Effects of mood manipulation and anxiety on performance of an emotional Stroop task

Time to Intervene: A Continuous-Time Approach to Network Analysis and Centrality

Network analysis of ESM data has become popular in clinical psychology. In this approach, discrete-time (DT) vector auto-regressive (VAR) models define the network structure with centrality measures used to identify intervention targets. However, VAR models suffer from time-interval dependency. Continuous-time (CT) models have been suggested as an alternative but require a conceptual shift, implying that DT-VAR parameters reflect total rather than direct effects. In this paper, we propose and illustrate a CT network approach using CT-VAR models. We define a new network representation and develop centrality measures which inform intervention targeting. This methodology is illustrated with an ESM dataset.

Cannabis containing equivalent concentrations of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) induces less state anxiety than THC-dominant cannabis

RATIONALE

Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), an active component of cannabis, can cause anxiety in some users during intoxication. Cannabidiol (CBD), another constituent of cannabis, has anxiolytic properties suggesting that cannabis products containing CBD in addition to THC may produce less anxiety than THC-only products. Findings to date around this issue have been inconclusive and could conceivably depend on moderating factors such as baseline anxiety levels in users.

OBJECTIVE

The present study examined whether anxiety following single doses of vaporised THC, CBD and THC/CBD might be explained by state and trait anxiety levels at baseline.

METHODS

A placebo-controlled, randomised, within-subjects study including 26 healthy recreational cannabis users tested the effects of vaporised THC-dominant cannabis (13.75 mg THC), CBD-dominant cannabis (13.75 mg CBD), THC/CBD-equivalent cannabis (13.75 mg THC/13.75 mg CBD) and placebo cannabis on anxiety. Self-rated trait anxiety was assessed with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). State levels of anxiety were objectively assessed with a computer-based emotional Stroop task (EST) and subjectively rated with the STAI-state questionnaire and a visual analogue scale.

RESULTS

Both THC and THC/CBD significantly increased self-rated state anxiety compared to placebo. State anxiety after THC/CBD was significantly lower than after THC alone. THC-induced anxiety was independent of anxiety at baseline. When baseline anxiety was low, CBD completely counteracted THC-induced anxiety; however, when baseline anxiety was high, CBD did not counteract THC-induced anxiety. There were no effects of any treatment condition on the EST.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the study demonstrated that the THC/CBD-equivalent cannabis induces less state anxiety than THC-dominant cannabis.

Emotional salience but not valence impacts anterior cingulate cortex conflict processing

Stimuli that evoke emotions are salient, draw attentional resources, and facilitate situationally appropriate behavior in complex or conflicting environments. However, negative and positive emotions may motivate different response strategies. For example, a threatening stimulus might evoke avoidant behavior, whereas a positive stimulus may prompt approaching behavior. Therefore, emotional stimuli might either elicit differential behavioral responses when a conflict arises or simply mark salience. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate valence-specific emotion effects on attentional control in conflict processing by employing an adapted flanker task with neutral, negative, and positive stimuli. Slower responses were observed for incongruent than congruent trials. Neural activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex was associated with conflict processing regardless of emotional stimulus quality. These findings confirm that both negative and positive emotional stimuli mark salience in both low (congruent) and high (incongruent) conflict scenarios. Regardless of the conflict level, emotional stimuli deployed greater attentional resources in goal directed behavior.

Cognitive and Affective Empathy Relate Differentially to Emotion Regulation

The constructs of empathy (i.e., understanding and/or sharing another's emotion) and emotion regulation (i.e., the processes by which one manages emotions) have largely been studied in relative isolation of one another. To better understand the interrelationships between their various component processes, this manuscript reports two studies that examined the relationship between empathy and emotion regulation using a combination of self-report and task measures. In study 1 (N = 137), trait cognitive empathy and affective empathy were found to share divergent relationships with self-reported emotion dysregulation. Trait emotion dysregulation was negatively related to cognitive empathy but did not show a significant relationship with affective empathy. In the second study (N = 92), the magnitude of emotion interference effects (i.e., the extent to which inhibitory control was impacted by emotional relative to neutral stimuli) in variants of a Go/NoGo and Stroop task were used as proxy measures of implicit emotion regulation abilities. Trait cognitive and affective empathy were differentially related to both task metrics. Higher affective empathy was associated with increased emotional interference in the Emotional Go/NoGo task; no such relationship was observed for trait cognitive empathy. In the Emotional Stroop task, higher cognitive empathy was associated with reduced emotional interference; no such relationship was observed for affective empathy. Together, these studies demonstrate that greater cognitive empathy was broadly associated with improved emotion regulation abilities, while greater affective empathy was typically associated with increased difficulties with emotion regulation. These findings point to the need for assessing the different components of empathy in psychopathological conditions marked by difficulties in emotion regulation.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00062-w.

