Exploring emotional and cognitive conflict using speeded voluntary facial expressions.

Affective conflict and control may have important parallels to cognitive conflict and control, but these processes have been difficult to quantitatively study with emotionally naturalistic laboratory paradigms. The current study examines a modification of the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT), a well-validated probe of cognitive conflict and control, for the study of emotional conflict. In the Emotional AX-CPT, speeded emotional facial expressions measured with electromyography (EMG) were used as the primary response modality, and index of emotional conflict. Bottom-up emotional conflict occurred on trials in which precued facial expressions were incongruent with the valence of an emotionally evocative picture probe (e.g., smiling to a negative picture). A second form of top-down conflict occurred in which the facial expression and picture probe were congruent, but the opposite expression was expected based on the precue. A matched version of the task was also performed (in a separate group of participants) with affectively neutral probe stimuli. Behavioral interference was observed, in terms of response latencies and errors, on all conflict trials. However, bottom-up conflict was stronger in the emotional version of the task compared to the neutral version; top-down conflict was similar across the two versions. The results suggest that voluntary facial expressions may be more sensitive to indexing emotional than nonemotional conflict, and importantly, may provide an ecologically valid method of examining how emotional conflict may manifest in behavior and brain activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Signals of threat do not capture, but prioritize, attention: A conditioning approach.

Research suggests that threatening information captures attention more rapidly than neutral information. However, in most studies threat stimuli differ perceptually from neutral stimuli and are instrumental to perform the task, leaving the question unanswered whether threat is sufficient to capture attention. In experiment 1, we designed a visual search task with stimuli of equal salience (colored circles) that have the potential to lead to efficient search (10 ms/item). In experiment 2, one of the colors (conditioned stimulus, CS+) was made threatening by means of fear conditioning. Participants responded to a target presented in one of the circles. Overall, the search was faster on congruent trials (where the target was presented in the CS+) than on baseline trials (where the CS + was absent). Furthermore, the search was slower on incongruent trials (where the target was presented in another color than the CS+) than on baseline trials. The search on congruent trials was affected by set size (90 ms/item), but to a lesser extent than on baseline trials (105 ms/item). We conclude that threat prioritizes, but does not capture attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive control: Dynamic, sustained, and voluntary influences.

The cost of incongruent stimuli is reduced when conflict is expected. This series of experiments tested whether this improved performance is due to repetition priming or to enhanced cognitive control. Using a paradigm in which Word and Number Stroop alternated every trial, Experiment 1 assessed dynamic trial-to-trial changes. Incongruent trials led to task-specific reduction of conflict (trial n + 2) without cross-task modulation (trial n + 1), but this was fully explained by repetition priming. In contrast, an increased ratio of incongruent words did lead to sustained task-specific enhancement, above and beyond repetition priming (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the voluntary modulation of cognitive control: A cue predicted the congruency of the incoming trial, allowing participants to establish the correct mindset (Word Stroop in Experiment 3, Flanker task in Experiment 4). Preparing oneself to process an incongruent word (or flanker) enhanced conflict resolution in the subsequent Number Stroop, an example of cross-task modulation. Taken together, these experiments reveal the multifaceted aspects of conflict resolution: Trial-to-trial changes are often due to repetition priming; sustained modulations brought about by task demands are task specific; and voluntary modulations are task general. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectancies of reinforcer location and quality as cues for a conditional discrimination in pigeons.

Experiment 1 demonstrated that reliably correlating different reinforcer locations (top vs bottom) with sample stimuli markedly enhanced the performance of pigeons (Columbalivia) in a spatial conditional discrimination. This differential outcome effect was more evident at longer retention intervals. In Experiment 2, pigeons were given the opportunity to learn about two redundant reinforcer features location (top vs bottom) and quality (grain vs chow). Which reinforcer feature exerted control over choosing depended on task structure. In the congruent task, where pecks to the top key operated the top feeder and pecks to the bottom key operated the bottom feeder, reinforcer location exerted predominant control. In the incongruent task, where pecks to the top key operated the bottom feeder and vice versa, reinforcer quality exerted exclusive control. These results have implications for the nature of reinforcer representations in instrumental learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Global–local and trail-making tasks by monolingual and bilingual children: Beyond inhibition.

