Emotional task management: neural correlates of switching between affective and non-affective task-sets

High autistic traits linked with reduced performance on affective task switching: An ERP study

Few studies have investigated affective flexibility in individuals with high autistic traits. In the present study, we employed affective task-switching paradigm combined with event related potential (ERP) technology to explore affective flexibility in individuals with high autistic traits. Participants were instructed to switch between identifying the gender (gender task) and emotion (emotion task) of presented faces. Two groups of participants were recruited based on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores: a High Autistic Group (HAG) and a Low Autistic Group (LAG). The results confirmed that the HAG exhibited greater behavioral emotion switch costs and increased N2 and decreased P3 components when switching to the emotion task. Additionally, we identified an affective asymmetric switch cost in the HAG, where the switch cost for the emotion task was larger than for the gender task at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels. In contrast, a symmetrical switch cost was observed in the LAG. These findings indicate that the HAG experiences difficulties with affective flexibility, particularly in tasks involving emotional processing. The patterns of affective asymmetric switch costs observed in both groups differed from previous results in autistic children and the general population, suggesting that the relative dominance of gender and emotion tasks may vary between the two groups. We propose that the dominance of emotion tasks declines as autistic traits increase.

To be or not to be flexible: A hierarchical model of affective flexibility in typical development and internalizing problems

Affective flexibility is defined as a complex executive function which enables individuals to successfully alternate between distinct emotional and non-emotional features of a given situation in order to attain a specific goal. A large body of research has focused exclusively on flexibility in a non-emotional context, although most of our interactions with our environment are emotionally satiated. Our main aim was to propose a hierarchical framework to describe this construct from a macro-level perspective to a more nuanced and micro-level perspective, including three different levels of affective flexibility: elementary, shifting, and generative. Next, we employed this hierarchical framework to examine the role played by affective flexibility in typical development and different forms of developmental psychopathology. Lastly, we discuss how this knowledge could inform future prevention and intervention programs aimed at reducing cognitive vulnerability to developmental psychopathology.

Neural correlates of affective task switching and asymmetric affective task switching costs

The control of emotions is of potentially great clinical relevance. Accordingly, there has been increasing interest in understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying the ability to switch efficiently between the processing of affective and non-affective information. Reports of asymmetrically increased switch costs when switching toward the more salient emotion task indicate specific demands in the flexible control of emotion. The neural mechanisms underlying affective task switching, however, are so far not fully understood. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (N = 57), we observed that affective task switching was accompanied by increased activity in domain-general fronto-parietal control systems. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the posterior medial frontal and anterolateral prefrontal cortex was directly related to affective switch costs, indicating that these regions play a particular role in individual differences in (affective) task-switching ability. Asymmetric switch costs were associated with increased activity in the right inferior frontal and dorsal anterior medial prefrontal cortex, two brain regions critical for response inhibition. This suggests that asymmetric switch costs might-to a great extent-reflect higher demands on inhibitory control of the dominant emotion task. These results contribute to a refined understanding of brain systems for the flexible control of emotions and thereby identify valuable target systems for future clinical research.

Individual differences in resilience to stress are associated with affective flexibility

Cognitive flexibility is frequently linked to resilience because of its important contribution to stress regulation. In this context, particularly affective flexibility, defined as the ability to flexibly attend and disengage from affective information, may play a significant role. In the present study, the relationship of cognitive and affective flexibility and resilience was examined in 100 healthy participants. Resilience was measured with three self-report questionnaires, two defining resilience as a personality trait and one focusing on resilience as an outcome in the sense of stress coping abilities. Cognitive and affective flexibility were assessed in two experimental task switching paradigms with non-affective and affective materials and tasks, respectively. The cognitive flexibility paradigm additionally included measures of cognitive stability and spontaneous switching in ambiguous situations. In the affective flexibility paradigm, we explicitly considered the affective valence of the stimuli. Response time switch costs in the affective flexibility paradigm were significantly correlated to all three measures of resilience. The correlation was not specific for particular valences of the stimuli before or during switching. For cognitive (non-affective) flexibility, a significant correlation of response time switch costs was found with only one resilience measure. A regression analysis including both affective and cognitive switch costs as predictors of resilience indicated that only affective, but not cognitive switch costs, explained unique variance components. Furthermore, the experimental measures of cognitive stability and the rate of spontaneous switching in ambiguous situations did not correlate with resilience scores. These findings suggest that specifically the efficiency of flexibly switching between affective and non-affective information is related to resilience.