The role of valence in word processing: Evidence from lexical decision and emotional Stroop tasks

It is widely accepted that the valence of a word (neutral, positive, or negative) influences lexical processing, yet data from the commonly used lexical decision and emotional Stroop tasks has yielded inconsistent findings regarding the direction of this influence. One critical obstacle to investigating the independent effects of valence is the matching of emotional and neutral stimuli on the lexical, sublexical, and conceptual characteristics known to influence word recognition. The second obstacle is that the cognitive processes which lead to a lexical decision and a colour naming response are unobservable from the response latency measures typically gathered. The present study compiled a set of neutral, positive, and negative words matched triplet-wise on 26 influential characteristics. The novel "mouse tracking" technique was used to analyse the development of responses to these materials in variants of the lexical decision and emotional Stroop task. A conventional key-press emotional Stroop task is also reported. Results revealed a significant processing advantage for positive words over negative and neutral words in the lexical decision task, whereas valence alone did not produce any significant effects in the emotional Stroop task. The discrepancy between the effects of valence across these different tasks is discussed. We also suggest that previous conflicting findings may be confounded by unmatched emotional and neutral stimuli, thus inflating the potential effects of valence.

Customizing Your Demons: Anxiety Reduction via Anthropomorphizing and Destroying an "Anxiety Avatar"

Character customization is a prominent feature in digital games, affording users the ability to tailor one’s virtual self-representation (avatar) to match aspects of their actual or ideal self, influencing psychological well-being. The mental health implications of character customization can be partially explained by self-discrepancy theory, which argues that achieving congruence with one’s avatar reduces cognitive dissonance. However, the role of undesirable self-concepts such as mental health ailments have largely been overlooked in this context despite forming part of one’s identity. In theory, customization of an avatar representing undesirable self-concepts presents a self-regulatory paradox: individuals desire to reduce discrepancies with a self-representation, yet they also desire to enlarge discrepancies with a disliked-self. To reconcile this, two experiments explored the psychological implications of imbuing avatars with undesirable self-concepts. In Study 1 (N = 90), participants customized an avatar to represent anxiety within themselves (i.e., an anxiety avatar). Customization significantly reduced state anxiety compared to a control group, supporting the proposed discrepancy-reduction mechanism. Study 2 (N = 122) employed a 2 (customization: yes, no) × 2 (destruction: yes, no) between-subjects design, with participants either destroying or observing an anxiety avatar. Destruction of customized anxiety avatars resulted in the largest reduction in anxiety among all conditions, supporting the proposed discrepancy-enlargement mechanism. Theoretical and practical implications for the use of avatar-based e-mental health interventions are discussed.

Neuroticism and extraversion as predictors of negative and positive emotional information processing: comparing Eysenck's, Gray's, and Newman's theories

This study compared how extraversion, neuroticism, and extraversion × neuroticism are related to processing of pleasant and unpleasant emotional information as predicted by Eysenck's, Gray's, and Newman's theories. Initially, the participants' levels of extraversion (as measured by the sociability subscale) and neuroticism were assessed with Eysenck's Personality Inventory. They were then tested individually. After completing a questionnaire of current positive and negative moods, they completed three tasks measuring processing of pleasant, unpleasant, and also neutral information. The results showed that extraversion was associated positively with the processing of pleasant information, while neuroticism was associated positively with the processing of unpleasant information. These findings support predictions from Eysenck's theory. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effect of Cannabidiol and Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol on Driving Performance: A Randomized Clinical Trial

IMPORTANCE

Cannabis use has been associated with increased crash risk, but the effect of cannabidiol (CBD) on driving is unclear.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the driving impairment caused by vaporized cannabis containing Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and CBD.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

A double-blind, within-participants, randomized clinical trial was conducted at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maastricht University in the Netherlands between May 20, 2019, and March 27, 2020. Participants (N = 26) were healthy occasional users of cannabis.

INTERVENTIONS

Participants vaporized THC-dominant, CBD-dominant, THC/CBD-equivalent, and placebo cannabis. THC and CBD doses were 13.75 mg. Order of conditions was randomized and balanced.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

The primary end point was standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP; a measure of lane weaving) during 100 km, on-road driving tests that commenced at 40 minutes and 240 minutes after cannabis consumption. At a calibrated blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.02%, SDLP was increased relative to placebo by 1.12 cm, and at a calibrated BAC of 0.05%, SDLP was increased relative to placebo by 2.4 cm.

RESULTS

Among 26 randomized participants (mean [SD] age, 23.2 [2.6] years; 16 women), 22 (85%) completed all 8 driving tests. At 40 to 100 minutes following consumption, the SDLP was 18.21 cm with CBD-dominant cannabis, 20.59 cm with THC-dominant cannabis, 21.09 cm with THC/CBD-equivalent cannabis, and 18.28 cm with placebo cannabis. SDLP was significantly increased by THC-dominant cannabis (+2.33 cm [95% CI, 0.80 to 3.86]; P < .001) and THC/CBD-equivalent cannabis (+2.83 cm [95% CI, 1.28 to 4.39]; P < .001) but not CBD-dominant cannabis (-0.05 cm [95% CI, -1.49 to 1.39]; P > .99), relative to placebo. At 240 to 300 minutes following consumption, the SDLP was 19.03 cm with CBD-dominant cannabis, 19.88 cm with THC-dominant cannabis, 20.59 cm with THC/CBD-equivalent cannabis, and 19.37 cm with placebo cannabis. The SDLP did not differ significantly in the CBD (-0.34 cm [95% CI, -1.77 to 1.10]; P > .99), THC (0.51 cm [95% CI, -1.01 to 2.02]; P > .99) or THC/CBD (1.22 cm [95% CI, -0.29 to 2.72]; P = .20) conditions, relative to placebo. Out of 188 test drives, 16 (8.5%) were terminated due to safety concerns.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

