Congruent Stimuli Research Articles

Unisensory and Multisensory Responses in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): Effects of Spatial Congruence

While it is generally accepted that structural and functional brain deficits underlie the behavioral deficits associated with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), the degree to which these problems are expressed in sensory pathology is unknown. Electrophysiological measures indicate that neural processing is delayed in visual and auditory domains. Furthermore, multiple reports of white matter deficits due to prenatal alcohol exposure indicate altered cortical connectivity in individuals with FASD. Multisensory integration requires close coordination between disparate cortical areas leading us to hypothesize that individuals with FASD will have impaired multisensory integration relative to healthy control (HC) participants. Participants’ neurophysiological responses were recorded using magnetoencephalography (MEG) during passive unisensory or simultaneous, spatially congruent or incongruent multisensory auditory and somatosensory stimuli. Source timecourses from evoked responses were estimated using multi-dipole spatiotemporal modeling. Auditory M100 response latency was faster for the multisensory relative to the unisensory condition but no group differences were observed. M200 auditory latency to congruent stimuli was earlier and congruent amplitude was larger in participants with FASD relative to controls. Somatosensory M100 response latency was faster in right hemisphere for multisensory relative to unisensory stimulation in both groups. FASD participants’ somatosensory M200 responses were delayed by 13 ms, but only for the unisensory presentation of the somatosensory stimulus. M200 results indicate that unisensory and multisensory processing is altered in FASD; it remains to be seen if the multisensory response represents a normalization of the unisensory deficits.

ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ МІЖПІВКУЛЬНОЇ ВЗАЄМОДІЇ ЗА ПОКАЗНИКАМИ ПОТЕНЦІАЛІВ, ПОВ'ЯЗАНИХ ІЗ ПОДІЯМИ

The study used a combined Stroop test involving a spatial feature. Stimuli (the words "green", "red", "blue" and "yellow", written in relevant or irrelevant color) were presented to the right or left of the center of the screen. In the case of coincidence of the color of the word and its semantic meaning, it was necessary to press the button with the ipsilateral hand (answer "yes", congruent stimulus), discrepancies – with the contralateral hand (answer "no", incongruent stimulus). According to the results obtained earlier, it was suggested that it is easier to transfer information from the left hemisphere to the right than in the opposite direction, and the dominance of the left hemisphere when performing this type of cognitive task. To study this hypothesis, records of event-related potentials (ERP) were obtained when subjects performed this test. The subjects were 7 men, right-handed, aged 20 ± 1,13 years. The most informative was the registration from Cz, for which the components N450 and late positive complex (LPC) were obtained when stimulated by incongruent stimuli from the right side. The N450 component is associated with anterior cingulate cortex activity and is considered a reliable marker of conflict present in the experimental paradigm of this test. LPC is probably a component specific to the Stroop task and corresponds to the level of conflict of stimuli. Recording ERPs from the central lead does not allow to determine in this case the source of their origin. However, a comparison of ERP of incongruent stimuli from the right and left indicates differences in response to stimuli from different halves of the screen. The appearance of these components for incongruent stimuli exposed on the right side of the screen probably means their association with the functions of the left hemisphere, and confirms the previous hypothesis of metacontrol by the left hemisphere in this type of cognitive task.

Emotion recognition and inhibitory control in manifest and pre-manifest Huntington's disease: evidence from a new Stroop task

