Emotional conflict occurs at a late stage: evidence from the paired-picture paradigm

Abstract

The present study used paired-picture paradigm, where either congruent or incongruent emotional expressions were presented side by side to measure the neural correlates underlying the processing of emotional conflict effect. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants identified whether the valences of the paired-picture were consistent or not. The results showed that incongruent and congruent picture pairs both elicited larger N2 (210-310 ms) amplitudes than neutral pairs. In contrast, the conflict picture pairs elicited a larger conflict slow potential (conflict SP, 700-1000 ms) than did the positive and neutral picture pairs. There was no significant difference in conflict SP amplitudes between incongruent and congruent picture pairs (i.e., the mean amplitudes of negative and positive picture pairs). The results demonstrated that emotional information was identified and processed during the stage from about 210 ms to 310 ms. However, the emotional conflict effect did not appear until late stage (700-1000 ms). These results supported the distributed attention theory of emotions (DATE).

How socioemotional setting modulates late-stage conflict resolution processes in the lateral prefrontal cortex

“…However, the majority of studies employed conflict paradigms (i.e., Simon or Flanker) in which conflict resolution is quite fast (as inferred from the response times) or focused on the influence of stimulus emotionality on conflict processing relative to nonemotional/emotionally neutral stimuli. Indeed, in emotional Stroop paradigms, it has commonly been found that conflict effects are reflected within later stages of neurophysiological processing (Pan, Lu, Chen, Wu, & Li, 2016;Shen, Xue, Wang, & Qiu, 2013). It therefore is possible that interference effects, as modulated by the emotional category, are not evident in the N2-ERP time window, because emotional conflict detection in Stroop tasks is dependent on the level of processing of the stimulus (MacLeod, 1991).…”

How the depth of processing modulates emotional interference – evidence from EEG and pupil diameter data

“…Neither did we find interactive effects within the CSP data, which suggests that conflict monitoring or resolution processes in general are not modulated by varying the processing depth of emotional interfering stimuli. However, since results suggest that the CSP is mostly affected by pro-active control processes (Larson et al, 2014;Pan et al, 2016;Shen et al, 2013), this is an expected finding.…”

“…The ability to process relevant emotional information and ignore irrelevant emotional information is central for emotional self-regulation (Berg et al, 2016;Marusak, Martin, Etkin, & Thomason, 2015;Ochsner & Gross, 2005). These processes have extensively been examined using emotional interference (Stroop) tasks (Egner, Etkin, Gale, & Hirsch, 2008;Etkin, Egner, & Kalisch, 2011;Kunde & Mauer, 2008;McKenna & Sharma, 2004;Pan, Lu, Chen, Wu, & Li, 2016;Saunders, Milyavskaya, & Inzlicht, 2015;Schreiter, Chmielewski, & Beste, 2018b;Zinchenko, Kanske, Obermeier, Schröger, & Kotz, 2015). In the face-word Stroop task, for example, emotional faces are presented together with an emotional word that is either congruent or incongruent with the presented emotional face (Egner et al, 2008(Egner et al, , 2008Etkin et al, 2011;Kerns et al, 2004;Marusak et al, 2015).…”

“…Therefore, we do not expect to observe amplitude modulations and differential correlations with the pupil diameter in the N2 time window. The CSP (conflict-slow potential) has been shown to be modulated by emotional Stroop conflict (Chen et al, 2016;Larson et al, 2014;Ma, Liu, Zhong, Wang, & Chen, 2014;Schreiter et al, 2018b), but seems to reflect pro-active control processes rather than conflict control in response to complex task-demands (Larson et al, 2014;Pan et al, 2016;Shen, Xue, Wang, & Qiu, 2013). Therefore, it is unlikely that there are modulations of the processes by the NE system (i.e., correlations with pupil diameter data) and modulations in amplitude due to a manipulation of DOP.…”

Understanding mixed emotions: paradigms and measures

“…Different stimuli have been used to induce mixed emotions in the laboratory, such as recalling naturally occurring situations [4, 5, 6], fictitious press advertisements [7, 8, 9, 10], listening to self-selected music [11], the paired-picture paradigm [12, 13, 14], or excerpts from motion pictures [15, 16, 17, 18]. However, these stimuli have been either ideographic (e.g., recall, self-selected music) or not naturalistic (e.g., scenes from motion pictures), less clear regarding simultaneity, stability, and time course of the mixed emotion (e.g., paired-picture paradigm), focused on a specific type of mixed emotion (e.g., nostalgia, poignancy), limited in number, or missing a neutral comparison condition.…”