In a crossover clinical trial that assessed driving performance during on-road driving tests, the SDLP following vaporized THC-dominant and THC/CBD-equivalent cannabis compared with placebo was significantly greater at 40 to 100 minutes but not 240 to 300 minutes after vaporization; there were no significant differences between CBD-dominant cannabis and placebo. However, the effect size for CBD-dominant cannabis may not have excluded clinically important impairment, and the doses tested may not represent common usage.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

EU Clinical Trials Register: 2018-003945-40.

Impacts of trait anxiety on visual working memory, as a function of task demand and situational stress

Higher trait anxiety can impair cognitive functioning via attention, but relatively little is known about the impacts on visual working memory. These were investigated using previously validated visual feature binding tasks. In Study 1, participants' memory for visual features (shapes) and feature bindings (coloured shapes) was assessed. Stimulus presentation was simultaneous or sequential, varying attentional demand, and participants were grouped according to trait cognitive anxiety (low, moderate, high). No reliable effect of trait anxiety, either cognitive or somatic, was found on memory accuracy, but moderate trait cognitive anxiety was associated with faster correct response times (i.e. increased efficiency) when stimuli were sequentially presented. In Study 2, the role of situational stress was explored during a simultaneously presented task. Higher trait cognitive and somatic anxiety were both associated with poorer efficiency during both shape and binding memory tasks. Trait somatic anxiety also predicted poorer binding effectiveness (i.e. accuracy), in those reporting higher state cognitive anxiety. Situational stress predicted binding effectiveness, but never interacted with trait anxiety, and was therefore not necessary to observe these trait anxiety-visual working memory relationships. Trait cognitive and somatic anxiety, and situational stress, therefore each influence visual working memory performance.

In or out: Response slowing across housing conditions as a measure of affect in three Western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla)

Background

Individuals experiencing negative affect have shown response slowing, a longer latency to respond in relation to baseline, when presented with aversive stimuli. We assessed response slowing in three male gorillas housed in a bachelor group as a function of daytime and nighttime housing arrangements.

Methods

In both experiments, three gorillas were rewarded for touching a single image (baseline, non-threatening gorilla or threatening gorilla) on a touchscreen. In Experiment One, they completed 48 50-trial sessions across combinations of three nested daytime and three nighttime conditions. In Experiment Two, they completed eight 50-trial sessions with novel stimuli across two daytime conditions, which were nested within two nighttime conditions. Housing conditions represented different amounts of space and degree of choice. We predicted that the gorillas would show response slowing to threatening stimuli when space and choice were restricted.

Results

We did not observe response slowing in Experiment One, although daytime and nighttime conditions interacted to predict response latencies. The gorillas responded more slowly when they had access to indoors and outdoors overnight compared to when they were in their stalls or together in an indoor habitat, but only if they had been given access to both indoors and outdoors or locked in the indoor habitat the day before. In Experiment Two, the gorillas did show response slowing to threatening stimuli, but this pattern did not interact with housing conditions. Our results, although limited by a small sample, are somewhat consistent with those of a previous study that did not find significant response slowing for apes as a function of aversive testing conditions, although the procedure has been effective in identifying dysregulated fear (high fear in low threat conditions) in macaques. The utility of this paradigm for testing affect in apes awaits further evaluation.

Linking Personality Traits to Individual Differences in Affective Spaces

Different individuals respond differently to emotional stimuli in their environment. Therefore, to understand how emotions are represented mentally will ultimately require investigations into individual-level information. Here we tasked participants with freely arranging emotionally charged images on a computer screen according to their subjective emotional similarity (yielding a unique affective space for each participant) and subsequently sought external validity of the layout of the individuals’ affective spaces through the five-factor personality model (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) assessed via the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Applying agglomerative hierarchical clustering to the group-level affective space revealed a set of underlying affective clusters whose within-cluster dissimilarity, per individual, was then correlated with individuals’ personality scores. These cluster-based analyses predominantly revealed that the dispersion of the negative cluster showed a positive relationship with Neuroticism and a negative relationship with Conscientiousness, a finding that would be predicted by prior work. Such results demonstrate the non-spurious structure of individualized emotion information revealed by data-driven analyses of a behavioral task (and validated by incorporating psychological measures of personality) and corroborate prior knowledge of the interaction between affect and personality. Future investigations can similarly combine hypothesis- and data-driven methods to extend such findings, potentially yielding new perspectives on underlying cognitive processes, disease susceptibility, or even diagnostic/prognostic markers for mental disorders involving emotion dysregulation.