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a genetic neurodegenerative disorder that affects not only the motor but also the cognitive domain. In particular, cognitive symptoms such as impaired executive skills and deficits in recognizing other individuals’ mental state may emerge many years before the motor symptoms. This study was aimed at testing two cognitive hypotheses suggested by previous research with a new Stroop task created for the purpose: 1) the impairment of emotion recognition in HD is moderated by the emotions’ valence, and 2) inhibitory control is impaired in HD. Forty manifest and 20 pre-manifest HD patients and their age- and gender-matched controls completed both the traditional “Stroop Color and Word Test” (SCWT) and the newly created “Stroop Emotion Recognition under Word Interference Task” (SERWIT), which consist in 120 photographs of sad, calm, or happy faces with either congruent or incongruent word interference. On the SERWIT, impaired emotion recognition in manifest HD was moderated by emotion type, with deficits being larger in recognizing sadness and calmness than in recognizing happiness, but it was not moderated by stimulus congruency. On the SCWT, six different interference scores yielded as many different patterns of group effects. Overall our results corroborate the hypothesis that impaired emotion recognition in HD is moderated by the emotions’ valence, but do not provide evidence for the hypothesis that inhibitory control is impaired in HD. Further research is needed to learn more about the psychological mechanisms underlying the moderating effect of emotional valence on impaired emotion recognition in HD, and to corroborate the hypothesis that the inhibitory processes involved in Stroop tasks are not impaired in HD. Looking beyond this study, the SERWIT promises to make important contributions to disentangling the cognitive and the psychomotor aspects of neurological disorders. The research was approved by the Ethics Committee of the “Istituto Leonarda Vaccari”, Rome on January 24, 2018.

Post-Attentive Integration and Topographic Map Distribution During Audiovisual Processing in Dyslexia: A P300 Event-Related Component Analysis.

BackgroundResearch on audiovisual post-attentive integration has been carried out using a variety of experimental paradigms and experimental groups but not yet studied in dyslexia. We investigated post-attentive integration and topographic voltage distribution in children with dyslexia by analysing the P300 event-related potential (ERP) component.MethodsWe used a 128-child ERP net for the ERP experiment. Two types of stimuli were presented as either congruent or incongruent stimuli. Congruent stimuli included a matching auditory sound with an animal image, whereas incongruent stimuli included unmatched animal sounds. A total of 24 age-matched children were recruited in the control (n = 12) and dyslexia (n = 12) groups. Children pressed button ‘1’ or ‘2’ when presented with congruent or incongruent stimuli, respectively. The P300 amplitudes and latencies with topographic voltage distribution were analysed for both groups.ResultsThe dyslexia group evoked significantly higher P300 amplitudes at the T4 area than the control group. No significant differences were found in cases of P300 latency. Moreover, the dyslexia group demonstrated a higher intensity of P300 voltage distribution in the right parietal and left occipital areas than the control group.ConclusionPost-attentive integration for children with dyslexia is higher and that this integration process implicated the parietal and occipital areas.

Semantic Conflict and Response Conflict in the Stroop Task

The most common ways researchers explain the Stroop effect are either through semantic or through response conflict. According to the literature, there are several methods capable of disentangling these conflicts: to use words outside of the response set, to use associatively related colors and words, or to use a “2:1” paradigm (requiring the same response for two types of stimuli). However, we believe that these methods cannot entirely differentiate semantic and response conflicts. We propose the following alternative method: when naming the color of a printed word (e.g., red, yellow, etc.) in the Stroop test, participants were asked to use different color names for some colors. For example, the red-colored stimuli had to be named by the word “yellow”. This approach allowed us to create semantically congruent stimuli, but with the conflict at the response level (the word red appears in red, but the participants have to say “yellow” because of the rule). Some stimuli remain congruent at the response level, but with the conflict at the semantic level (the word yellow appears in red, and the participants have to say “yellow” because of the rule). The results showed that semantically congruent stimuli do not produce the Stroop effect even if the meaning of the word corresponds to an incorrect response. In turn, congruence at the response level reduces the interference effect, but interference remains significant. Thus, the response conflict affects the magnitude of the Stroop effect only when there is a semantic conflict. Our data do not correspond to models that assume direct activation of responses corresponding to word meaning

Auditory Perceptual History Is Propagated through Alpha Oscillations.

