No abstract

It has been suggested that anxious individuals are more prone to feel that negative outcomes are particularly extreme and to interpret ambiguous outcomes as negative compared to nonanxious individuals. Previous studies have demonstrated that the feedback negativity (FN) component of event-related brain potential (ERP) is sensitive to outcome evaluation and outcome expectancy. Hence, we predicted that the FN should be different between high trait-anxiety (HTA) and low trait-anxiety (LTA) individuals. To test our hypothesis, the ERPs were recorded during a simple monetary gambling task. The FN was measured as a difference wave created across conditions. We found that the amplitude of the FN indicating negative versus positive outcomes was significantly larger for LTA individuals compared to HTA individuals. However, there was no significant difference in the FN between groups in response to ambiguous versus positive outcomes. The results indicate that there is a relationship between the FN and individual differences in anxiety. We suggest that these results reflect the impact of anxiety on outcome expectation. Our results challenge the reinforcement learning theory of error-related negativity, which proposes that ERN and FN reflect the same cognitive process.

No abstract

Perceptual load is known to influence the locus of attentional selection in the brain but through an unknown underlying mechanism. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how perceptual load interacts with cue-driven involuntary attention. Perceptual load was manipulated in a line orientation discrimination task in which target location was cued involuntarily by means of peripheral cues. Attentional modulation was observed for P1m (the posterior midline P1 component with peak latency between 108 and 140 ms) with invalid trials eliciting larger P1m than valid trials. This attentional effect on P1m increased as a function of perceptual load, suggesting an early temporal locus for the interaction of perceptual load and involuntary attention. Attentional modulation for the C1 component (peak latency at approximately 80 ms) was also observed, but only for high load stimuli that were presented intermixed with low load stimuli. Results suggest that (a) perceptual load affects attentional selection at early processing stages; (b) perceptual load interacts with involuntary attention earlier and with different brain mechanisms relative to voluntary attention; and (c) attentional modulation in the C1 time range is possible under optimal experimental conditions.