Cognitive Control Processes and Defense Mechanisms That Influence Aggressive Reactions: Toward an Integration of Socio-Cognitive and Psychodynamic Models of Aggression

Research on cognitive processes has primarily focused on cognitive control and inhibitory processes to the detriment of other psychological processes, such as defense mechanisms (DMs), which can be used to modify aggressive impulses as well as self/other images during interpersonal conflicts. First, we conducted an in-depth theoretical analysis of three socio-cognitive models and three psychodynamic models and compared main propositions regarding the source of aggression and processes that influence its enactment. Second, 32 participants completed the Hostile Expectancy Violation Paradigm (HEVP) in which scenarios describe a hostile vs. non-hostile social context followed by a character's ambiguous aversive behavior. The N400 effect to critical words that violate expected hostile vs. non-hostile intent of the behavior was analyzed. Prepotent response inhibition was measured using a Stop Signal task (SST) and DMs were assessed with the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ-60). Results showed that reactive aggression and HIA were not significantly correlated with response inhibition but were significantly positively and negatively correlated with image distorting defense style and adaptive defense style, respectively. The present article has highlighted the importance of integrating socio-cognitive and psychodynamic models to account for the full complexity underlying psychological processes that influence reactive aggressive behavior.

Information structure effects on the processing of nouns and verbs: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Electroencephalographic (EEG) signals can reveal the cost required to deal with information structure mismatches in speech or in text contexts. The present study investigates the costs related to the processing of different associations between the syntactic categories of Noun and Verb and the information categories of Topic and Focus. It is hypothesized that – due to the very nature (respectively, predicative and non-predicative) of verbal and nominal reference – sentences with Topics realized by verbs, and Focuses realized by nouns, should impose greater processing demands, compared to the decoding of nominal Topics and verbal Focuses. Data from event-related potential (ERP) measurements revealed an N400 effect in response to both nouns encoded as Focus and verbs packaged as Topic, confirming that the cost associated with information structure processing follows discourse-driven expectations also with respect to the word-class level.

Characteristics of N400 component elicited in patients who have migraine with aura

Background This study aimed to examine the N400 effect and event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited from congruent and incongruent stimuli in patients who have migraines with aura (MwA). Methods A total of 33 MwA patients and 20 healthy controls (HCs) were studied. They were balanced in age (35.12 ± 8.94 vs 34.70 ± 9.59 years, p = 0.872) and sex (69.7 vs 75.0% females, p = 0.761). ERPs were measured in response to both stimuli, where pictures were preceded with an object name that either matched or mismatched with the object. Averaged amplitudes, peaks, peak latencies, difference waves and topography were compared between MwA and HCs. Results MwA patients had significantly lower averaged amplitudes at the Fz and F4 sites during incongruent stimuli, as well as reduced peaks at the C3 and Pz sites. Topography showed a more widespread N400 effect over scalp relative to HCs. The difference ERP waveforms did not differ in the N400 effect between groups, but the P600 effect was significantly stronger in the HCs group relative to the MwA group at the Pz (6.52 ± 2.57 vs. 3.50 ± 3.15, p = 0.001) and P4 (5.86 ± 2.79 vs. 3.95 ± 3.64, p = 0.040) sites. Conclusions Picture-word matching tasks could serve as a potential new method for the investigation of semantic processing in MwA patients.

Learning positive social information reduces racial bias as indexed by N400 response

The present study used EEG/ERPs to detect the activation of implicit stereotypical representations associated to other-race (OR) people and the modulation of such activation through the previous presentation of positive vs. neutral social information. Electrophysiological signals were recorded in 40 Italian Caucasian participants, unaware of the overall study’s purpose. They were presented with 285 sentences that could either violate, non-violate (e.g., “the Roma girl was involved in a robbery) or be neutral with regard to stereotypical concepts concerning other-race people (e.g. Asians, Africans, Arabic). ERPs were time-locked to the terminal words. Prior to the sentence reading task, participants were exposed to a 10 minutes colourful video documentary. While the experimental group was presented a video containing images picturing other-race characters involved in “prestigious” activities that violated stereotypical negative assumptions (e.g. a black neurosurgeon leading a surgery team), the control group viewed a neutral documentary about flora and fauna. EEG signals were then recorded during the sentence reading task to explore whether the previous exposure to the experimental video could modulate the detection of incongruence in the sentences violating stereotypes, as marked by the N400 response. A fictitious task was adopted, consisted in detecting rare animal names. Indeed, only the control group showed a greater N400 response (350–550 ms) to words incongruent with ethnic stereotypes compared to congruent and neutral ones, thus suggesting the presence of a racial bias. No N400 response was found for the experimental group, suggesting a lack of negative expectation for OR individuals. The swLORETA inverse solution, performed on the prejudice-related N400 showed that the Inferior Temporal and the Superior and Middle Frontal Gyri were the strongest N400 intra-cortical sources. Regardless of the experimental manipulation, Congruent terminal words evoked a greater P300 response (500–600 ms) compared to incongruent and neutral ones and a late frontal positivity (650–800 ms) was found to be larger to sentences involving OR than own-race characters (either congruent or incongruent with the prejudice) thus possibly indicating bias-free perceptual in-group/out-group categorization processes. The data showed how it is possible to modulate a pre-existing racial prejudice (as reflected by N400 effect) through exposure to positive media-driven information about OR people. Further follow-up studies should determine the duration in time, and across contexts, of this modulatory effect.

