Impact of negative affectively charged stimuli and response style on cognitive-control-related neural activation: An ERP study

The canonical AX-CPT task measures two forms of cognitive control: sustained goal-oriented control (“proactive” control) and transient changes in cognitive control following unexpected events (“reactive” control). We modified this task by adding negative and neutral International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures to assess the effects of negative emotion on these two forms of cognitive control. Proactive and reactive control styles were assessed based on measures of behavior and electrophysiology, including the N2 event-related potential component and source space activation (Low Resolution Tomography [LORETA]). We found slower reaction-times and greater DLPFC activation for negative relative to neutral stimuli. Additionally, we found that a proactive style of responding was related to less prefrontal activation (interpreted to reflect increased efficiency of processing) during actively maintained previously cued information and that a reactive style of responding was related to less prefrontal activation (interpreted to reflect increased efficiency of processing) during just-in-time environmentally triggered information. This pattern of results was evident in relatively neutral contexts, but in the face of negative emotion, these associations were not found, suggesting potential response style-by-emotion interaction effects on prefrontal neural activation.     

冲动特质对青少年认知控制的影响——基于双重认知控制理论

根据双重认知控制理论,抑制控制分为主动性控制和反应性控制。为了探索冲动特质青少年究竟在哪个抑制控制成分存在不足,本研究用冲动性人格量表(BIS-11)选取了高冲动特质和低冲动特质青少年,并记录了他们在完成AX-CPT任务时的反应时和正确率。结果显示:与低冲动个体相比,高冲动个体在BX试次(主动性控制)上的反应时和正确率以及线索辨别力指数上的表现均差于低冲动个体,而在AY试次(反应性控制)上的反应时和正确率以及探测敏感性指标上的表现与低冲动个体没有显著差异。这些结果说明,与低冲动特质青少年相比,高冲动特质青少年的反应性控制保存较好,但主动性控制能力表现出不足。     

Impaired context maintenance in mild to moderately depressed students

We test the hypothesis that people with depression experience difficulties in maintaining task-relevant context information over longer periods of time using the AX version of the continuous performance task (AX-CPT). The AX-CPT requires that participants maintain a context cue (A) in an active state in order to respond correctly to a target cue (X) presented after a short delay. A total of 40 nondepressed and mild to moderately depressed students completed versions of the task with short (1-s) or long (10-s) interstimulus intervals (ISIs). Mildly depressed participants made significantly more context-dependent (BX) errors, unlike controls who made more errors on trials where good context processing would impair performance (AY). This pattern of errors was only evident in the long ISI condition, suggesting poor maintenance of contextual information.