Media multitasking as an avoidance coping strategy against emotionally negative stimuli

Background and Objectives: Emotion regulation refers to the way individuals manage and regulate their own emotions in response to negative emotional experiences. This study investigated whether media multitasking serves as an avoidance coping strategy for managing emotionally stressful events. Design and Methods: Using a correlational design, 140 participants completed self-report measures of media multitasking and emotion regulation, and cognitive measures assessing attentional bias for emotionally negative stimuli. Results: Media multitasking was associated with difficulties in accepting emotional responses for participants who showed an attentional bias away from anxiety words, and for participants with poorer inhibitory control over such words. Further, there was a strong association between media multitasking and reduced interference from anxiety words for participants with stronger inhibitory control over such words in the emotional Stroop task. Conclusions: Results support the idea that media multitasking is linked to difficulty dealing with emotionally negative stimuli and serves as an avoidance coping strategy where one deliberately directs attention away from negative stimuli to prevent their further processing. The findings have real-life implications for managing anxiety and depression, as media multitasking may be used as a maladaptive coping strategy that further increases these negative moods.

Priming Emotional Salience Reveals the Role of Episodic Memory and Task Conflict in the Non-color Word Stroop Task

Previous research attempted to account for the emotional Stroop effect based on connectionist models of the Stroop task that implicate conflict in the output layer as the underlying mechanism (e.g., Williams et al., 1996). Based on Kalanthroff et al.’s (2015) proactive-control/task-conflict (PC-TC) model, our study argues that the interference from non-color words (neutral and negative words) is due to task conflict. Using a study-test procedure 120 participants (59 high and 61 low trait anxiety) studied negative and neutral control words prior to being tested on a color responding task that included studied and unstudied words. The results for the low anxiety group show no emotional Stroop effect, but do demonstrate the slowdown in response latencies to a block of studied and unstudied words compared to a block of unstudied words. In contrast, the high anxiety group shows (a) an emotional Stroop effect but only for studied negative words and (b) a reversed sequential modulation in which studied negative words slowed down the color-responding of studied negative words on the next trial. We consider how these findings can be incorporated into the PC-TC model and suggest the interacting role of trait anxiety, episodic memory, and emotional salience driving attention that is based on task conflict.

I'm going to fail! Acute cognitive performance anxiety increases threat-interference and impairs WM performance

Stress can impair cognitive performance, as commonly observed in cognitive performance anxiety (CPA; e.g., test anxiety). Cognitive theories indicate that stress impairs performance by increasing attention to negative thoughts, a phenomenon also known as threat-interference. These theories are mainly supported by findings related to self-report measures of threat-interference or trait anxiety. Our main aim was to test, for the first time in a single study, the hypotheses that acute CPA-related stress negatively affects both working memory (WM) performance and objectively assessed threat-interference during performance. In addition, we aimed to assess the validity of a new stress-induction procedure that was developed to induce acute CPA. Eighty-six females were randomly assigned to a CPA-related stress group (n = 45) or a control group. WM performance and threat-interference were assessed with an n-back task (2-back and 3-back memory loads), using CPA-related words as distracters. The stress group showed higher state anxiety and slower WM performance. Both effects were moderated by trait CPA: the effects were stronger for individuals with higher trait CPA. Finally, trait CPA moderated the effect of stress on threat-interference during higher cognitive load: individuals with higher trait CPA in the stress group showed higher threat-interference. We conclude that acute CPA increases threat-interference and impairs WM performance, especially in vulnerable individuals. The role of threat-interference, cognitive load, and trait anxiety should be taken into account in future research. Finally, our method (combining our stressor and modified n-back task) is effective for studying stress-cognition interactions in CPA.

Gone in sixty (milli)seconds: Disentangling the effects of location context on attention bias

Attention bias is associated with a broad range of emotional disorders. Because of its transportability, attention bias modification (ABM) training can be administered outside of the laboratory; however, some evidence suggests that ABM training may be less effective when conducted in the individual's natural environment. The aim of this study was to examine factors that might account for the attenuated effects of attentional bias (AB) when assessed remotely. One hundred fifty-eight undergraduate psychology students completed the Emotional Stroop Task on two occasions - once in the laboratory and once remotely. To help disentangle the influences of emotional state and location on attention bias, participants were randomized to view either an emotionally provocative clip or an emotionally neutral clip prior to completing the emotional Stroop task. Results showed evidence of an attentional bias only in the laboratory, among participants in the neutral emotion condition (b = -19.67, P = .008, 95% CI [-34.18, -5.15]). Exploratory analyses revealed that emotion provocation was associated with attentional bias among individuals with greater symptoms of depression, but only remotely (b = -15.70, P = 0.046, 95% CI [-31.15, -0.25]). These findings suggest that caution should be used when conducting attention bias research remotely. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

