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ABSTRACT: Social psychologists have long noted the tendency for human behavior to conform to social group norms. This study examined
whether feedback indicating that participants had deviated from group norms would elicit a neural signal previously shown
to be elicited by errors and monetary losses. While electroencephalograms were recorded, participants (N = 30) rated the attractiveness of 120 faces and received feedback giving the purported average rating made by a group of
peers. The feedback was manipulated so that group ratings either were the same as a participant’s rating or deviated by 1,
2, or 3 points. Feedback indicating deviance from the group norm elicited a feedback-related negativity, a brainwave signal
known to be elicited by objective performance errors and losses. The results imply that the brain treats deviance from social
norms as an error.
KeywordsERP–Motivation–Cognitive control
Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 05/2012; 12(1):65-73. · 3.57 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This investigation tested the hypothesis that individuals low in positive affect are slower to shift attention from one focus to another. Ninety-six participants completed a self-report mood questionnaire and a standard attentional orienting task. Results indicated a significant correlation between cue validity effects and self-reported positive affect, such that individuals low in positive affect were relatively faster to respond to validly-cued targets and slower to respond to invalidly-cued targets, compared to individuals high in positive affect. Negative affect, psychometrically separated from positive affect by a principal components analysis, was unrelated to attentional orienting but was correlated with generalized alerting effects of cues. The main results are interpreted as supporting decreased cognitive flexibility in states of low positive affect.
Cognitive Therapy and Research 04/2012; 28(6):733-744. · 1.33 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In this research, we investigated the degree to which brain systems involved in ignoring emotionally salient information differ
from those involved in ignoring nonemotional information. The design allowed examination of regional brain activity, using
fMRI during color-word and emotional Stroop tasks. Twelve participants indicated the color of words while ignoring word meaning
in conditions in which neutral words were contrasted to emotionally negative, emotionally positive, and incongruent color
words. Dorsolateral frontal lobe activity was increased by both negative and incongruent color words, indicating a common
system for maintaining an attentional set in the presence of salient distractors. In posterior regions of the brain, activity
depended on the nature of the information to be ignored. Ignoring color-incongruent words increased left parietal activity
and decreased parahippocampal gyrus activity, whereas ignoring negative emotional words increased bilateral occipito-temporal
activity and decreased amygdala activity. The results indicate that emotion and attention are intimately related via a network
of regions that monitor for salient information, maintain attention on the task, suppress irrelevant information, and select
appropriate responses.
Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 04/2012; 3(2):81-96. · 3.57 Impact Factor
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[show abstract]
[hide abstract]
ABSTRACT: Social psychologists have long noted the tendency for human behavior to conform to social group norms. This study examined whether feedback indicating that participants had deviated from group norms would elicit a neural signal previously shown to be elicited by errors and monetary losses. While electroencephalograms were recorded, participants (N = 30) rated the attractiveness of 120 faces and received feedback giving the purported average rating made by a group of peers. The feedback was manipulated so that group ratings either were the same as a participant's rating or deviated by 1, 2, or 3 points. Feedback indicating deviance from the group norm elicited a feedback-related negativity, a brainwave signal known to be elicited by objective performance errors and losses. The results imply that the brain treats deviance from social norms as an error.
Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 03/2012; 12(1):65-73. · 3.57 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study used electroencephalogram (EEG) power spectrum analyses to characterize neural activity during the intertrial interval, a period during which online cognitive adjustments in response to errors or conflict are thought to occur. EEG alpha power was quantified as an inverse index of cerebral activity during the period between each response and the next stimulus in a Stroop task. Alpha power was significantly reduced following error responses compared to correct responses, indicating greater cerebral activity following errors. Reduced alpha power was also observed following Stroop conflict trials compared to no-conflict trials, suggesting that conflict engages processes of mental adjustment. Finally, hemispheric differences in alpha power during the intertrial interval supported the complementary roles of the left and right hemispheres in behavioral activation and inhibition.
