情绪场景图片的注意偏向：眼动研究

注意实验中,与不带情绪色彩的刺激相比,具有情绪意义的刺激可引起注意偏向。本研究以情绪场景图片为材料,通过眼动技术分别记录被试在反向眼跳任务和Go/No-go任务中的眼动数据,考察了情绪图片的注意偏向。结果发现：反向眼跳任务中,对情绪图片的眼跳潜伏期比中性图片更长,眼跳错误率也更高;在Go任务中,相对于呈现在中央的中性图片,情绪图片引起的对靶子的眼跳潜伏期更长;在No-go任务中,相对于呈现在中央的中性图片,情绪图片引起的眼跳错误率更低。实验结果说明,情绪图片可引起注意偏向,表现为更快的捕获注意并且注意更难从情绪图片上转移。     

暴力犯罪者对负性情绪信息注意偏向的ERP研究

采用视觉搜索范式,探讨了暴力犯罪者对情绪刺激（愤怒面孔与高兴面孔）的注意偏向特点。行为数据显示,相比非暴力组,暴力组对愤怒面孔的反应要显著快于高兴面孔,初步验证了暴力犯罪者对负性情绪信息存在注意偏向。ERP数据进一步表明,当目标刺激为愤怒面孔时,暴力组N2pc的潜伏期要显著小于非暴力组,说明暴力犯罪者对愤怒面孔的觉察早于高兴面孔,对负性情绪刺激更为敏感。由于N2pc的波幅不存在显著差异,差异主要表现在反应时和潜伏期,说明暴力犯能够更快的觉察到负性情绪面孔,但并没有对其投入更多的注意资源,出现回避模式,表明暴力犯对负性情绪信息的加工是一种警觉—回避模式。     

Sex differences in interpretation bias in adolescents

Interpretation biases, in which ambiguous information is interpreted negatively, have been hypothesized to place adolescent females at greater risk of developing anxiety and mood disorders than same‐aged males. We tested the hypothesis that adolescent girls interpret ambiguous scenarios more negatively, and/or less positively, than same‐aged males using the Adolescent Interpretation and Belief Questionnaire (N = 67, 11–15 years old). We also tested whether adolescent girls and boys differed in judging positive or negative interpretations to be more believable and whether the scenario content (social vs. non‐social) affected any sex difference in interpretation bias. The results showed that girls had higher average negative interpretation scores than boys, with no sex differences in positive interpretation scores. Girls and boys did not differ on which interpretation they found to be most believable. Both sexes reported that positive interpretations were less likely to come to mind, and were less believable, for social than for non‐social scenarios. These results provide preliminary evidence for sex differences in interpretation biases in adolescence and support the hypothesis that social scenarios are a specific source of anxiety to this age group. A greater understanding of the aetiology of interpretation biases will potentially enhance sex‐ and age‐specific interventions for anxiety and mood disorders.     

Neural correlates of social perception on response bias

Accurate person perception is crucial in social decision-making. One of the central elements in successful social perception is the ability to understand another’s response bias; this is because the same behavior can represent different inner states depending on whether other people are yea-sayers or naysayers. In the present study, we have tried to investigate how the internal biases of others are perceived. Using a multi-trial learning paradigm, perceivers made predictions about a target’s responses to various suggested activities and then received feedback for each prediction trial-by-trial. Our hypotheses were that (1) the internal decision criterion of the targets would be realized through repeated experiences, and (2) due to positive–negative asymmetry, yea-sayers would be recognized more gradually than naysayers through the probabilistic integration of repeated experiences. To find neural evidence that tracks probabilistic integration when forming person knowledge on response biases, we employed a model-based fMRI with a State-Space Model. We discovered that person knowledge about yea-sayers modulated several brain regions, including caudate nucleus, DLPFC, hippocampus, etc. Moreover, when person knowledge was updated with incorrect performance feedback, brain regions including the caudate nucleus, DLPFC, dmPFC, and TPJ were also involved. There were overlapping regions for both processes, caudate nucleus and DLPFC, suggesting that these regions take crucial roles in forming person knowledge with repeated feedback, while reflecting acquired information up to the current prediction.     