The Modified Stroop Task Is Susceptible to Feigning: Stroop Performance and Symptom Over-endorsement in Feigned Test Anxiety

Some researchers argue that the modified Stroop task (MST) can be employed to rule out feigning. According to these authors, modified Stroop interference effects are beyond conscious control and therefore indicative of genuine psychopathology. We examined this assumption using a within-subject design. In the first session, students (N = 22) responded honestly, while in the second session they were asked to read a vignette about test anxiety and then fake this condition. During both sessions, we administered an MST consisting of neutral, anxiety-related, and test anxiety-related words. Participants also completed the Self-Report Symptom Inventory (SRSI; Merten et al., 2016) that focuses on over-reporting of pseudosymptoms. Our feigning instructions were successful in that students succeeded in generating the typical MST effect by providing longer response latencies on anxiety related (r = 0.43) and test anxiety-related (r = 0.31) words, compared with neutral words. Furthermore, students endorsed significantly more pseudosymptoms on the SRSI (r = 0.62) in the feigning session than in the honest control condition. We conclude that the MST effect is not immune to feigning tendencies, while the SRSI provides promising results that require future research.

Two Aspects of Activation: Arousal and Subjective Significance - Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Correlates Investigated by Means of a Modified Emotional Stroop Task

The arousal level of words presented in a Stroop task was found to affect their interference on the required naming of the words’ color. Based on a dual-processes approach, we propose that there are two aspects to activation: arousal and subjective significance. Arousal is crucial for automatic processing. Subjective significance is specific to controlled processing. Based on this conceptual model, we predicted that arousal would enhance interference in a Stroop task, as attention would be allocated to the meaning of the inhibited word. High subjective significance should have the opposite effect, i.e., it should enhance the controlled and explicit part of Stroop task processing, which is color naming. We found that response latencies were modulated by the interaction between the arousal and subjective significance levels of words. The longest reaction times were observed for highly arousing words of medium subjective significance level. Arousal shaped event related potentials in the 150–290 ms time range, while effects of subjective significance were found for 50–150, 150–290, and 290–530 ms time ranges.

Emotion and sex of facial stimuli modulate conditional automaticity in behavioral and neuronal interference in healthy men

Our surrounding provides a host of sensory input, which we cannot fully process without streamlining and automatic processing. Levels of automaticity differ for different cognitive and affective processes. Situational and contextual interactions between cognitive and affective processes in turn influence the level of automaticity. Automaticity can be measured by interference in Stroop tasks. We applied an emotional version of the Stroop task to investigate how stress as a contextual factor influences the affective valence-dependent level of automaticity. 120 young, healthy men were investigated for behavioral and brain interference following a stress induction or control procedure in a counter-balanced cross-over-design. Although Stroop interference was always observed, sex and emotion of the face strongly modulated interference, which was larger for fearful and male faces. These effects suggest higher automaticity when processing happy and also female faces. Supporting behavioral patterns, brain data show lower interference related brain activity in executive control related regions in response to happy and female faces. In the absence of behavioral stress effects, congruent compared to incongruent trials (reverse interference) showed little to no deactivation under stress in response to happy female and fearful male trials. These congruency effects are potentially based on altered context- stress-related facial processing that interact with sex-emotion stereotypes. Results indicate that sex and facial emotion modulate Stroop interference in brain and behavior. These effects can be explained by altered response difficulty as a consequence of the contextual and stereotype related modulation of automaticity.

Peer effects on self-regulation in adolescence depend on the nature and quality of the peer interaction

Adolescence is a critical period for the development of self-regulation, and peer interactions are thought to strongly influence regulation ability. Simple exposure to peers has been found to alter decisions about risky behaviors and increase sensitivity to rewards. The link between peer exposure and self-regulation is likely to vary as a function of the type and quality of peer interaction (e.g., rejection or acceptance). Little is known about how the nature of interactions with peers influences different dimensions of self-regulation. We examined how randomization to acceptance or rejection by online "virtual" peers influenced multiple dimensions of self-regulation in a multisite community sample of 273 adolescents aged 16-17 years. Compared to a neutral condition, exposure to peers produced increases in cold cognitive control, but decreased hot cognitive control. Relative to peer acceptance, peer rejection reduced distress tolerance and increased sensitivity to losses. These findings suggest that different dimensions of adolescent self-regulation are influenced by the nature of the peer context: basic cognitive functions are altered by mere exposure to peers, whereas more complex decision making and emotion regulation processes are influenced primarily by the quality of that exposure.

A standardized list of affect-related life events

In experimental contexts, affect-related word lists have been widely applied when examining how cognitive processes interact with emotional processes. These lists, however, present limitations when studying the relation between emotion and cognitive processes such as time and number processing because affective words do not inherently contain time or quantity information. Live events, in contrast, are experienced by an observer and therefore inherently carry affect information. Unfortunately, existing life-event lists and inventories have been largely applied within clinical contexts as diagnostic tools, and therefore are not suitable for many experimental contexts because they do not contain a balanced number of reliably positive, negative, and neutral life events. In Experiment 1, we create a standardized affect-related life-events list with 171 positive, negative, and neutral affect-related life events. In Experiment 2, we show that strength of affect and significance of the event are integral dimensions, suggesting that these two features are difficult to separate perceptually. The implications of these findings and some potential future applications of the created life-events list are discussed.

