Cue Valence Influences the Effects of Cue Uncertainty on ERP Responses to Emotional Events.

Huiyan Lin,Ziping Liang,Hua Jin,Ting Liu,Jiafeng Liang

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2020.00140

Abstract

Individuals often predict consequences, particularly emotional consequences, according to emotional or non-emotional signals conveyed by environmental cues (i.e., emotional and non-emotional cues, respectively). Some of these cues signify the consequences with certainty (i.e., certain cues), whereas others do not (i.e., uncertain cues). Several event-related potential (ERP) studies regarding non-emotional cues have suggested that the effects of cue uncertainty on attention to emotional events occur in both perception and evaluation processes. However, due to the limitations of previous studies, it is unclear what the effects of cue uncertainty would be in an emotional cue condition. Moreover, it is uncertain whether the effects of cue uncertainty are affected by cue valence (i.e., emotional and non-emotional cues). To address these questions, we asked participants to view cues and then to view emotional (positive or negative) pictures. The cues either did or did not indicate the emotional content of the picture. In the emotional cue condition, happy and fearful faces were used as certain cues indicating upcoming positive and negative pictures, respectively, and neutral faces were used as uncertain cues. In the non-emotional cue condition, scrambled faces outlined in red and blue indicated upcoming positive and negative pictures, respectively, and scrambled faces outlined in green served as uncertain cues. The results showed that for negative pictures, ERP responses in a time range between 60 and 1,000 ms were shifted to a more negative direction in a certain condition than in the uncertain condition when the cues were emotional. However, the effect was the reverse for positive pictures. This effect of cue uncertainty was similar in the non-emotional cue—negative condition. In contrast, there was no effect of cue uncertainty in the non-emotional cue—positive condition. Therefore, the findings indicate that cue uncertainty modulates attention toward emotional events when the events are signified by emotional cues. The findings may also suggest that cue valence modulates the effects of cue uncertainty on attention to emotional events.

Highlights

In everyday life, individuals attempt to predict the consequences of events so that they can approach desirable events and avoid undesirable ones
Given that more positive-going event-related potential (ERP) responses to emotionallycertain events are thought to be associated with increased attention to relevant events (Dieterich et al, 2016, 2017), the findings suggest that certain cues enhance attention towards emotional events, negative events, during both perceptual and evaluation processes
Further analysis showed that for negative pictures, there was no significant effect of cue uncertainty (p > 0.05), whereas for positive pictures, the ratings were higher in the certain condition than in the uncertain condition (F(1,19) = 8.84, p = 0.008, ηp2 = 0.32)

Summary

Introduction

Individuals attempt to predict the consequences of events so that they can approach desirable events and avoid undesirable ones. Their expectations are often based on either emotional or non-emotional signals conveyed by environmental cues. The same expectation will occur if you see your friend raising his/her hands, a prearranged signal of danger (i.e., a non-emotional cue). Some of these emotional and non-emotional cues signify upcoming events with certainty (i.e., they are certain cues), whereas others do not (i.e., they are uncertain cues). The different categories of cues might critically influence the perception of emotional consequences and even guide decision-making associated with those consequences (e.g., Onoda et al, 2006, 2007, 2008; Sarinopoulos et al, 2010; Grupe and Nitschke, 2011; Gole et al, 2012; Lin et al, 2012, 2014a,b, 2015a,d, 2017b, 2018; Yang et al, 2012; Aue et al, 2013; Dieterich et al, 2016, 2017; Sussman et al, 2017; Qiao et al, 2018)

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