SummaryPerception is a proactive, “predictive” process, in which the brain relies, at least in part, on accumulated experience to make best guesses about the world to test against sensory data, updating the guesses as new experience is acquired. Using novel behavioral methods, the present study demonstrates the role of alpha rhythms in communicating past perceptual experience. Participants were required to discriminate the ear of origin of brief sinusoidal tones that were presented monaurally at random times within a burst of uncorrelated dichotic white noise masks. Performance was not constant but varied with delay after noise onset in an oscillatory manner at about 9 Hz (alpha rhythm). Importantly, oscillations occurred only for trials preceded by a target tone to the same ear, either on the previous trial or two trials back. These results suggest that communication of perceptual history generates neural oscillations within specific perceptual circuits, strongly implicating behavioral oscillations in predictive perception and with formation of working memory.

Effects of attentional bias modification therapy on the cue reactivity and cognitive control networks in participants with cocaine use disorders

ABSTRACT Background While attentional bias modification therapy (ABMT) alters drug-related behaviors in some substance users, results have been mixed in individuals with cocaine use disorders (CUD). Objectives The current study examined whether ABMT affected brain functioning during independent measures of cue reactivity (i.e., cocaine versus food cues) and cognitive control (i.e., incongruent versus congruent trials), and whether brain activity was associated with baseline or post-intervention cocaine use. Methods 37 participants (62% male) were randomly assigned to ABMT or control therapy. Clinical and neuroimaging assessments occurred at baseline and immediately post-intervention, with additional clinical testing at 2 weeks and 3 months following intervention. Cocaine use was assessed through self-report. Results Slower reaction times and increased functional activation (prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex) were observed for incongruent versus congruent stimuli and increased functional activation for cocaine relative to food videos (ventral striatum, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex). The default-mode network (DMN) was not deactivated during exposure to cocaine videos. The degree of activation during cocaine relative to food cues was associated with baseline cocaine use (insula only) and reduction in use following treatment (insula and anterior DMN) above and beyond clinical variables. Cognitive control network activity was not associated with cocaine use at baseline or following treatment. ABMT therapy did not differentially affect cocaine use or functional activation during either task. Conclusion Current results suggest a relationship between cue reactivity network activation and cocaine use, but question the efficacy of ABMT in changing brain function during cue reactivity or cognitive control tasks.

AGE-RELATED DIFFERENCES IN INHIBITION INVESTIGATION OF SIMON AND FLANKER CONFLICTS IN ERPS

It is unclear whether or not older adults experience more difficulty managing cognitive conflict by inhibiting distracting stimuli and/or ignoring irrelevant information than younger adults. A common procedure used to measure inhibitory function is through the use of congruent and incongruent stimuli. Specifically, past literature that used tasks like the Simon and flanker have found differing effects on reaction times and various event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes and latencies, suggesting that either inhibitory function is a unitary mechanism or multifaceted. Moreover, research exhibits uncertainty for whether or not age influences deficits to inhibitory function. Therefore, the present study sought to investigate these research questions by combining the Simon and flanker tasks into one unique task. The study’s behavioral results indicate that older adults have greater difficulty with cognitive conflict in both Simon and flanker tasks due to significantly prolonged reaction times during incongruent trials. Furthermore, reaction time data posits that there are no significant age-related differences between the Simon and flanker task. This finding indicates that through the use of these tasks, inhibitory function is a unitary mechanism. In addition, preliminary electroencephalogram data shows that younger and older adults process the task’s information similarly. These initial findings can further inhibition research through its use as benchmarks for the measurement of cognitive change and deficit identification in older adults.

Semantic Incongruency Interferes With Endogenous Attention in Cross-Modal Integration of Semantically Congruent Objects.

