ERP Study Research Articles

The Boolean map as the unit of visual working memory: An ERP study

The Boolean map as the unit of visual working memory: An ERP study

Proactive and reactive response inhibition of individuals with high schizotypy viewing different facial expressions: An ERP study using an emotional stop-signal task

The present study aimed to examine whether impairments in reactive (outright stopping) and proactive (preparation for stopping) response inhibition are affected by negative emotions in individuals with high schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, as well as the neural mechanisms underlying these processes. Twenty-seven participants with high schizotypy and 28 matched low-schizotypy individuals completed an emotional stop-signal task in which they responded to facial emotions (neutral or angry) or inhibited their responses (when the frame of the picture turned red). Electroencephalogram (EEG) data were also recorded during the task. At the neural level, analysis of go trials revealed that viewing angry faces impaired proactive inhibition. In addition, the high-schizotypy group exhibited a greater P3 amplitude in go trials in the neutral condition than the low-schizotypy group; however, no group difference was found in the angry condition. For stop trials (reactive inhibition), a smaller P3 amplitude was found in the angry condition than in the neutral condition. Moreover, high-schizotypy individuals showed smaller P3 amplitudes than low-schizotypy individuals. The current findings suggest that, at the neural level, viewing negative emotions impaired both proactive and reactive response inhibition. Individuals with high schizotypy exhibited impairments in proactive response inhibition in the neutral condition but not in the angry condition; they exhibited impaired reactive response inhibition in both emotion conditions. The present findings deepen our understanding of emotional response inhibition in individuals on the schizophrenia spectrum.

Self-deception: Distorted metacognitive process in ambiguous contexts.

As one of the commonly used folk psychological concepts, self-deception has been intensively discussed yet is short of solid ground from cognitive neuroscience. Self-deception is a biased cognitive process of information to obtain or maintain a false belief that could be both self-enhancing or self-diminishing. Study 1 (N= 152) captured self-deception by adopting a modified numerical discrimination task that provided cheating opportunities, quantifying errors in predicting future performance (via item-response theory model), and measuring the belief of how good they are at solving the task (i.e., self-efficacy belief). By examining whether self-efficacy belief is based upon actual ability (true belief) or prediction errors (false belief), Study 1 showed that self-deception occurred in the effortless (easier access to answer cues) rather than effortful (harder access to answer cues) cheating opportunity conditions, suggesting high ambiguity in attributions facilitates self-deception. Studies 2 and 3 probed the neural source of self-deception, linking self-deception with the metacognitive process. Both studies replicated behavioral results from Study 1. Study 2 (ERP study; N= 55) found that the amplitude of frontal slow wave significantly differed between participants with positive/self-enhancing and negative/self-diminishing self-deceiving tendencies in incorrect predictions while remaining similar in correct predictions. Study 3 (functional magnetic resonance imaging study; N= 33) identified self-deceiving associated activity in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex and showed that effortless cheating context increased cheating behaviors that further facilitated self-deception. Our findings suggest self-deception is a false belief associated with a distorted metacognitive mental process that requires ambiguity in attributions of behaviors.

‘Good for you!’ Processing social emotions in L2 discourse comprehension: an ERP study

AbstractSocial factors impact sentence comprehension in a first language (L1), suggesting that semantic processing cannot be dissociated from social and moral emotions in relation to pro/antisocial individuals. Given that integrating multiple types of information and processing emotion-laden pragmatic information is costlier in a second language (L2), we investigated whether social factors would affect discourse comprehension similarly in L2. Processing the outcomes of scenarios involving pro/antisocial protagonists provoked similar neural patterns in L2 as in L1 (Rodríguez-Gómez, Martín-Loeches, Colmenares, Romero Ferreiro & Moreno, 2020), suggesting that L2 users simultaneously integrate semantic and discourse-pragmatic information during sentence comprehension.

The influence of self-focused attention on emotional picture processing: An ERP study.

Research has documented neurophysiological indicators of anticipation (Stimulus Preceding Negativity [SPN]) and perception (Late Positive Potential [LPP]) of threat, yet little is known as to how self-focused attention manipulations influence emotion processing within the context of cued picture viewing. With self-referent attention moderating attention to external stimuli, it is necessary to document how self-focused attention impacts attention and the ability to emotionally process external threat. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the impact of self-focused attention on the anticipation and perceptual processing of unpleasant pictures within a cued-picture viewing paradigm among 33 participants. Overall, the results suggest that the self-focused attention manipulations disrupted anticipation but not processing of pictures, as indexed by the SPN and LPP respectively. Self-focused attention appears to disrupt the preparatory attention for upcoming unpleasant stimuli, potentially through loading cognitive resources or activation of associative defensive responding. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the impact of self-focused attention within the context of emotional picture processing and suggest further areas of investigation.