Event-Related Potentials Elicited by Phonetic Errors Differentiate Children With Speech Sound Disorder and Typically Developing Peers

Purpose A growing body of research suggests that a deficit in speech perception abilities contributes to the development of speech sound disorder (SSD). However, little work has been done to characterize the neurophysiological processes indexing speech perception deficits in this population. The primary aim of this study was to compare the neural activity underlying speech perception in young children with SSD and with typical development (TD). Method Twenty-eight children ages 4;1–6;0 (years;months) participated in this study. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while children completed a speech perception task that included phonetic (speech sound) and lexical (meaning) matches and mismatches. Groups were compared on their judgment accuracy for matches and mismatches as well as the mean amplitude of the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) and N400 ERP components. Results Children with SSD demonstrated lower judgment accuracy across the phonetic and lexical conditions compared to peers with TD. The ERPs elicited by lexical matches and mismatches did not distinguish the groups. However, in the phonetic condition, the SSD group exhibited a more consistent left-lateralized PMN effect and a delayed N400 effect over frontal sites compared to the TD group. Conclusions These findings provide some of the first evidence of a delay in the neurophysiological processing of phonological information for young children with SSD compared to their peers with TD. This delay was not present for the processing of lexical information, indicating a unique difference between children with SSD and with TD related to speech perception of phonetic errors. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16915579

When inefficient speech-motor control affects speech comprehension: atypical electrophysiological correlates of language prediction in stuttering

It is well attested that people predict forthcoming information during language comprehension. The literature presents different proposals on how this ability could be implemented. Here, we tested the hypothesis according to which language production mechanisms have a role in such predictive processing. To this aim, we studied two electroencephalographic correlates of predictability during speech comprehension ‒ pre-target alpha‒beta (8-30 Hz) power decrease and the post-target N400 event-related potential (ERP) effect, ‒ in a population with impaired speech-motor control, i.e., adults who stutter (AWS), compared to typically fluent adults (TFA). Participants listened to sentences that could either constrain towards a target word or not, allowing or not to make predictions. We analyzed time-frequency modulations in a silent interval preceding the target and ERPs at the presentation of the target. Results showed that, compared to TFA, AWS display: i) a widespread and bilateral reduced power decrease in posterior temporal and parietal regions, and a power increase in anterior regions, especially in the left hemisphere (high vs. low constraining) and ii) a reduced N400 effect (non-predictable vs. predictable). The results suggest a reduced efficiency in generating predictions in AWS with respect to TFA. Additionally, the magnitude of the N400 effect in AWS is correlated with alpha power change in the right pre-motor and supplementary motor cortex, a key node in the dysfunctional network in stuttering. Overall, the results support the idea that processes and neural structures prominently devoted to speech planning and execution support prediction during language comprehension.

The role of associative learning in healthy and sustainable food evaluations: an event- related potential study

Individuals in industrialized societies frequently include processed foods in their diet. However, overconsumption of heavily-processed foods leads to imbalanced calorie intakes as well as negative health consequences and environmental impacts. In the present study, normal-weight healthy individuals were recruited in order to test whether associative learning (Evaluative Conditioning, EC) could strengthen the association between food-types (minimally-processed and heavily-processed foods) and concepts (e.g., healthiness), and whether these changes would be reflected at the implicit associations, at the explicit ratings and in behavioral choices. A semantic congruency task with Electroencephalography recordings was used to examine the neural signature of newly acquired food. The accuracy after EC towards minimally-processed food (MP-food) in the SC task significantly increased, indicating strengthened associations between MP-food and the concept of healthiness through EC. At neural level, a more negative amplitude of the N400 waveform, which reflects semantic incongruency, was shown in response to MP-foods paired with the concept of unhealthiness in proximity of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). This implied the possible role of the left DLPFC in changing food representations by integrating stimuli’s features with existing food-relevant information. Finally, the N400 effect was modulated by individuals’ attentional impulsivity as well as restrained eating behavior.

An ERP Study on Attraction Effects in Advanced L2 Learners

In English, the rule of agreement is quite simple: verbs must agree with their subject head nouns in terms of number features. Despite this simplicity, agreement processing is always interrupted when the subject phrase of the sentence “The key to the cabinets is on the table,” contains two nouns with a mismatch in number features commonly known as attraction effects. This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether late advanced second language (L2) learners can acquire native-like sensitivity of attraction effects. The results revealed that L2 learners showed ERP patterns qualitatively similar to native English speakers: ungrammatical verbs following singular attractors elicited a P600 effect relative to their grammatical counterparts, whereas this positivity was replaced by an N400 effect when plural attractors intervened between the subject head nouns and the verbs. Of particular interest, given that, compared to native speakers, the amplitude of the P600 effect elicited by L2 learners was smaller, there was a quantitative difference between native speakers and L2 learners. We proposed that these two ERP components represented the two processing routes of agreement: the P600 effect indexed a full, combinatorial process, which parsed morphosyntactic features between agreement controllers and targets, whereas the N400 effect indexed a shallow, heuristic process, which evaluated lexical associations between agreeing elements. Moreover, similar to native speakers, advanced L2 learners showed an asymmetrical pattern of attraction effects, in that plural attractors were interfered with ungrammaticality at disagreeing verbs, but they did not cause any difficulties in processing grammatical sentences at agreeing verbs. The overall results suggested that compared to native processing, L2 processing of complex agreement with attractor interference was shallower and therefore late advanced L2 learners could not achieve native-like attraction effects.