Psychophysiology 05/2011; 48(5):583-90. · 3.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study tested the hypothesis that individual differences in cognitive control can predict individual differences in emotion regulation. Participants completed color-word and emotional Stroop tasks while an electroencephalogram was recorded, and then they reported daily stressful events, affect, and coping for 14 days. Greater posterror slowing in the emotional Stroop task predicted greater negative affect in response to stressors and less use of task-focused coping as daily stressors increased. Participants whose neural activity best distinguished errors from correct responses tended to show less stress reactivity in daily self-reports. Finally, depression levels predicted daily affect and coping independent of cognitive control variables. The results offer qualified support for an integrated conception of cognitive and emotional self-regulation.
Emotion 04/2011; 11(2):379-90. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study was designed to characterize the brain system that monitors speech in people who stutter and matched controls. We measured two electrophysiological peaks associated with action-monitoring: the error-related negativity (ERN) and the error positivity (Pe). Both the ERN and Pe were reliably observed after errors in a rhyming task and a nonverbal flanker task, replicating previous reports of a language-monitoring ERN and demonstrating that the Pe can also be elicited by phonological errors. In the rhyming task, stutterers showed a heightened ERN peak regardless of whether they actually committed an error. Similar results, though only marginally significant, were obtained from the flanker task. These results support the vicious cycle hypothesis, which posits that stuttering results from over-monitoring the speech plan. The elevation of the ERN in stutterers and the similarity of the results between the flanker and rhyming tasks implies that speech-monitoring may rely on the same neural substrate as action-monitoring.
Brain and Language 01/2011; 116(3):105-15. · 3.12 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Error commission evokes changes in event-related potentials, autonomic nervous system activity, and behavior, presumably reflecting the operation of a cognitive control network. Here we test the hypothesis that errors lead to increased cortical arousal, measurable as changes in electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha band power. Participants performed a Stroop task while EEG was recorded. Following correct responses, alpha power increased and then decreased in a quadratic pattern, implying transient mental disengagement during the intertrial interval. This trend was absent following errors, which elicited significantly less alpha power than correct trials. Moreover, post-error alpha power was a better predictor of individual differences in post-error slowing than the error-related negativity (ERN), whereas the ERN was a better predictor of post-error accuracy than alpha power. These findings imply that changes in cortical arousal play a unique role in modulating post-error behavior.
Psychophysiology 02/2009; 46(2):336-43. · 3.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study examined the effects of interpersonal similarity on vicarious error processing. We predicted that high similarity between self and other would predict increased neural responsiveness to the other's errors, based on the assumption that experience is more strongly shared when it involves similar others. Participants observed a confederate performing a flanker task while event-related brain potentials were recorded from the observer. Physiological data revealed two error-related potentials, the observational error-related negativity (oERN) and positivity (oPe). Self-reports of perceived similarity toward the confederate predicted both components. Participants reporting higher interpersonal similarity showed a larger oPe response to the other's errors, suggesting increased salience of errors committed by similar others. Unexpectedly, higher similarity also predicted a decreased oERN response. Divergent results for oERN and oPe may reflect the different functional roles of the two components. Together the results demonstrate that vicarious error monitoring is sensitive to social factors.
Social neuroscience 01/2009; 4(1):85-96. · 3.17 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Worry is thought to involve a strategy of cognitive avoidance, in which internal verbalization acts to suppress threatening emotional imagery. This study tested the hypothesis that worry-prone individuals would exhibit patterns of between-hemisphere communication that reflect cognitive avoidance. Specifically, the hypothesis predicted slower transfer of threatening images from the left to the right hemisphere among worriers. Event-related potential (ERP) measures of interhemispheric transfer time supported this prediction. Left-to-right hemisphere transfer times for angry faces were relatively slower for individuals scoring high in self-reported worry compared with those scoring low, whereas transfer of happy and neutral faces did not differ between groups. These results suggest that altered interhemispheric communication may constitute one mechanism of cognitive avoidance in worry.