Implicit Belittlements Call for Implicit Measures: Emotional Reactions to Youth Paternalistic Stereotypes

Age discrimination at work can potentially affect every worker. Indeed, like ‘old’ workers, young ones hired in their first job elicit the idea that they have quite interesting social abilities but lack of competence, which constitutes a case of paternalistic stereotypes (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Generally, the negative (incompetence) facet of such stereotypes is not blatantly expressed, but is subtly conveyed behind an apparently positive discourse. Consequently, it is considered as being generally under-detected, while harmful. In this paper, we examine whether paternalistic stereotyping’s under-detection is real or if it is due to the use of inadequate measures. Based on a study showing that targets feel that something is wrong (Dardenne, Dumont, & Bollier 2007), we rely on affective measures to investigate whether the detection of the subtly conveyed negative facet of paternalistic stereotypes calls for subtle, implicit measures. In Study 1, explicit self-reports of targets’ affective states after a meeting with a paternalistic boss revealed mainly positive affect. In Study 2, an implicit emotional measure however revealed the presence of a negative affective state. The last Study, using a more ecological affective measure, demonstrates that paternalistic stereotypes trigger an ambivalent affective reaction. Altogether, the three studies suggest that the negative facet of paternalistic stereotypes is not as under-detected as we thought.

N450 and LPC Event-Related Potential Correlates of an Emotional Stroop Task with Words Differing in Valence and Emotional Origin

Affective meaning of verbal stimuli was found to influence cognitive control as expressed in the Emotional Stroop Task (EST). Behavioral studies have shown that factors such as valence, arousal, and emotional origin of reaction to stimuli associated with words can lead to lengthening of reaction latencies in EST. Moreover, electrophysiological studies have revealed that affective meaning altered amplitude of some components of evoked potentials recorded during EST, and that this alteration correlated with the performance in EST. The emotional origin was defined as processing based on automatic vs. reflective mechanisms, that underlines formation of emotional reactions to words. The aim of the current study was to investigate, within the framework of EST, correlates of processing of words differing in valence and origin levels, but matched in arousal, concreteness, frequency of appearance and length. We found no behavioral differences in response latencies. When controlling for origin, we found no effects of valence. We found the effect of origin on ERP in two time windows: 290–570 and 570–800 ms. The earlier effect can be attributed to cognitive control while the latter is rather the manifestation of explicit processing of words. In each case, reflective originated stimuli evoked more positive amplitudes compared to automatic originated words.

Does emotion change auditory prediction and deviance detection?

In the last decades, a growing number of studies provided compelling evidence supporting the interplay of cognitive and affective processes. However, it remains to be clarified whether and how an emotional context affects the prediction and detection of change in unattended sensory events. In an event-related potential (ERP) study, we probed the modulatory role of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral visual contexts on the brain response to automatic detection of change in spectral (intensity) vs. temporal (duration) sound features. Twenty participants performed a passive auditory oddball task. Additionally, we tested the relationship between ERPs and self-reported mood. Participants reported more negative mood after the negative block. The P2 amplitude elicited by standards was increased in a positive context. Mismatch Negativity (MMN) amplitude was decreased in the negative relative to the neutral and positive contexts, and was associated with self-reported mood. These findings suggest that the detection of regularities in the auditory stream was facilitated in a positive context, whereas a negative visual context interfered with prediction error elicitation, through associated mood changes. Both ERP and behavioral effects highlight the intricate links between emotion, perception and cognitive processes.

Optimism and Attentional Bias for Negative and Positive Stimuli

Optimism, or positive outcome expectancy, correlates with better psychological and physiological adjustment, in part because of conscious behavior such as coping. However, procedural, automatic, and unconscious processes also may affect adjustment. The emotional Stroop task was used to assess the relationships between optimism and unconscious attentional bias for positively valenced, negatively valenced, neutral current concern, and neutral control stimuli. Undergraduate students (n = 48) completed personality measures at the beginning of the semester and completed the Stroop task under separate cover. Optimism was associated with a greater attentional bias for positive stimuli relative to negative stimuli. Optimism also was associated with slower skin conductance response rates during negative stimuli. Unconscious attentional biases may contribute to the better adjustment associated with optimism.

The Emotional Stroop Task: Assessing Cognitive Performance under Exposure to Emotional Content

The emotional Stroop effect (ESE) is the result of longer naming latencies to ink colors of emotion words than to ink colors of neutral words. The difference shows that people are affected by the emotional content conveyed by the carrier words even though they are irrelevant to the color-naming task at hand. The ESE has been widely deployed with patient populations, as well as with non-selected populations, because the emotion words can be selected to match the tested pathology. The ESE is a powerful tool, yet it is vulnerable to various threats to its validity. This report refers to potential sources of confounding and includes a modal experiment that provides the means to control for them. The most prevalent threat to the validity of existing ESE studies is sustained effects and habituation wrought about by repeated exposure to emotion stimuli. Consequently, the order of exposure to emotion and neutral stimuli is of utmost importance. We show that in the standard design, only one specific order produces the ESE.