Efficient multisensory integration is often influenced by other cognitive processes including, but not limited to, semantic congruency and focused endogenous attention. Semantic congruency can re-allocate processing resources to the location of a congruent stimulus, while attention can prioritize the integration of multi-sensory stimuli under focus. Here, we explore the robustness of this phenomenon in the context of three stimuli, two of which are in the focus of endogenous attention. Participants completed an endogenous attention task with a stimulus compound consisting of 3 different objects: (1) a visual object (V) in the foreground, (2) an auditory object (A), and (3) a visual background scene object (B). Three groups of participants focused their attention on either the visual object and auditory sound (Group VA, n = 30), the visual object and the background (VB, n = 27), or the auditory sound and the background (AB, n = 30), and judged the semantic congruency of the objects under focus. Congruency varied systematically across all 3 stimuli: All stimuli could be semantically incongruent (e.g., V, ambulance; A, church bell; and B, swimming-pool) or all could be congruent (e.g., V, lion; A, roar; and B, savannah), or two objects could be congruent with the remaining one incongruent to the other two (e.g., V, duck; A, quack; and B, phone booth). Participants exhibited a distinct pattern of errors: when participants attended two congruent objects (e.g., group VA: V, lion; A, roar), in the presence of an unattended, incongruent third object (e.g., B, bath room) they tended to make more errors than in any other stimulus combination. Drift diffusion modeling of the behavioral data revealed a significantly smaller drift rate in two-congruent-attended condition, indicating slower evidence accumulation, which was likely due to interference from the unattended, incongruent object. Interference with evidence accumulation occurred independently of which pair of objects was in the focus of attention, which suggests that the vulnerability of congruency judgments to incongruent unattended distractors is not affected by sensory modalities. A control analysis ruled out the simple explanation of a negative response bias. These findings implicate that our perceptual system is highly sensitive to semantic incongruencies even when they are not endogenously attended.

Does everyone see the forest before the trees? An order-constrained analysis of precedence and interference effects in a hierarchical letters task.

Inter-individual variability in global/local processing is often quantified through performance on the well-known hierarchical letters task (Navon, 1977). Here, a global letter stimulus is composed of local letters and participants perform a task (e.g., identification) on the global or local letter(s) in global and local attention conditions, respectively. Congruency between levels (e.g., same or different letter) is manipulated. Global precedence refers to faster average response times in the global versus local attention condition, whereas global/local interference refers to slower response times in local/global attention conditions for incongruent versus congruent stimuli. The size of these reaction time differences is used as a quantification of the ease with which individuals can identify the global letter (precedence) or are hampered by incongruency at the other level (interference). However, a quantification of the statistical evidence for or against individual differences in either measure rarely occurs. In this study, we applied order-constrained modelling (Haaf & Rouder, 2017) to three different data sets (N = 275, N = 116, and N = 40) from three different labs. This technique allows researchers to quantify the evidence for inter-individual differences in precedence and interference and, if present, whether these effects vary are in the same direction for everyone. In our two large-N data sets (with only 50–80 trials per condition), we observed that everyone shows precedence, with unconstrained variability (local and global precedence). Furthermore, everyone shows global and local interference, without inter-individual variability. This implies that precedence is not global for everyone and that interference does not vary between individuals, calling into question its usefulness as an individual difference characteristic. However, the data set with 40 observers and 320 trials per condition showed variability for global interference, and zero local interference. A proper quantification of variability in interference thus seems to require many more trials per observer than standard practice.

Synchronization of Sensory Gamma Oscillations Promotes Multisensory Communication.

Rhythmic neuronal activity in the gamma range is a signature of cortical processing and its synchronization across distant sites has been proposed as a fundamental mechanism of network interactions. While this has been shown within sensory streams, we tested whether cross talk between the senses relies on similar mechanisms. Direct sensory interactions in humans (male and female) were studied with a visual–tactile amplitude matching paradigm. In this task, congruent stimuli are associated with behavioral benefits, which are proposed to be mediated by increased binding between sensory cortices through coherent gamma oscillations. We tested this hypothesis by applying 4-in-1 multi-electrode transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) with 40 Hz over visual and somatosensory cortices. In phase stimulation (0°) was expected to strengthen binding and thereby enhance the congruence effect, while anti-phase (180°) stimulation was expected to have opposite effects. Gamma tACS was controlled by alpha (10 Hz) and sham stimulation, as well as by applying tACS unilaterally while visual–tactile stimuli were presented lateralized. Contrary to our expectations, gamma tACS over the relevant hemisphere delayed responses to congruent trials. Additionally, reanalysis of EEG data revealed decoupling of sensory gamma oscillations during congruent trials. We propose that gamma tACS prevented sensory decoupling and thereby limited the congruence effect. Together, our results favor the perspective that processing multisensory congruence involves corticocortical communication rather than feature binding. Furthermore, we found control stimulation over the irrelevant hemisphere to speed responses under alpha stimulation and to delay responses under gamma stimulation, consistent with the idea that contralateral alpha/gamma dynamics regulate cortical excitability.