Emotion 11/2008; 8(5):684-92. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study examined whether individual differences in error-related self-regulation predict emotion regulation in daily life, as suggested by a common-systems view of cognitive and emotional self-regulation. Participants (N= 47) completed a Stroop task, from which error-related brain potentials and behavioral measures of error correction were computed. Participants subsequently reported on daily stressors and anxiety over a 2-week period. As predicted by the common-systems view, a physiological marker of error monitoring and a behavioral measure of error correction predicted emotion regulation in daily life. Specifically, participants higher in cognitive control, as assessed neurally and behaviorally, were less reactive to stress in daily life. The results support the notion that cognitive control and emotion regulation depend on common or interacting systems.
Psychological Science 08/2008; 19(7):702-8. · 4.43 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study examined the influence of depression on error-monitoring and behavioral compensation after errors, two important aspects of cognitive control. Undergraduates differing in self-reported depression levels completed a modified Stroop task while error-related scalp potentials were recorded. Behaviorally, participants with higher depression scores were disproportionately slower and less accurate after errors in a task condition that included negative emotional words. Physiological results indicated that the amplitudes of the error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe), two indices of error detection, were not correlated with depression score. ERN amplitudes predicted behavioral slowdown after errors, but only among more depressed participants in the negative-word condition. Together, the results imply that depression is associated not with an error detection deficit, but rather with alterations in subsequent performance changes, once errors have been identified.
Emotion 03/2008; 8(1):58-67. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study tested the prediction that the error-related negativity (ERN), a physiological measure of error monitoring, would be enhanced in anxious individuals, particularly in conditions with threatening cues. Participants made gender judgments about faces whose expressions were either happy, angry, or neutral. Replicating prior studies, midline scalp negativities were greater following errors than following correct responses. In addition, state anxiety interacted with facial expression to predict ERN amplitudes. Counter to predictions, participants high in state anxiety displayed smaller ERNs for angry-face blocks and larger ERNs for happy-face blocks, compared to less anxious participants. These results are inconsistent with the simple notion that anxiety enhances error sensitivity globally. Rather, we interpret the findings within an expectancy violation framework, in which anxious participants have altered expectations for success and failure in the context of happy and angry facial cues, with greater ERN amplitudes when expectations are violated.
Brain and Cognition 09/2007; 64(3):247-56. · 3.17 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Recent evidence indicates that emotional stimuli may be accorded special priority in information processing. Extending that research, this study tested the hypothesis that communication between the left and right hemispheres would be facilitated for emotional compared to non-emotional faces. Sixty-eight participants matched angry, happy, and neutral face photographs either within a single visual field (i.e., within one hemisphere) or across opposite visual fields (i.e., between the two hemispheres). An overall performance advantage favoring across-field trials was modulated by the emotionality of the face. Specifically, the across-field advantage was significantly greater for angry and happy faces compared to neutral faces, a pattern evident for both accuracy and reaction time data. Possible interpretations of the enhanced interhemispheric processing advantage include increased computational complexity or subcortical transfer of emotionally salient information.
Cognitive Brain Research 07/2005; 24(1):66-72. · 3.77 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study tested the hypothesis that interhemispheric communication about emotional stimuli is influenced by situational factors that alter emotional relevance. Under evaluative or nonevaluative conditions, participants matched angry and happy faces within a single visual field or across opposite visual fields. An overall across-field advantage (AFA) reflected the benefit of sharing information between the hemispheres. The AFA was greater for angry than for happy faces in the evaluation condition but did not differ for angry and happy faces in the no-evaluation condition. Examination of individual differences indicated that high trait evaluation levels of worry were associated with poorer interhemispheric communication of angry faces, supporting a threat-avoidance conception of worry. Thus, both situational factors and individual differences affected interhemispheric communication about emotional faces.