Keep calm and be patient: The influence of anxiety and time on post-error adaptations

Individual differences in anxiety and punishment sensitivity have an impact on electrophysiological markers of error processing and the orienting of attention to threatening information. However, it remains unclear how these individual differences influence behavioral adaptations to errors. Therefore, we set out to investigate the influence of anxiety and punishment sensitivity on post-error adaptations, and whether this influence depends on the time people get to adapt. We tested 99 participants using a Simon task with randomized inter-trial intervals. Significant post-error slowing (PES) was found at all time intervals. However, in line with previous research, PES reduced over time. While PES did not interact with anxiety, or punishment sensitivity, the pattern of post-error accuracy depended on anxiety. There is clear post-error accuracy decrease at the shortest interval, but individuals with a low score on trait anxiety showed a reversed effect (i.e., post-error accuracy increase) at a longer interval. These results suggest that people have trouble to disengage attention from an error, which can be overcome with time and low anxiety.

Emotional Stroop Dilution: The boundary conditions of attentional capture by threat words

It is widely believed that threatening stimuli in our environment capture attention. Much of the core evidence for attentional capture by threatening stimuli comes from the Emotional Stroop task. Yet recent evidence suggests that the Emotional Stroop task does not measure attentional capture (e.g., Algom et al., 2004). The present paper assesses whether threat words can capture attention using a modified Stroop Dilution procedure (e.g., Kahneman & Chajczyk, 1983), where attentional capture by a threat word is inferred from a reduction in color-word interference for threat words compared to non-threat words (emotional Stroop Dilution). The outcome of the present experiments indicates that threat words can capture attention, but only when task demands do not require that a word be attended. It is suggested that threat words produce (1) cognitive slowing, and influence two processes of selective attention (2) attentional capture and (3) the ability to filter irrelevant dimensions of an attended stimulus.

Is the emotional Stroop task a special case of mood induction? Evidence from sustained effects of attention under emotion

Sustained effects of emotion are well known in everyday experience. Surprisingly, such effects are seldom recorded in laboratory studies of the emotional Stroop task, in which participants name the color of emotion and neutral words. Color performance is more sluggish with emotion words than with neutral words, the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). The ESE is not sensitive to the order in which the two groups of words are presented, so the effect of exposure to emotion words does not extend to disrupting performance in a subsequent block with neutral words. We attribute this absence of a sustained effect to habituation engendered by excessive repetition of the experimental stimuli. In a series of four experiments, we showed that sustained effects do occur when habituation is removed, and we also showed that the massive exposure to negative stimuli within the ESE paradigm induces a commensurately negative mood. A novel perspective is offered, in which the ESE is considered a special case of mood induction.

Inhibitory transcranial magnetic theta burst stimulation attenuates prefrontal cortex oxygenation

Recent studies highlighted the great potential of newly established theta burst stimulation (TBS) protocols for non-invasive human brain stimulation studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). While intermittent TBS over the primary motor cortex was found to potentiate motor evoked potentials, continuous TBS led to profound attenuations. Although numerous studies investigated the impact of TBS on motor cortex function, yet, only few imaging studies focused on its effects in other brain areas. Particularly for the prefrontal cortex, it is unclear whether TBS has similar effects compared to application over motor areas. In the current study continuous TBS was applied to either the left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a sample of healthy subjects. Changes in prefrontal oxygenation were measured during an emotional Stroop task by means of functional multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) before and after stimulation. Results showed bilaterally decreased prefrontal oxygenation following inhibitory stimulation of the left prefrontal cortex but no behavioral effect. No such alterations were observed following right-hemispheric or sham stimulation. The results of the current study are in line with earlier findings and additionally demonstrate that also prefrontal oxygenation can be impaired by continuous TBS.

Time-dependent effects of cortisol on selective attention and emotional interference: a functional MRI study

Acute stress is known to induce a state of hypervigilance, allowing optimal detection of threats. Although one may benefit from sensitive sensory processing, it comes at the cost of unselective attention and increased distraction by irrelevant information. Corticosteroids, released in response to stress, have been shown to profoundly influence brain function in a time-dependent manner, causing rapid non-genomic and slow genomic effects. Here, we investigated how these time-dependent effects influence the neural mechanisms underlying selective attention and the inhibition of emotional distracters in humans. Implementing a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled design, 65 young healthy men received 10 mg hydrocortisone either 60 min (rapid effects) or 270 min (slow effects), or placebo prior to an emotional distraction task, consisting of color-naming of either neutral or aversive words. Overall, participants responded slower to aversive compared to neutral words, indicating emotional interference with selective attention. Importantly, the rapid effects of corticosteroids increased emotional interference, which was associated with reduced amygdala inhibition to aversive words. Moreover, they induced enhanced amygdala connectivity with frontoparietal brain regions, which may reflect increased influence of the amygdala on an executive network. The slow effects of corticosteroids acted on the neural correlates of sustained attention. They decreased overall activity in the cuneus, possibly indicating reduced bottom-up attentional processing, and disrupted amygdala connectivity to the insula, potentially reducing emotional interference. Altogether, these data suggest a time-specific corticosteroid modulation of attentive processing. Whereas high circulating corticosteroid levels acutely increase emotional interference, possibly facilitating the detection of threats, a history of elevation might promote sustained attention and thereby contribute to stress-recovery of cognitive function.