Temporal Dynamics of Varying Physical Loads on Speed and Accuracy of Cognitive Control.

The present study examined the effect of 4 physical-load conditions on interference control throughout a period of 45min. A sample of 52 sport students was assigned to either a no, a low, an alternating low to moderate, or a moderate physical-load condition. A modified Eriksen-flanker task was administered in the preexercise period, 7 times during the exercise, and twice after completing the exercise. Significant interaction effects of time and condition, and significant time effects within condition on the reaction time of congruent stimuli and errors on incongruent stimuli, suggest a specific in-task effect of the alternating low to moderate and moderate physical-load conditions. Thus, it was concluded that moderate physiological arousal influences interference control by an increase of information-processing speed in tasks that require less cognitive control (congruent condition), which is at the expense of accuracy in cognitively more demanding tasks (incongruent condition).

Speech-specific audiovisual integration modulates induced theta-band oscillations.

Speech perception is influenced by vision through a process of audiovisual integration. This is demonstrated by the McGurk illusion where visual speech (for example /ga/) dubbed with incongruent auditory speech (such as /ba/) leads to a modified auditory percept (/da/). Recent studies have indicated that perception of the incongruent speech stimuli used in McGurk paradigms involves mechanisms of both general and audiovisual speech specific mismatch processing and that general mismatch processing modulates induced theta-band (4–8 Hz) oscillations. Here, we investigated whether the theta modulation merely reflects mismatch processing or, alternatively, audiovisual integration of speech. We used electroencephalographic recordings from two previously published studies using audiovisual sine-wave speech (SWS), a spectrally degraded speech signal sounding nonsensical to naïve perceivers but perceived as speech by informed subjects. Earlier studies have shown that informed, but not naïve subjects integrate SWS phonetically with visual speech. In an N1/P2 event-related potential paradigm, we found a significant difference in theta-band activity between informed and naïve perceivers of audiovisual speech, suggesting that audiovisual integration modulates induced theta-band oscillations. In a McGurk mismatch negativity paradigm (MMN) where infrequent McGurk stimuli were embedded in a sequence of frequent audio-visually congruent stimuli we found no difference between congruent and McGurk stimuli. The infrequent stimuli in this paradigm are violating both the general prediction of stimulus content, and that of audiovisual congruence. Hence, we found no support for the hypothesis that audiovisual mismatch modulates induced theta-band oscillations. We also did not find any effects of audiovisual integration in the MMN paradigm, possibly due to the experimental design.

Top-Down Predictions of Familiarity and Congruency in Audio-Visual Speech Perception at Neural Level.

During speech perception, listeners rely on multimodal input and make use of both auditory and visual information. When presented with speech, for example syllables, the differences in brain responses to distinct stimuli are not, however, caused merely by the acoustic or visual features of the stimuli. The congruency of the auditory and visual information and the familiarity of a syllable, that is, whether it appears in the listener’s native language or not, also modulates brain responses. We investigated how the congruency and familiarity of the presented stimuli affect brain responses to audio-visual (AV) speech in 12 adult Finnish native speakers and 12 adult Chinese native speakers. They watched videos of a Chinese speaker pronouncing syllables (/pa/, /pha/, /ta/, /tha/, /fa/) during a magnetoencephalography (MEG) measurement where only /pa/ and /ta/ were part of Finnish phonology while all the stimuli were part of Chinese phonology. The stimuli were presented in audio-visual (congruent or incongruent), audio only, or visual only conditions. The brain responses were examined in five time-windows: 75–125, 150–200, 200–300, 300–400, and 400–600 ms. We found significant differences for the congruency comparison in the fourth time-window (300–400 ms) in both sensor and source level analysis. Larger responses were observed for the incongruent stimuli than for the congruent stimuli. For the familiarity comparisons no significant differences were found. The results are in line with earlier studies reporting on the modulation of brain responses for audio-visual congruency around 250–500 ms. This suggests a much stronger process for the general detection of a mismatch between predictions based on lip movements and the auditory signal than for the top-down modulation of brain responses based on phonological information.