Emotion 10/2004; 4(3):219-32. · 3.88 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A recent theory proposed that high levels of progesterone during the menstrual cycle may lead to functional decoupling of the cerebral hemispheres [Neuropsychologia 38 (2000) 1362]. The present study tested this theory with a well-validated behavioral measure of interhemispheric communication administered to 55 naturally-cycling women at the luteal or menstrual phase of the cycle. Neither between-subjects nor within-subjects analyses found significant differences in interhemispheric communication between the menstrual and luteal phases (F < 1). Correlations between salivary progesterone levels and interhemispheric communication also failed to support the theory. Although negative affect (NA) was associated with decreased effectiveness of interhemispheric communication, mood variables could not account for the lack of relationship between hormonal and interhemispheric variables. In summary, despite a rigorous and valid test, the theory that progesterone leads to interhemispheric decoupling found no support.
Neuropsychologia 01/2004; 42(11):1496-503. · 3.64 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In an era characterized by an increasing bias in favor of molecular paradigms in neuroscience, this ambitious volume attests to the fundamental value of conceptualizing neural systems on a more molar and integrative level. Researchers in the area of brain asymmetry are in a unique position to make connections between brain functioning and behavioral functioning and are using sophisticated behavioral and clinical methods and advanced electrophysiological and hemodynamic techniques to do so. Chapters in this book elucidate complex cognitive and emotional phenomena from multifaceted perspectives ranging from the biochemical to the sociocultural. Indeed, the editors consider the study of brain asymmetry, with its ability to address various levels of analysis with diverse methodological and conceptual approaches, as an exemplary paradigm for future brain/behavior research.
Psychophysiology 12/2003; 35(4):479 - 481. · 3.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: As task performance improves with practice, oftentimes fewer brain areas are recruited to aid in processing. However, relatively little research has investigated how practice affects interactions between brain regions. Given prior work indicating that interhemispheric division of processing is most advantageous when task demands are high, we predicted that interactions between the cerebral hemispheres would be less advantageous after practice than before practice. This hypothesis was confirmed by reanalysis of data from two previously published studies. Practice reduced (1) the degree to which interhemispheric interaction facilitated performance for two letter-matching tasks (Experiment 1), and (2) the extent to which interhemispheric interaction reduced interference in a global-local perception task (Experiment 2). These findings illustrate the dynamic nature of neural recruitment in response to changing task demands.
Laterality 11/2003; 8(4):361-75. · 1.13 Impact Factor
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Rebecca J Compton
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ABSTRACT: This review addresses the interconnections between emotional and attentional processing, with an emphasis on both behavioral and neuroscientific findings. Are emotional stimuli encoded automatically, and what does that mean? How are emotional stimuli selected for enhanced processing within a limited capacity system? Evidence suggests a two-stage process: First, emotional significance is evaluated preattentively by a sub-cortical circuit involving the amygdala; and second, stimuli deemed emotionally significant are given priority in the competition for access to selective attention. This process involves bottom-up inputs from the amygdala as well as top-down influences from frontal lobe regions involved in goal setting and maintaining representations in working memory. The review highlights limitations in the current literature, directions for fruitful future research, and the need to move beyond simple dichotomies such as 'cognition' versus 'emotion.'
Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews 07/2003; 2(2):115-29.
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ABSTRACT: In this research, we investigated the degree to which brain systems involved in ignoring emotionally salient information differ from those involved in ignoring nonemotional information. The design allowed examination of regional brain activity, using fMRI during color-word and emotional Stroop tasks. Twelve participants indicated the color of words while ignoring word meaning in conditions in which neutral words were contrasted to emotionally negative, emotionally positive, and incongruent color words. Dorsolateral frontal lobe activity was increased by both negative and incongruent color words, indicating a common system for maintaining an attentional set in the presence of salient distractors. In posterior regions of the brain, activity depended on the nature of the information to be ignored. Ignoring color-incongruent words increased left parietal activity and decreased parahippocampal gyrus activity, whereas ignoring negative emotional words increased bilateral occipito-temporal activity and decreased amygdala activity. The results indicate that emotion and attention are intimately related via a network of regions that monitor for salient information, maintain attention on the task, suppress irrelevant information, and select appropriate responses.
Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 07/2003; 3(2):81-96. · 3.57 Impact Factor
