Electrophysiological Responses to Rapidly-Presented Affective Stimuli Predict Individual Differences in Subsequent Attention

AbstractFaces transmit rich information about a unique personal identity. Recent studies examined how negative evaluative information affects event-related potentials (ERPs), the relevance of individual differences, such as trait anxiety, neuroticism, or agreeableness, for these effects is unclear. In this preregistered study, participants (N = 80) were presented with neutral faces, either associated with highly negative or neutral biographical information. Faces were shown under three different task conditions that varied the attentional focus on face-unrelated features, perceptual face information, or emotional information. Results showed a task-independent increase of the N170 component for faces associated with negative information, while interactions occurred for the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) and the Late Positive Potential (LPP), showing ERP differences only when paying attention to the evaluative information. Trait anxiety and neuroticism did not influence ERP differences. Low agreeableness increased EPN differences during perceptual distraction. Thus, we observed that low agreeableness leads to early increased processing of potentially hostile faces, although participants were required to attend to a face-unrelated feature.

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Modeling Individual Differences in Automatic Evaluation Measured by Evaluative Decision Task

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000109 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

pp. 143-152 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Blaž Rebernjak ◽

Vesna Buško

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Automatic Processing ◽

Affective Processing ◽

Decision Task ◽

Analytic Framework ◽

Affective Stimuli ◽

Confirmatory Factor ◽

Priming Paradigm ◽

Time Variables ◽

The Stability

The study concerns the measurement of individual differences in the automatic processing of affective stimuli within an affective priming paradigm. Automatic processing measures, termed processing tendencies, were defined by parcels composed of difference score items of the Evaluative Decision Task reaction time variables. Confirmatory factor analytic framework was used (1) to construct parcels of individual items and to evaluate them in terms of unidimensionality and temporal invariance, (2) to examine the structure of relationships among the processing tendencies, and (3) to test the stability of individual differences in processing tendencies over a 4-week period. Random assignment of items to parcels showed unidimensionality as well as invariance over time. Processing tendencies relating to same-valence targets – facilitation and inhibition of positive targets as well as facilitation and inhibition of negative targets – showed a positive relationship at both timepoints not predicted by theory. Furthermore, evidence in favor of stability of individual differences in processing tendencies was obtained for positive targets, while the results for negative targets were less clear. The results are interpreted in light of current theories of automatic affective processing.

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Direct Electrophysiological Mapping of Shape-Induced Affective Perception

Neural Plasticity ◽

10.1155/2018/9795013 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2018 ◽

pp. 1-8 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yingli Li ◽

Qingguo Ding ◽

Yuancun Zhao ◽

Yanan Bu ◽

Xiaoyan Tang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Reaction Time ◽

Visual Information ◽

Parietal Lobe ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Happy Face ◽

Affective Stimuli ◽

Electrophysiological Responses ◽

Affective Perception ◽

Angry Face ◽

Emotional Effects

Visual information may convey different affective valences and induce our brain into different affective perceptions. Many studies have found that unpleasant stimuli could produce stronger emotional effects than pleasant stimuli could. Although there has been a notion that triangle is perceived as negative and circle as positive, there has been no systematic study to map the degrees of valence of shapes with different affective perceptions. Here, we employed four shapes (ellipse, triangle, and line-drawn happy and angry faces) to investigate the behavior and electrophysiological responses, in order to systematically study shape-induced affective perception. The reaction time delay and the event-related potential (ERP), particularly the early ERP component, were applied to find the associations with different affective perceptions. Our behavioral results showed that reaction time for angry face was significantly shorter than those for the other three types of stimuli (p<0.05). In the ERP results, P1, N1, P2, and N2 amplitudes for angry face were significantly larger than those for happy face. Similarly, P1, N1, P2, and N2 amplitudes for triangle were significantly larger than those for ellipse. Particularly, P1 amplitude in the parietal lobe for angry face was the strongest, followed by happy face, triangle, and ellipse. Hence, this work found distinct electrophysiological evidence to map the shape-induced affective perception. It supports the hypothesis that affective strain would induce larger amplitude than affective ease does and strong affective stimuli induce larger amplitude than mild affective stimuli do.

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