In 3 experiments, a total of 151 monolingual and bilingual 6-year-old children performed similarly on measures of language and cognitive ability; however, bilinguals solved the global–local and trail-making tasks more rapidly than monolinguals. This bilingual advantage was found not only for the traditionally demanding conditions (incongruent global–local trials and Trails B) but also for the conditions not usually considered to be cognitively demanding (congruent global–local trials and Trails A). All the children performed similarly when congruent trials were presented in a single block or when perceptually simple stimuli were used, ruling out speed differences between the groups. The results demonstrate a bilingual advantage in processing complex stimuli in tasks that require executive processing components for conflict resolution, including switching and updating, even when no inhibition appears to be involved. They also suggest that simple conditions of the trail-making and global–local tasks involve some level of effortful processing for young children. Finally, the bilingual advantage in the trail-making task suggests that the interpretation of standardized measures of executive control needs to be reconsidered for children with specific experiences, such as bilingualism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquired equivalence and distinctivenes of cues: I. Exploring a neural network approach.

Rats were placed in 4 contexts (A, B, C, D) where they received 2 auditory stimuli (X, Y); in A and B presentations of X were paired with food and those of Y were not, and in C and D, Y was paired with food and X was not. Rats then received combinations of contexts that had provided congruent (AB, CD) or incongruent (AD, CB) information about X and Y's relationship to food. Responding was more variable during congruent than incongruent trials (Experiment 1) and was systematically increased and decreased during congruent (relative to incongruent) trials by the presentation of food or no food, respectively (Experiment 2). These results support a connectionist approach to acquired changes in stimulus distinctiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional attention set-shifting and its relationship to anxiety and emotion regulation.

Attentional deployment is a primary strategy individuals use to regulate emotion. In 2 experiments, a measure of an individual’s ability to deploy attention toward and away from emotional mental representations was developed. This measure of attentional control capacity for emotion adapted an explicit-cuing task switching paradigm in which participants had to shift between emotional and neutral mental sets. Experiment 1 (N = 118) showed that those higher in trait anxiety and worrisome thoughts took longer to switch from a neutral to an emotional mental set. In Experiment 2 (N = 42), participants were given a stressful anagram task, and those who switched more efficiently from a neutral set to an emotional set were more frustrated by the stressful task. In addition, those who switched more efficiently from an emotional set to a neutral set persisted longer on the stressful task. These findings provide an initial step toward identifying possible mechanisms through which individuals apply attentional control to emotional mental representations to regulate emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adjustments of conflict monitoring in Parkinson's disease.

Objective: In Stroop-like tasks, the detection of conflict triggers adjustments of cognitive control to reduce conflict in subsequent trials. The present study tested the hypothesis of an impaired modulation of conflict monitoring in Parkinson's disease (PD). Method: 18 PD patients and 18 healthy control (HC) participants performed a Stroop-like task in 2 conditions differing in terms of incongruent/congruent stimuli ratio. Results: HC participants demonstrated a sustained modulation of interference effect, the interference effect being decreased when the proportion of incongruent stimuli was high. A trial-by-trial analysis also showed that in the HC group, processing an incongruent stimulus reduced interference in the subsequent trial. Unlike controls, PD patients did not demonstrate any transient or sustained reduction of the interference effect. Conclusion: Within the framework of recent models, these results can be interpreted as an impairment of a proactive mode of cognitive control in patients with PD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual conditioning with massed versus distributed unconditional stimuli in the absence of explicit conditional stimuli.

Rats received unsignaled shocks in an observation chamber, with different groups varying with respect to time between shocks. Twenty-four hours later the rats were returned to the observation chamber for a test of conditioning to contextual stimuli. The freezing response served as the dependent variable. In Experiment 1 we found that distributed shock trials (60 s) resulted in more context conditioning than did massed trials (3 s or 6 s). Experiment 2 replicated this intertrial interval (ITI) effect when total time in the context was equated for the massed and distributed groups. The observed beneficial effect of distributed practice for conditioning to contextual stimuli runs counter to the predictions of Pavlovian conditioning models that posit that the benefit of distributed conditioning trials for discrete conditional stimuli arises because of decreased contextual conditioning with longer ITIs (e.g., Gibbon & Balsam, 1981; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). Although the basic effect of enhanced performance with longer ITIs is consistent with Wagner's rehearsal model (e.g., 1978), three findings argue against such an account. First, posttrial stimulation did not reduce the benefit obtained from distributed trials (Experiment 3). Second, intertrial distractors did not improve performance of the animals subjected to massed trials (Experiment 4). And third, the ITI effect was not eliminated when conditioning was brought to its asymptote (Experiment 5). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional selection is biased toward mood-congruent stimuli.

One can exert significant volitional control over the attentional filter so that stimuli that are consistent with one's explicit goals are more likely to receive attention and become part of one's conscious experience. Here we pair a mood induction procedure with an inattentional blindness task to show that one's current mood has a similar influence on attention. A positive, negative, or neutral mood manipulation was followed by an attentionally demanding multiple-object tracking task. During the tracking task, participants were more likely to notice an unexpected face when its emotional expression was congruent with participants' mood. This was particularly true for the frowning face, which was detected almost exclusively by participants in the sad mood induction condition. This attentional bias toward mood-congruent stimuli provides evidence that one's temporary mood can influence the attentional filter, thereby affecting the information that one extracts from, and how one experiences the world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use of subliminal psychodynamic activation in the study of repression.