The Effects of Cognitive-Affective Switching With Unpredictable Cues in Adults and Adolescents and Their Relation to "Cool" Executive Functioning and Emotion Regulation

The impact of emotion on executive functioning is gaining interest. It has led to the differentiation of "cool" Executive Functioning (EF) processes, such as cognitive flexibility, and "hot" EF processes, such as affective flexibility. But how does affective flexibility, the ability to switch between cognitive and affective information, vary as a function of age and sex? How does this construct relate to "cool" executive functioning and cognitive-emotion regulation processes? In this study, 266 participants, including 91 adolescents (M = 16.08, SD = 1.42 years old) and 175 adults (M = 25.69, SD = 2.17 years old), completed a cognitive-affective switching task with specific (as opposed to general) unpredictable switches, as well as measures of inhibition, attention, and cognitive-emotion coping strategies. We expected cognitive to affective switching to be more costly than affective to cognitive switching in females versus males, as well as higher switch costs in adolescents. Using linear mixed modelling, we analysed the effect of age, sex, and types of switching on reaction time. Results show that adolescents are slower switchers than adults, and demonstrate that females, although faster switchers than males, are slower when switching from cognitive to affective content than when they are switching from affective to cognitive content. Multiple regression analyses revealed age-specific associations between cognitive-affective switching and inhibition. These results converge with reported developmental and gender specificities in EF and emotion processing, respectively. Additionally, affective flexibility could relate to differences in vigilance and inhibition.

Cognitive, Affective, and Feedback-Based Flexibility - Disentangling Shared and Different Aspects of Three Facets of Psychological Flexibility

Cognitive flexibility - the ability to adjust one ´s behavior to changing environmental demands - is crucial for controlled behavior. However, the term 'cognitive flexibility' is used heterogeneously, and associations between cognitive flexibility and other facets of flexible behavior have only rarely been studied systematically. To resolve some of these conceptual uncertainties, we directly compared cognitive flexibility (cue-instructed switching between two affectively neutral tasks), affective flexibility (switching between a neutral and an affective task using emotional stimuli), and feedback-based flexibility (non-cued, feedback-dependent switching between two neutral tasks). Three experimental paradigms were established that share as many procedural features (in terms of stimuli and/or task rules) as possible and administered in a pre-registered study plan (N = 100). Correlation analyses revealed significant associations between the efficiency of cognitive and affective task switching (response time switch costs). Feedback-based flexibility (measured as mean number of errors after rule reversals) did not correlate with task switching efficiency in the other paradigms, but selectively with the effectiveness of affective switching (error rate costs when switching from neutral to emotion task). While preregistered confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided no clear evidence for a shared factor underlying the efficiency of switching in all three domains of flexibility, an exploratory CFA suggested commonalities regarding switching effectiveness (accuracy-based switch costs). We propose shared mechanisms controlling the efficiency of cue-dependent task switching across domains, while the relationship to feedback-based flexibility may depend on mechanisms controlling switching effectiveness. Our results call for a more stringent conceptual differentiation between different variants of psychological flexibility.

Delayed reconfiguration of a non-emotional task set through reactivation of an emotional task set in task switching: an ageing study

In our everyday life, we frequently switch between different tasks, a faculty that changes with age. However, it is still not understood how emotion impacts on age-related changes in task switching. Using faces with emotional and neutral expressions, Experiment 1 investigated younger (n = 29; 18-38 years old) and older adults' (n = 32; 61-80 years old) ability to switch between an emotional and a non-emotional task (i.e. responding to the face's expression vs. age). In Experiment 2, younger and older adults also viewed emotional and neutral faces, but switched between two non-emotional tasks (i.e. responding to the face's age vs. gender). Data from Experiment 1 demonstrated that switching from an emotional to a non-emotional task was slower when the expression of the new face was emotional rather than neutral. This impairment was observed in both age groups. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed that neither younger nor older adults were affected by block-wise irrelevant emotion when switching between two non-emotional tasks. Overall, the findings suggest that task-irrelevant emotion can impair task switching through reactivation of the competing emotional task set. They also suggest that this effect and the ability to shield task-switching performance from block-wise irrelevant emotion are preserved in ageing.

Predicting clinical outcome from reward circuitry function and white matter structure in behaviorally and emotionally dysregulated youth

Behavioral and emotional dysregulation in childhood may be understood as prodromal to adult psychopathology. Additionally, there is a critical need to identify biomarkers reflecting underlying neuropathological processes that predict clinical/behavioral outcomes in youth. We aimed to identify such biomarkers in youth with behavioral and emotional dysregulation in the Longitudinal Assessment of Manic Symptoms (LAMS) study. We examined neuroimaging measures of function and white matter in the whole brain using 80 youth aged 14.0 (s.d.=2.0) from three clinical sites. Linear regression using the LASSO (Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator) method for variable selection was used to predict severity of future behavioral and emotional dysregulation measured by the Parent General Behavior Inventory-10 Item Mania Scale (PGBI-10M)) at a mean of 14.2 months follow-up after neuroimaging assessment. Neuroimaging measures, together with near-scan PGBI-10M, a score of manic behaviors, depressive behaviors and sex, explained 28% of the variance in follow-up PGBI-10M. Neuroimaging measures alone, after accounting for other identified predictors, explained ~1/3 of the explained variance, in follow-up PGBI-10M. Specifically, greater bilateral cingulum length predicted lower PGBI-10M at follow-up. Greater functional connectivity in parietal-subcortical reward circuitry predicted greater PGBI-10M at follow-up. For the first time, data suggest that multimodal neuroimaging measures of underlying neuropathologic processes account for over a third of the explained variance in clinical outcome in a large sample of behaviorally and emotionally dysregulated youth. This may be an important first step toward identifying neurobiological measures with the potential to act as novel targets for early detection and future therapeutic interventions.