Late mismatch negativity of lexical tone at age 8 predicts Chinese children's reading ability at age 10.

Deficits in phonological processing are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises reading is scant. This 2-year longitudinal ERP study investigates changes in pre-attentive auditory processing that underlies categorical perception of mandarin lexical tones during the years children learn to read fluently. The main purpose of the present study was to explore the development of lexical tone categorical perception to see if it can predict children's reading ability. Both behavioral and electrophysiological measures were taken in this study. Auditory event-related potentials were collected with a passive listening oddball paradigm. Using a stimulus continuum spanning from one lexical tone category exemplar to another, we identified a between-category and a within-category tone deviant that were acoustically equidistant from a standard stimulus. The standard stimulus occurred on 80% of trials, and one of two deviants (between-category or within-category) equiprobably on the remaining trials. 8-year-old Mandarin speakers participated in both an initial ERP oddball paradigm and returned for a 2-year follow-up. The between-category MMN and within-category MMN significantly correlate with each other at age 8 (p = 0.001) but not at age 10. The between-category MMN at age 8 can predict children's ability at age 10 (p = 0.03) but the within-category cannot. The categorical perception of lexical tone is still developing from age 8 to age 10. The behavioral and electrophysiological results demonstrate that categorical perception of lexical tone at age 8 predicts children's reading ability at age 10.

Degree of incrementality is modulated by experimental context – ERP evidence from German quantifier restriction

ABSTRACT The current ERP study investigates the role of non-linguistic context in incremental semantic comprehension. Using picture-sentence verification, we examined the neurophysiological correlates of contextual adaptation effects. We manipulated experiment-inherent frequency and tested whether a relatively high ratio of experimental to filler sentences constrains the contextual restriction of the German quantifier alle (“all”). While previous results indicate that the truth evaluation may be postponed when the experimental setting is completely ambiguous with respect to a potentially following restriction, the current study used a higher ratio of non-restricted vs. restricted sentences than the previous one (4:1 vs. 1:1) and thereby tested whether a low restriction probability increases the likelihood of an immediate truth evaluation. Our results show that experiment-inherent frequency distributions immediately modulate the N400 amplitude, analogous to previous studies on speaker reliability.

Money priming enhances sensitivity to the outcome feedback of decision-making under uncertainty: Evidence from an ERP study

Money is the most common medium of exchange and plays an important role in our daily life. However, current literature has not yet specifically touched on the influence of money priming on decision-making behaviour under uncertainty and related neural mechanisms. In this study, we used event-related potentials with an adapted version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) paradigm to examine brain activity related to the effects of money priming on outcome evaluation in decision-making under uncertainty. Reward positivity (RewP) and P300 components were analysed with respect to feedback valence (win vs. loss) and priming condition (money vs. neutral). The ERP results demonstrated that when individuals made decisions after having been primed with the monetary concept, the positive outcome feedback evoked a larger RewP component than after they had been primed with neutral stimuli. Conversely, there was no significant money priming effect when the outcome feedback was negative. In contrast, when individuals made decisions after having been primed with the monetary concept, the negative outcome feedback evoked a larger P300 than after they had been primed with neutral stimuli, whereas there was no significant money priming effect when the outcome feedback was positive. Our findings, thus, indicate that the brain response to money priming effects on the outcome evaluation in the BART occurs at both an early semi-automatic processing stage and a later cognitive appraisal stage. They further suggest that individuals prefer achieving financial gains at first and then focus on preventing financial losses in the money priming condition relative to the neutral priming condition.