P1‐227: DEFICITS IN EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IN AMNESTIC MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT: EVENT‐RELATED POTENTIALS STUDY DURING STROOP COLOR‐WORD TASK

Previous investigations showed that Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related executive function deficits start near the beginning of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) phase of itself. The study aimed to explore deficits in executive function in amnestic MCI (aMCI) with Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) study. The ERP data were measured and analyzed in 30 aMCI and 38 healthy elderly controls (HEC) during Stroop Color-Word Task (SCWT). The study indicated that aMCI patients showed decreased accuracy (ACC) and delayed reaction time (RT) in incongruent condition, compared to HEC (all p < 0.05). Additionally, aMCI patients showed greater N450 amplitudes of a difference wave between ERPs elicited by incongruent and congruent stimuli at Fz electrode, compared to HEC (all p < 0.05). Moreover, standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography analysis (sLORETA) study showed a hyperactivation in the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in the contrast for the incongruent condition relative to the congruent condition, compared to HEC during N450 time range (p < 0.05). The study showed deficits in conflict processing in aMCI with an ERP study. And the deficits might derive from the left IPL. Hence, the study demonstrated that ERP with SCWT was a sensitive biomarker for recognizing aMCI patients from HEC.

The Effects of Repeated Dyspnea Exposure on Response Inhibition.

In order to treat dyspnea (=breathlessness) successfully, response inhibition (RI) as a major form of self-regulation is a premise. This is supported by research showing that self-regulation is associated with beneficial behavioral changes supporting treatment success in patients. Recent research showed that dyspnea has an impairing effect on RI, but the effects of repeated dyspnea exposure on RI remain unknown. Therefore, the present study tested the effects of repeated resistive load-induced dyspnea on RI over a 5-day period. Healthy volunteers (n = 34) performed the standard version of the Stroop task during baseline and dyspnea conditions on the first and fifth testing day and underwent an additional dyspnea exposure phase on each testing day. Variables of interest to investigate RI were reaction time, accuracy as well as the event-related potentials late positive complex (LPC) and N400 in the electroencephalogram. Reduced accuracy for incongruent compared to congruent stimuli during the dyspnea condition on the first testing day were found (p < 0.001). This was paralleled by a reduced LPC and an increased N400 for incongruent stimuli during the induction of dyspnea (p < 0.05). After undergoing dyspnea exposure, habituation of dyspnea intensity was evident. Importantly, on the fifth testing day, no differences between baseline, and dyspnea conditions were found for behavioral and electrophysiological measures of RI. These findings demonstrate that the impairing effect of dyspnea on RI disappeared after repeated dyspnea exposure in healthy participants. Translated to a clinical sample, it might cautiously be suggested that dyspnea exposure such as dyspnea perceived during physical exercise could reduce the impairing effect of dyspnea on RI which might have the potential to help increase self-regulation abilities and subsequent treatment efforts in dyspneic patients.

