The time course of attentional modulation on emotional conflict processing |
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| Authors: | Pingyan Zhou Guochun Yang Weizhi Nan |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;2. School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China |
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| Abstract: | Cognitive conflict resolution is critical to human survival in a rapidly changing environment. However, emotional conflict processing seems to be particularly important for human interactions. This study examined whether the time course of attentional modulation on emotional conflict processing was different from cognitive conflict processing during a flanker task. Results showed that emotional N200 and P300 effects, similar to colour conflict processing, appeared only during the relevant task. However, the emotional N200 effect preceded the colour N200 effect, indicating that emotional conflict can be identified earlier than cognitive conflict. Additionally, a significant emotional N100 effect revealed that emotional valence differences could be perceived during early processing based on rough aspects of input. The present data suggest that emotional conflict processing is modulated by top-down attention, similar to cognitive conflict processing (reflected by N200 and P300 effects). However, emotional conflict processing seems to have more time advantages during two different processing stages. |
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| Keywords: | Emotional conflict Cognitive conflict Top-down attention N200 N100 P300 |
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