Deliberate control of facial expressions in a go/no-go task: An ERP study

In two studies we investigate the role of affective factors and top-down processes underlying production and deliberate control of emotional facial expressions and its neural underpinnings. In Study 1 we examine facial expressions of joy, fear and disgust depending on the emotional content of the visual stimuli (upright faces, inverted faces, emotion inducing pictures without faces). In Study 2 we focus on expressions of joy and disgust depending on gaze direction (with and without eye contact) in a more natural setting with a real person as stimulus. We hypothesized that the more automatic processes are induced by stimuli (e.g., arousal, mimicry or social cues like eye contact) the harder it is to control facial expressions; particularly expressions of joy compared to fear and disgust. In both studies we used go/no-go tasks and showed faster RTs for conditions with upright faces or eye contact, respectively. We also found faster RTs for expressions of joy than of fear and disgust. In Study 1 participants showed more errors in no-go trials for expressions of joy than for expressions of fear and disgust, indicating worse top-down control for expressions of joy than of fear or disgust. An ERP analysis of the no-go P3 in Study 1 revealed larger amplitudes for upright faces compared with both inverted faces and emotion inducing pictures and larger amplitudes for expressions of joy than for disgust. This indicates greater demand of top-down control when automatic mimicry processes are activated and some degree of specificity to particular facial expressions. In Study 2 more errors in no-go trials in conditions with eye contact only for expressions of joy indicate mimicry could be larger for expressions with high affiliative intent like expressions of joy, and reduced mimicry for negative expressions. All results indicate that facial expressions buffered by automatic processes (e.g., mimicry) have a greater need for top-down control, especially expressions of joy compared to expressions of fear and disgust.

Performance Differences Between High and Low Empathy Ability in Conflicts of Interest: An ERP Study.

ObjectiveEmpathy is negatively correlated with high levels of conflict behaviors, such as aggression. The purpose of this study was to examine whether there were still differences in the performance of high and low empathy ability under the general level of conflict.MethodsThe Chinese version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI-C) was distributed to 250 undergraduate students. The subjects were classified as the high-empathy group (n = 38) and the low-empathy group (n = 37). An improved ultimatum paradigm was used to create a relatively realistic general-intensity conflict situation. A total of 29 undergraduate students (15 in the low-empathy group) were subjected to conflicting or non-conflicting proposals. Event-related potential technology was used to record the EEG of the high- and low-empathy groups during the processing of different proposal types.ResultsThe high-empathy group had longer response times and lower rejection rates under different proposal types compared to the low-empathy group. The low-empathy group evoked more negative MFN amplitude under conflicting proposals than under non-conflicting proposals, while the difference was not significant in the high-empathy group. The low-empathy group induced greater LPP under non-conflicting proposals than under conflicting proposals, while the difference was not significant in the high-empathy group.ConclusionHigh-empathy individuals showed more altruistic behaviors, and fewer conflict tendencies compared to low-empathy individuals. Low-empathy individuals had greater negative evaluations of conflicting offers, while high-empathy individuals weakened their negative evaluations of conflicting proposals because of their relatively high empathy. Compared to high-empathy individuals, low-empathy individuals showed stronger motivation to converge on non-conflicting proposals.

Searching for Visual Singletons Without A Feature to Guide Attention.

RT studies have provided evidence for a singleton-detection strategy that is used to search for salient targets when there is no additional featural knowledge that would help guide attention. Despite this behavioral evidence, there have been few ERP studies of singleton detection mode because it was reported early on that the ERP signature of attentional selection (the N2pc) is absent without feature guidance. Recently, however, it was discovered that a small and relatively late N2pc occurs in singleton detection mode along with a previously unreported component called the singleton detection positivity (SDP). Here, we show that both components are influenced by the number of items in the display, as one might expect in a salience-based search mode. Specifically, the N2pc and SDP were larger when the set size was increased to make the singleton "pop out" more easily, when participants responded more quickly regardless of set size, and when RT search slopes were negative (Experiment 1). The latency of the SDP also depended on set size. In Experiment 2, EEG was recorded with a higher density electrode array to better characterize the scalp topography of the components and to estimate their neural sources. Regional sources near the ventral surface of extrastriate cortex in the occipital lobe explained over 96% of N2pc and SDP activities. These results indicate that searching in singleton detection mode selectively modulates processing within perceptual regions of visual cortex.

Diminished Inhibitory Control in Adolescents with Overweight and/or Substance Use: an ERP Study

Diminished Inhibitory Control in Adolescents with Overweight and/or Substance Use: an ERP Study

Falling on deaf ears: The effects of sender identity and feedback dimension on how people process and respond to negative feedback − An ERP study

