accepted: 12/16/2019] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Many existing findings indicate that processing of emotional information is pre-attentive, largely immune from attentional control. Nevertheless, inconsistent evidence on the interference of emotional cues on cognitive processing suggests that this influence may be a highly conditional phenomenon. The aim of the present study was twofold: (1) to examine the modulation of attention control on emotion processing using facial expressions (2) explore the very same effect for emotional body expressions. In Experiment 1, participants performed a Flanker task in which they had to indicate either the emotion (happy/fearful) or the gender of the target stimulus while ignoring the distracting stimuli at the side. We found evidence for intrusion of the emotional dimension of a stimulus in both the emotion and gender discrimination performance, thus when either task-relevant or task-irrelevant. To further explore the influence of attention control mechanisms, in Experiment 2 participants performed a same-or-different judgment task in which they were asked to pay attention to both the central and lateral stimuli and indicated whether the central stimulus matched the lateral for emotion or gender. Results showed that emotional features exerted an influence at an implicit level (i.e., during gender judgments) for bodies only. Gender features did not affect emotional processing in either experiments. To rule out the possibility that this effect was driven by postural rather than emotional features of fearful vs. happy stimuli, a control experiment was conducted. In Experiment 3, bodies with an opening/up-ward or closing/down-ward posture but with no emotional valence were presented. Results revealed that the body posture did not influence gender discrimination. Findings suggest that the emotional valence of a face or body stimulus can overpass attention filtering mechanisms, independently from the level of attentional modulation (Experiment 1). However, broadening the focus of attention to include the lateral stimuli led emotional information to intrude on the main task, exerting an implicit, bottom–up influence on gender processing, only when conveyed by bodies (Experiment 2). Results point to different mechanisms for the implicit processing of face and body emotional expressions, with the latter likely having role on action preparation processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Viola Oldrati
- Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy
- *Correspondence: Viola Oldrati,
| | | | - Geraldina Poggi
- Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy
| | - Cosimo Urgesi
- Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society, University of Udine, Udine, Italy
- Scientific Institute, IRCCS E. Medea, San Vito al Tagliamento, Pordenone, Italy
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