It's more than just conflict: The functional role of congruency in the sequential control adaptation

According to the conflict monitoring theory (CMT), one of the most prominent theories of cognitive control, the exertion of cognitive control is triggered by the detection of conflicting response tendencies in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Recent research has challenged this emphasis of response conflicts and has debated whether in addition to shielding after incongruent trials the relaxation after congruent trials also contributes to the sequential adaptation of control. To investigate the functionality of facilitative congruent trials in sequential adaptation of control, we conducted two experiments using a visual (Experiment 1) and an auditory (Experiment 2, preregistered) Simon task with stimuli presented laterally to the left or right (creating response congruent and incongruent trials) or without any particular spatial information (creating neutral trials). Both experiments showed converging results: in the error and reaction time data, the Simon effect was smaller following incongruent trials, larger following congruent trials, and the Simon effect following neutral trials was in-between. Results thus suggest that sequential control adaptations can originate from two processes: Increased shielding in response to incongruent trials and relaxation in response to congruent trials. Argumentations for a functional role of congruent and incongruent trials in the sequential adaptation of control suggest a more general theory of fluency monitoring instead of mere conflict monitoring. In addition, such extensions of the CMT provide theoretical explanations of how control is ever relaxed in response conflict tasks after being enhanced by conflict in the first place. Last but not least, the results may also be taken as a further hint that congruent stimuli may provide a positive affective signal for control relaxation just it has already been shown for incongruent stimuli as aversive signals for the up-regulation of control (shielding).

Cognitive conflict could facilitate negative stimulus processing: evidence from trait anxiety in the flanker paradigm.

The present study used event-related potentials to investigate the affective priming effect of cognitive conflict and the influence of trait anxiety during the early stage of conflict processing. Participants with relatively high-trait or low-trait anxiety were tested using a combination of flanker task (congruent or incongruent arrows) as primes presented 200 ms before positive or negative words as targets. Behavioral results showed that response times were shorter for negative targets following incongruent primes relative to congruent primes, and vice versa, suggesting that conflicts facilitated the processing of negative targets. Event-related potential results revealed that the N2 amplitudes (280-320 ms) for incongruent stimuli were significantly more negative than those for congruent stimuli, indicating a significant conflict effect. Moreover, the N400 amplitudes (580-680 ms) for positive targets after congruent primes were significantly more negative than those after incongruent primes, but no significant difference was found in the N400 amplitudes after congruent primes and incongruent primes for negative targets, indicating that conflicts had a negative effect on the subsequent processing. In addition, in the high-trait anxiety, the N400 amplitudes for negative targets after incongruent primes were significantly more negative than those after incongruent primes, and vice versa, indicating that conflicts facilitated the processing of negative targets. These findings showed that conflicts could facilitate the processing of negative targets and be viewed as aversive signals during the early stage of conflict processing and that high-trait anxiety promoted the negative effect induced by conflicts.

Effects of Pointing Gestures on Memory for (In)Congruent Stimuli in Children and Young Adults

ABSTRACTWe investigated whether finger pointing toward picture locations can be used as an external cognitive control tool to guide attention and compensate for the immature cognitive control functions in children compared with young adults. Item and source memory performance was compared for picture‐location pairs that were either semantically congruent (e.g., a cloud presented at the upper half of the screen) or incongruent (e.g., a cloud presented at the lower part of the screen). Contrary to our expectations, pointing had an adverse effect on source memory compared to visual observation only, in both age groups. As expected, superior source memory performance was found for congruent compared to incongruent picture‐locations pairs in both age groups. These findings suggest that pointing toward pictures compared to only viewing may hamper memory, and that congruent picture locations are easier to remember than incongruent ones.

Are Face-Incongruent Voices Harder to Process?

Based on current integration theories of face-voice processing, the present study had participants process 1,152 videos of faces uttering digits. Half of the videos contained face-voice gender-incongruent stimuli (vs. congruent stimuli in the other half). Participants indicated digit magnitude or parity. Tasks were presented in pure blocks (only 1 task) and in task switching blocks (using colored cues to specify task). The results indicate significant congruency effects in pure blocks, but partially reversed congruency effects in task switching, probably due to enhanced assignment of capacity toward resolving difficult situational demands. Congruency effects did not dissipate over time, ruling out that initial surprise associated with incongruent stimuli drove the effects. The results show that interference between two task-irrelevant person-related dimensions (face/voice gender) can affect processing of a third, task-relevant dimension (digit identity), suggesting greater processing ease associated with more authentic voices (i.e., voices that do not violate face-based expectancies).