To study the clinical phenomenon of repression, 33 female undergraduates were selected for the presence of high sexual guilt and divided into 2 groups. One group evidenced a high degree of personality development from which it was inferred that they were prone toward (a) the use of repression rather than more primitive defenses and (b) oedipal rather than preoedipal conflict. The 2nd group evidenced a lesser degree of personality development, thus the above inferences did not apply. The subliminal psychodynamic activation method was used with both groups to evaluate effects on repression of intensifying and diminishing unconscious conflict over sexual wishes. Ss were exposed to conflict intensifying, conflict reducing, and neutral control stimuli, each accompanied by a congruent picture both before (in 1 condition) and after (in another condition) a recall test of both neutral and sexual material. The conflict-reduction condition did not affect memory of the passages, but the conflict-intensification condition did (a) for the group with the greater degree of personality development, (b) when this condition was presented before the material to be remembered, and (c) for the recall of neutral passages. The special conditions necessary for demonstration of repression are viewed as elucidating why it has previously been difficult to show evidence of repression in laboratory experiments. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motor activation without conscious discrimination in metacontrast masking.

Nine experiments investigated motor responses to geometric stimuli (a target and a distractor) preceded by masked primes. In congruent trials, the target was preceded by a smaller target-like shape and the distractor by a smaller distractor-like shape. In incongruent trials this arrangement was reversed. In neutral trials both primes were distractor-like shapes. Highly significant effects of these priming conditions on reaction time and error rate were found, although there was no conscious discrimination of primes, as assessed by a discrimination index (d′ or ds) not different from 0. This result subsisted under conditions of time pressure, feedback, practice, and financial incentive in the discrimination task. It remained unchanged under conditions in which the reaction time and discrimination tasks were blocked, alternated, randomly mixed, or combined on each trial. It is concluded that motor activation without conscious discrimination was demonstrated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Balancing cognitive demands: Control adjustments in the stop-signal paradigm.

Cognitive control enables flexible interaction with a dynamic environment. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated control adjustments in the stop-signal paradigm, a procedure that requires balancing speed (going) and caution (stopping) in a dual-task environment. Focusing on the slowing of go reaction times after stop signals, the authors tested 5 competing hypotheses for post-stop-signal adjustments: goal priority, error detection, conflict monitoring, surprise, and memory. Reaction times increased after both successful and failed inhibition, consistent with the goal priority hypothesis and inconsistent with the error detection and conflict hypotheses. Post-stop-signal slowing was greater if the go task stimulus repeated on consecutive trials, suggesting a contribution of memory. We also found evidence for slowing based on more than the immediately preceding stop signal. Post-stop-signal slowing was greater when stop signals occurred more frequently (Experiment 1), inconsistent with the surprise hypothesis, and when inhibition failed more frequently (Experiment 2). This suggests that more global manipulations encompassing many trials affect post-stop-signal adjustments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguous information: Beyond the emotion-congruent effect.

The authors investigated how anxiety influences the use of contextual information in the resolution of ambiguity. Participants heard ambiguous homophones (threat/neutral, positive/neutral, and neutral/ neutral) with related contextual information. State anxiety was manipulated experimentally. The interpretations of anxious participants were influenced by context to a greater extent than those of control participants. Some mood-incongruent effects were observed where anxious participants were more likely to adopt neutral interpretations of potentially threatening stimuli. Effects were observed in a spelling task (Experiments 1 and 2) and in a lexical decision task (Experiment 3), with supraliminal, and subliminal presentation of contextual cues, and with 2 different anxiety-induction procedures. Results show how anxiety affects both the content and the process of resolution of ambiguity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Here is looking at you: Emotional faces predominate in binocular rivalry.

Two incompatible pictures compete for perceptual dominance when they are presented to one eye each. This so-called binocular rivalry results in an alternation of dominant and suppressed percepts. In accordance with current theories of emotion processing, the authors' previous research has suggested that emotionally arousing pictures predominate in this perceptual process. Three experiments were run with pictures of emotional facial expressions that are known to induce emotions while being well controlled in terms of physical characteristics. In Experiment 1, photographs of emotional and neutral facial expressions were presented of the same actor to minimize physical differences. In Experiment 2, schematic emotional expressions were presented to further eliminate low-level differences. In Experiment 3, a probe-detection task was conducted to control for possible response-biases. Together, these data clearly demonstrate that emotional facial expressions predominate over neutral expressions; they are more often the first percept and they are perceived for longer durations. This is not caused by physical stimulus properties or by response-biases. This novel approach supports that emotionally significant visual stimuli are preferentially perceived. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applying the attractor field model to social cognition: Perceptual discrimination is facilitated, but memory is impaired for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions.