Attentional bias, distractibility and short-term memory in anxiety

Cognitive effects of anxiety have been amply documented. Anxiety has been linked with an attentional bias toward threat, distractibility, and reductions in short-term memory (STM) capacity. These three functions have rarely been investigated jointly and permeability may account for some of the effects documented. In this experiment, we examine these three cognitive functions using one verbal and one visuospatial task. In the irrelevant speech paradigm, participants had to remember strings of letters while irrelevant neutral or threatening speech was presented. In the visuospatial sandwich paradigm, participants were asked to remember sequences of visuospatial targets sometimes presented within irrelevant distracters. We examined the links between state anxiety, worry, and indices of attentional bias toward threat, distractibility from neutral stimuli, and STM capacity. Results show that state anxiety was uniquely linked with impairments in STM while worry was more particularly related to distractibility, independently from permeability between the different cognitive functions. Attentional bias toward threat was linked with variance common to both anxiety and worry. An examination of clinical and non-clinical subgroups suggests that subjective threat perception and attentional bias toward threat are features that are particularly characteristic of clinical levels of anxiety. Our findings confirm the important links between anxiety and basic cognitive functions.

Temperament and Attentional Bias in Vocal Emotional Stroop Tasks

Human information processing is influenced by the affective quality of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. A widely known example is the emotional variant of the colour–naming Stroop task. Although participants are not instructed to attend to valence, it nevertheless influences response times. We studied how persons differ in ignoring the irrelevant valence of stimuli and how such differences are related to personality traits. In two emotional Stroop tasks using a vocal response mode, participants were instructed to name the colour of unpleasant and pleasant words presented in different physical colours. In Study 2, we introduced a second task to increase the cognitive load. Across both studies, extraversion and approach temperament were associated with higher interferences by pleasant words. Neuroticism and avoidance temperament, however, were associated with higher interferences by unpleasant words only when cognitive load increased because of a task switch. This finding suggests that highly neurotic individuals can mitigate influences of emotional stimuli on information processing under conditions of low cognitive load. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Social identity-based motivation modulates attention bias toward negative information: an event-related brain potential study

Research has demonstrated that people readily pay more attention to negative than to positive and/or neutral stimuli. However, evidence from recent studies indicated that such an attention bias to negative information is not obligatory but sensitive to various factors. Two experiments using intergroup evaluative tasks (Study 1: a gender-related groups evaluative task and Study 2: a minimal-related groups evaluative task) was conducted to determine whether motivation to strive for a positive social identity – a part of one’s self-concept – drives attention toward affective stimuli. Using the P1 component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a neural index of attention, we confirmed that attention bias toward negative stimuli is not mandatory but it can depend on a motivational focus on affective outcomes. Results showed that social identity-based motivation is likely to bias attention toward affectively incongruent information. Thereby, early onset processes – reflected by the P1 component – appeared susceptible to top-down attentional influences induced by the individual’s motivation to strive for a positive social identity.

Affective processes in human-automation interactions

OBJECTIVE

This study contributes to the literature on automation reliance by illuminating the influences of user moods and emotions on reliance on automated systems.

BACKGROUND

Past work has focused predominantly on cognitive and attitudinal variables, such as perceived machine reliability and trust. However, recent work on human decision making suggests that affective variables (i.e., moods and emotions) are also important. Drawing from the affect infusion model, significant effects of affect are hypothesized. Furthermore, a new affectively laden attitude termed liking is introduced.

METHOD

Participants watched video clips selected to induce positive or negative moods, then interacted with a fictitious automated system on an X-ray screening task At five time points, important variables were assessed including trust, liking, perceived machine accuracy, user self-perceived accuracy, and reliance.These variables, along with propensity to trust machines and state affect, were integrated in a structural equation model.

RESULTS

Happiness significantly increased trust and liking for the system throughout the task. Liking was the only variable that significantly predicted reliance early in the task. Trust predicted reliance later in the task, whereas perceived machine accuracy and user self-perceived accuracy had no significant direct effects on reliance at any time.

CONCLUSION

Affective influences on automation reliance are demonstrated, suggesting that this decision-making process may be less rational and more emotional than previously acknowledged.

APPLICATION

Liking for a new system may be key to appropriate reliance, particularly early in the task. Positive affect can be easily induced and may be a lever for increasing liking.