Dissociating electrophysiological correlates of subjective,objective, and correct memory in investigating the emotion-induced recognition bias

Performance on tasks requiring discrimination of at least two stimuli can be viewed either from an objective perspective (referring to actual stimulus differences), or from a subjective perspective (corresponding to participant’s responses). Using event-related potentials recorded during an old/new recognition memory test involving emotionally laden and neutral words studied either blockwise or randomly intermixed, we show here how the objective perspective (old versus new items) yields late effects of blockwise emotional item presentation at parietal sites that the subjective perspective fails to find, whereas the subjective perspective (“old” versus “new” responses) is more sensitive to early effects of emotion at anterior sites than the objective perspective. Our results demonstrate the potential advantage of dissociating the subjective and the objective perspective onto task performance (in addition to analyzing trials with correct responses), especially for investigations of illusions and information processing biases, in behavioral and cognitive neuroscience studies.     

Accuracy of retrospective memory and covariation estimation in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Assessment methods relying on biased or inaccurate retrospective recall may distort knowledge about the nature of disorders and lead to faulty clinical inferences. Despite concerns about the accuracy of retrospective recall in general and in particular with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, the accuracy of retrospective recall for one's own symptoms assessed in vivo is unknown in this population. This study used a prospective ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology to create a criterion against which to assess recall accuracy in OCD patients. Although results indicated that patients’ retrospective recall of OCD symptoms was fairly accurate, they consistently overestimated the magnitude of OCD symptom covariation with non-OCD facets (e.g., sleep duration, contemporaneous stress level, etc.). Findings suggest that even when recall of OCD symptoms is accurate, patients may be inaccurate in estimating symptom covariation. The findings have implications for the research, case conceptualization, and assessment of OCD, and may extend to other disorders.     

Affective primes suppress attention bias to threat in socially anxious individuals

Anxious individuals show an attention bias towards threatening information. However, under conditions of sustained environmental threat this otherwise-present attention bias disappears. It remains unclear whether this suppression of attention bias can be caused by a transient activation of the fear system. In the present experiment, high socially anxious and low socially anxious individuals (HSA group, n=12; LSA group, n=12) performed a modified dot-probe task in which they were shown either a neutral or socially threatening prime word prior to each trial. EEG was collected and ERP components to the prime and faces displays were computed. HSA individuals showed an attention bias to threat after a neutral prime, but no attention bias after a threatening prime, demonstrating that suppression of attention bias can occur after a transient activation of the fear system. LSA individuals showed an opposite pattern: no evidence of a bias to threat with neutral primes but induction of an attention bias to threat following threatening primes. ERP results suggested differential processing of the prime and faces displays by HSA and LSA individuals. However, no group by prime interaction was found for any of ERP components.     

Inner speech slips exhibit lexical bias, but not the phonemic similarity effect

Inner speech, that little voice that people often hear inside their heads while thinking, is a form of mental imagery. The properties of inner speech errors can be used to investigate the nature of inner speech, just as overt slips are informative about overt speech production. Overt slips tend to create words (lexical bias) and involve similar exchanging phonemes (phonemic similarity effect). We examined these effects in inner and overt speech via a tongue-twister recitation task. While lexical bias was present in both inner and overt speech errors, the phonemic similarity effect was evident only for overt errors, producing a significant overtness by similarity interaction. We propose that inner speech is impoverished at lower (featural) levels, but robust at higher (phonemic) levels.     

Moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments

An extensive body of research suggests that the distinction between doing and allowing plays a critical role in shaping moral appraisals. Here, we report evidence from a pair of experiments suggesting that the converse is also true: moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments. Specifically, morally bad behavior is more likely to be construed as actively ‘doing’ than as passively ‘allowing’. This finding adds to a growing list of folk concepts influenced by moral appraisal, including causation and intentional action. We therefore suggest that the present finding favors the view that moral appraisal plays a pervasive role in shaping diverse cognitive representations across multiple domains.