A new model of mental representation is applied to social cognition: the attractor field model. Using the model, the authors predicted and found a perceptual advantage but a memory disadvantage for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions. In Experiment 1, participants completed a same/different perceptual discrimination task involving morphed pairs of angry-to-happy Black and White faces. Pairs of faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions (i.e., happy Black, angry White) were more likely to be labeled as similar and were less likely to be accurately discriminated from one another than faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions (i.e., angry Black, happy White). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that objective discriminability of stimuli moderated the impact of attractor field effects on perceptual discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 3, participants completed a recognition task for angry and happy Black and White faces. Consistent with the attractor field model, memory accuracy was better for faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syllabic priming in lexical decision and naming tasks: The syllable congruency effect re-examined in French.

This study investigated the role of the syllable in visual recognition of French words. The syllable congruency procedure was combined with masked priming in the lexical-decision task (Experiments 1 and 3) and the naming task (Experiment 2). Target words were preceded by a nonword prime sharing the first three letters that either corresponded to the syllable (congruent condition), or not (incongruent condition). When primes were displayed for 67 ms, similar results were found in both the lexical decision and the naming tasks. Consonant-vowel targets such as BA.LANCE were recognised more rapidly in the congruent condition than in the incongruent and control conditions, while consonant-vowel-consonant targets such as BAL.CON were recognised more rapidly in the congruent and incongruent conditions than in the control condition. When a 43-ms SOA was used in the lexical-decision task, no significant priming effect was obtained. The results are discussed in an interactive-activation model incorporating syllable units. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social values and social conflict in creative problem solving and categorization.

Participants were led to expect either cooperation or conflict, and then performed K. Duncker's (1945) functional-fixedness task (Experiment 1) or E. Rosch's (1975) categorization task (Experiment 2). Those who expected cooperation, compared with those who expected conflict, were more likely to solve Duncker's task and used categories more inclusively, that is, rated low-prototypic exemplars of a category as better members of the category. In Experiment 3, the direct experience of cooperation and conflict had the same effect on categorization. In Experiment 4, participants were classified as having cooperative, competitive, or individualistic social values, and were led to expect either cooperation, conflict, or neither in a control. In the control, cooperators used categories more inclusively than competitors or individualists. Competitors used categories least inclusively in the conflict condition; in the cooperation condition, they used categories most inclusively. These results are interpreted in terms of the possible mediating role of cognitive organization in individual and intergroup conflict resolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Across-task conflict regulation: A replication failure.

Fernandez-Duque and Knight (2008, Experiment 4) described an across-task effect of endogenously generated, anticipatory control: A cue that predicted conflict in an upcoming Eriksen flanker task modulated conflict regulation in a subsequent number Stroop task. In 3 experiments, 1 of which included an exact replication condition, we failed to observe the expected across-task effect. However, a reanalysis of our data revealed a conflict adaptation effect: Number task processing on incongruent trials was influenced by random fluctuations in flanker task performance. Our findings, alongside reports of reactive across-task conflict regulation (Freitas, Bahar, Yang, & Banai, 2007), challenge Fernandez-Duque and Knight’s claim that across-task effects are a distinctive feature of anticipatory cognitive control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional resources in timing: interference effects in concurrent temporal and nontemporal working memory tasks

Three experiments examined interference effects in concurrent temporal and nontemporal tasks. The timing task in each experiment required subjects to generate a series of 2- or 5-sec temporal productions. The nontemporal tasks were pursuit rotor tracking (Experiment 1), visual search (Experiment 2), and mental arithmetic (Experiment 3). Each nontemporal task had two levels of difficulty. All tasks were performed under both single- and dual-task conditions. A simple attentional allocation model predicts bidirectional interference between concurrent tasks. The main results showed the classic interference effect in timing. That is, the concurrent nontemporal tasks caused temporal productions to become longer (longer productions represent a shortening of perceived time) and/or more variable than did timing-only conditions. In general, the difficult version of each nontemporal task disrupted timing more than the easier version. The timing data also exhibited a serial lengthening effect, in which temporal productions became longer across trials. Nontemporal task performance showed a mixed pattern. Tracking and visual search were essentially unaffected by the addition of a timing task, whereas mental arithmetic was disrupted by concurrent timing. These results call for a modification of the attentional allocation model to incorporate the idea of specialized processing resources. Two major theoretical frameworks--multiple resource theory and the working memory model--are critically evaluated with respect to the resource demands of timing and temporal/nontemporal dual-task performance.