Abstract
Recent behavioral studies revealed an interesting phenomenon concerning the influence of affect on the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli. In a paradigm, where the participants’ task was to read a word, remember its meaning for a while, and then choose one of two pictorial-alphabet-like graphical signs best representing the word sense, we observed that the decisions involving trials with reflective-originated verbal stimuli were performed significantly longer than decisions concerning other stimuli (i.e., automatic-originated). The origin of an affective reaction is a dimension which allows speaking of an affect as automatic (you feel it in your guts) or reflective (you feel it comes from your mind). The automatic affective reaction represents the immediate and inescapable as opposed to the reflective, i.e., the delayed and controllable affective responses to stimuli. In the current experiment, we investigated the neural correlates of performance in an QR-signs-selection ambiguous task. We found the effects of valence and origin in the N400/FN400 potential by means of a stimuli-locked analysis of the initial part of the task, that is, the remembering of a certain word stimulus in a working memory. The N400/FN400 effects were separated in space on scalp distribution. Reflective originated stimuli elicited more negative FN400 than other conditions, which means that such stimuli indeed are associated with conceptual incongruence or higher affective complexity of meaning, but distinct from purely cognitive concreteness. Moreover, the amplitude of the potential preceding the decision, analyzed in the response-locked way, was shaped by the origin of an affective state but not valence. Trials involving decisions concerning reflective-originated words were characterized by a more negative amplitude than trials involving automatic-originated and control word stimuli. This corresponds to the observed pattern of response latencies, where we found that latencies for reflective stimuli were longer than for automatic originated or control ones. Additionally, this study demonstrates that the proposed new ambiguous paradigm is useful in studies concerning the influence of affect on decisions.
Highlights
The way we process information in situations involving ambiguity may be influenced by many different factors, including the current affective state of an individual (Frijda, 2007) as well as affective connotations of stimuli accompanying the situation (Russell, 2003)
The analysis of behavioral data was conducted on the same group of participants and trials as in the decision-related event-related potentials (ERPs) analysis in order to assure the comparability of results
The aim of the current experiment was to investigate the neural correlates of an interesting behavioral phenomenon, namely, the impact of the origin of affective connotations of word stimuli on the reaction latencies in a task involving intuitive interpretation of ambiguous graphical stimuli
Summary
The way we process information in situations involving ambiguity may be influenced by many different factors, including the current affective state of an individual (Frijda, 2007) as well as affective connotations of stimuli accompanying the situation (Russell, 2003). In recent behavioral studies (Antosz and Imbir, 2017; Imbir, 2017), a very interesting phenomena was found, namely, considering affective dimensions—instead of valence, the origin of an affective state (Imbir, 2015; Jarymowicz and Imbir, 2015) was the most important factor contributing to the response latencies of decisions made under uncertainty. Origin of an affective state represents the engagement of simplified (automatic) versus elaborated (reflective) criteria of evaluation (Jarymowicz, 2012; Imbir, 2015). Origin was measured with use of heart versus mind dichotomy for affective reactions. High validity and reliability of origin assessments was demonstrated on a large number of word stimuli (Imbir, 2016a). The concept of origin was derived from an emotion duality model (Jarymowicz and Imbir, 2015), the theory highlighting diverse mechanisms leading to formation of an emotion
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