Social contexts can affect how people respond to feedback from others. We investigated how context information modulates the cognitive processing of feedback messages (i.e., external evaluations of one's character). We manipulated two aspects of (positive and negative) feedback messages: The identity of the sender (ingroup vs. outgroup member), and the dimension (one's competence vs. morality) as focal concern addressed in the feedback. We measured affective and behavioral responses after participants received such feedback (Study 1, N = 194), and additionally recorded an EEG in Study 2 (N = 49). In both studies, participants reported being more emotionally affected by negative feedback from ingroup compared to outgroup senders. Participants in Study 1 also reported to perceive feedback on their morality (vs. competence) as more negative. Complementing these findings, ERP results of Study 2 revealed greater preferential processing (i.e., increased P200) of feedback messages delivered by ingroup rather than outgroup members. Additionally, participants paid less sustained attention to feedback on their morality (vs. competence, as indicated by decreased P300- and LPP-amplitudes), and afterward recalled less morality- (vs. competence-) related feedback messages. The ERP findings were more pronounced for negative compared to positive feedback. These results suggest that subtle cues such as the social group-membership of a sender or the dimension addressed in a feedback message can modulate the cognitive processing of that message. Furthermore, our findings may explain why people are inclined to disregard negative feedback from outgroup senders and on their moral character.

Positive attention bias in high socially anxious individuals: Evidence from an ERP study

The Bivalent Fear of Evaluation (BFEO) model posits that the fear of positive evaluation (FPE) is a core feature of social anxiety. As such, high socially anxious individuals may show attention bias when faced with positive stimuli. However, most of the previous studies focused on the negative attention bias of social anxiety, and less on the attention bias of positive stimuli. Meanwhile, the effect of stimulus presentation time on the attention bias pattern was unclear. In order to investigate this question, we used a dot-probe paradigm with facial expressions (happy, fearful, angry, neutral) presented for 100 ms and 500 ms. The ERP results showed: (1) For high socially anxious group, happy faces elicited a larger N1 for valid than for invalid cued probes, whereas for healthy control group, angry faces elicited a larger N1 for valid than for invalid cued probes. (2) When valid cues following happy faces presented for 500 ms, the N1 amplitude was larger than that of invalid cues. However, when valid cues following angry and fear faces presented for 100 ms, the N1 amplitude was larger than that of invalid cues. The results showed difficulty in attention disengagement of high socially anxious individuals from positive stimuli, as reflected by N1, illustrating the positive attention bias in social anxiety. These results prove that FPE may contribute to maintaining social anxiety.

Scrutinizing Whether Mere Group Membership Influences the N170 Response to Faces: Results from Two Preregistered Event-Related Potential Studies.

A socially consequential test of the cognitive penetrability of visual perception is whether merely sharing a group membership with another person influences how you encode their face. Past research has examined this issue by manipulating group membership with techniques from social psychology and then measuring the face-sensitive N170 ERP. However, methodological differences across studies make it difficult to draw conclusions from this literature. In our research, we conducted two large-scale, preregistered ERP studies to address how critical methodological decisions could influence conclusions about top-down effects of group membership on face perception. Specifically, we examined how mere group membership, perceptual markers that signify group membership, number of trials included in the study design, the racial/ethnic identity of face stimuli, and the data analytic approach affect inferences about the N170 response to faces. In Study 1, we found no evidence that mere group membership significantly influenced the N170. However, we found that the background color used to signify group membership modulated the magnitude and latency of the N170. Exploratory analyses also showed effects of stimulus race/ethnicity. In Study 2, we dissociated background color from face encoding by presenting background color before the faces. In this second study, we found no main effect of group membership, background color, or stimulus race/ethnicity. However, we did see an unhypothesized mere group membership effect on trials toward the end of the study. Our results inform debates about social categorization effects on visual perception and show how bottom-up indicators of group membership can bias face encoding.

The reliability of P300 and the influence of age, gender and education variables in a 50 years and older normative sample

ObjectivesThe present study aims to investigate the effects of age, gender, and level of education on P300 in a healthy population, aged 50 years and over; and determine the reliability metrics for different conditions and measurement methods. MethodAuditory and visual oddball recordings of 171 healthy adults were investigated. A fully automated preprocessing was applied to elicit ERP P300. Maximum peak amplitude, latency and mean amplitudes were measured. Data were stratified by age, gender, and education to determine group-level differences by using repeat measures of ANOVA. The internal consistency of P300 was calculated by a split-half method using odd-even segments. Test-retest reliability was assessed by calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). ResultsMaximum peak P300 amplitudes were higher in the 50–64 years age group compared to the >65 years age group; and females showed increased P300 amplitudes compared to males. P300 measures showed fair to good internal consistency and poor to good test-retest reliability. ConclusionAge and gender should be taken into account when designing ERP studies with elderly individuals. P300 showed good internal consistency in general, between gender groups and age groups. Long-term test-retest reliability was lower but acceptable. These findings can be interpreted as the strength of P300 by being an objective and reliable method independent of cultural differences. Here we underline several factors that may affect P300 measures and discuss other possible factors that should be standardized for P300 to be used in clinical settings.

Effects of Tai Chi and Walking Exercise on Emotional Face Recognition in Elderly People: An ERP Study.

Both tai chi and walking can improve the physical health of the elderly, but the effect on the emotional cognitive function of the elderly is unclear. To investigate the effect of long-term walking and tai chi exercise on the emotional cognitive function of the elderly, 63 subjects were recruited in this study according to age and exercise habits, including 16 in the youth control group, 15 in the elderly non-exercise control group, 17 in the elderly walking group, and 18 in the elderly tai chi group. The “learning–test paradigm” of emotional faces was used to measure the subjects’ ability to recognize and remember emotional (negative and neutral) faces. Behavioral and EEG data were recorded during the learning and testing phases. The results showed that there is aging in emotional cognition in older adults compared with younger adults. Long-term walking and tai chi exercise can delay the deterioration of emotional cognitive function in older adults to some extent. Both walking and tai chi exercise can delay the decline in aging-related emotional face recognition function to some extent. Walking exercise can delay the decline in aging-related emotional face memory function to some extent.

Spatial and temporal processing difficulties in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia: An ERP study.

Magnocellular (M) deficit theory indicates that individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) have low sensitivity to stimuli with high temporal frequencies (HTF) and low spatial frequencies (LSF). However, some studies found that temporal processing and spatial processing were correlated with different reading-related skills. Chinese is a logographic language, and visual skills are particularly important for reading in Chinese. It is necessary to investigate the temporal and spatial processing abilities in the M pathway of Chinese children with DD. Using electrophysiological recordings, the present study examined the mean amplitude and latency of P1 during a grating direction judgment task in 13 children with DD and 13 age-matched normal children. Dyslexic children showed a low amplitude and long latency of P1 in the HTF condition and LSF condition compared with age-matched children. In the HTF condition, the amplitude of P1 correlated with phonological awareness, and the latency of P1 correlated with reading fluency and rapid naming of digits. The amplitude of P1 in the LSF condition correlated with reading accuracy. This result suggested that Chinese children with DD had difficulties in both temporal and spatial processing in the M pathway. However, temporal processing and spatial processing played different roles in Chinese reading.

The effects of quantifier size on the construction of discourse models

Sentences with quantified expressions involve mental representations of sets of individuals for which some property holds (the reference set), as well as of sets for which the property does not hold (the complement set). Both sets can receive discourse focus with negative quantifiers, while the reference set is strongly preferred with positive quantifiers, complement set focus however being possible if contextually motivated. In an offline semantic plausibility study and two online EEG studies, we investigated whether the complement set is an available discourse entity inherently for positive quantifiers, as it is for negative quantifiers. The results show that while the default focus patterns induced by positive and negative quantifiers are robust, both complement and reference set are represented as discourse entities and this is to our knowledge the first study to show that even positive quantifiers make both reference and complement set mentally represented during discourse processing without contextual influence. We also discuss the impact the results from the two ERP studies have on the functional interpretation of two well known ERP effects: the N400 and the P600. • The proportion between the Reference set (for which some property is true) and the Complement set (for which the property is not true) of quantifiers matters in both offline acceptability and online processing. Proportionally larger sets are preferred over smaller sets and induce less processing difficulty. •Not only negative quantifiers, but also positive ones make both the Reference set and the Complement set mentally represented during discourse processing, without contextual influence. •The results support an approach where the N400 effect is related to lexical retrieval and the P600 effect is related to discourse integration.

Awareness to utilitarian responses in later life: An ERP study with moral dilemmas

The current study aims to provide the first insights into the neural correlates of utilitarian and deontological responses to moral dilemmas across the lifespan. To this purpose, younger (n = 30), middle-aged (n = 29), and older adults (n = 29) completed moral dilemmas during an EEG recording. Behaviorally, groups did not differ in the number of utilitarian responses and reaction times. However, at the neural level, older adults had higher Error Positivity (Pe) amplitudes than younger adults after utilitarian responses. As this effect was specific to utilitarian responses, it suggests that utilitarian decisions may induce increased conflict in the older group. These findings highlight that older adults may be more aware of the harmful outcomes of utilitarian decisions during moral decision-making.