Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Rapid responses to emotional words play a considerable role in human social communication. It has been reported that individuals have an advantage to process emotional words in comparison with neutral words. While it is crucial to distinguish between words that convey concrete concepts and abstract concepts in emotional words processing, because many studies have found that concrete words (e.g., “desk”) are processed more quickly and efficiently than abstract words (e.g., “truth”), which is termed as the concreteness effects. However, much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, our understanding of abstract concepts is limited, and the way in which abstract concepts are represented has received a great deal of research interest. Recent research has found an “abstractness effect”, that is, a processing advantage of abstract words over concrete words, suggesting the role of affective information in the representation of abstract concepts. In the present study, we distinguished emotional nouns into concrete concepts and abstract concepts to explore potential differences in processing, as measured by event-related potentials. A dual-target RSVP task was employed to explore the processing stages of concrete and abstract nouns in the limited attention context. A total of 24 right-handed participants (8 males) aged from 18 to 30 years old took part in this study in exchange for payment. Brain electrical activity was recorded by a 64-channel system composing of tin electrodes mounted in an elastic cap according to the international 10-20 System. In addition to behavioral responses, P1, N170, and LPC components were selected as indicators of early and late processing stages of emotional nouns. The behavioral results showed that there was no concreteness effect or abstractness effect of emotional nouns in the context of limited attentional resources, while it reflected a “negative bias” for emotion effect. ERP results suggested N170 component was modulated by emotion valence and concreteness, that emotional nouns elicited significantly larger N170 amplitude than neutral nouns, and concrete nouns elicited significantly larger N170 amplitude than abstract nouns. Above two modulation patterns of N170 component were observed in the left hemisphere, but not in the right hemisphere. LPC component was also modulated by emotion valence and concreteness, that emotional nouns elicited significantly LPC amplitude than neutral nouns, while in contrast to previous studies, concrete nouns elicited significantly larger LPC amplitude than abstract nouns, which might reflect the attention resource allocation or the effect of emotional information on concreteness effect. Last but not least, there was an interaction effect between concreteness and emotion valence, that positive, negative, and neutral of abstract nouns could be distinguished by LPC amplitude respectively, while it could only differentiate emotional concrete nouns from non-emotional nouns. The late stage of emotional noun processing was in accordance with the abstractness effect. Emotion valence and concreteness both modulate the ERP components in the early and late stages of noun processing in the limited attention context. In the late processing stage, LPC amplitude distinguishing abstract nouns with different valence, which indicates that abstract nouns had more emotional valence than concrete nouns, and provides electrophysiological evidence for the view that abstract words contain more emotional information.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Researchers have fully studied the influence of emotional experience on individuals’ performance of completing mathematical tasks by using questionnaires and behavioral experiments, and they focused on the relationship between anxiety (especially mathematical anxiety) and mathematical performance. Nevertheless, the underlying brain mechanism of this relationship remains unknown. Furthermore, we also experience a variety of emotions in addition to anxiety in our daily lives. To our knowledge, few studies have studied the relationship between emotional experiences other than anxiety and the estimation strategy utilization effectiveness, or the influence of emotion regulation on estimation strategy utilization.This study is comprised of a series of experiments, aiming to examine the cognitive mechanisms of emotion priming and emotion regulation affecting estimation strategy utilization. Specifically, in study 1, facial expression images (positive, neutral and negative) will be used as emotional stimuli, and participants will be asked to finish the emotion labeling task (experiment 1 and experiment 2) or the gender judging task (experiment 3 and experiment 4), which is aimed to achieve the purpose of explicit emotional priming and implicit emotional priming, respectively. In our study, we combine the event related potential (ERP) technology (experiment 1 and experiment 3) and the behavioral experiment (experiment 2 and experiment 4) as research methods. We plan to ask participants to complete the two-digit multiplication estimation tasks (e.g., 23 × 78), by using the specified estimation strategies (strategy execution, experiment 1 and experiment 3) or a freely chosen strategy (strategy choice, experiment 2 and experiment 4), aiming to reveal the influence of emotional valence (positive, neutral, and negative) and emotional priming style (explicit prime vs. implicit prime) on estimation strategy utilization. Under the strategy execution condition, the specified estimation strategies are down-up (DU) and up-down (UD) strategy. Under the DU condition, participants will be asked to round the first operand down to the nearest decade, and round the second operand up to the nearest decade (e.g., doing 20 × 80=1600 for 23 × 78). Under the UD condition, participants will be asked to round the first operand up to the nearest decade, and round the second operand down to the nearest decade (e.g., doing 30 × 70=2100 for 28 × 73). In study 2, we will utilize the high temporal resolution of ERP technology to examine the influence of reappraisal and suppression on estimation strategy execution, from the perspective of explicit and implicit emotion regulation, respectively. In study 2, we aim to reveal the potential temporal dynamic characteristics and the brain activation patterns of along with the emotion regulation effects during estimation strategy utilization. Under implicit emotion regulation condition, participants will be asked to complete the word matching task, during which they are required to select the synonym of the target word from the alternative words, while the target word contains the meaning of reappraisal or suppression.The innovations of this study are as follows: Firstly, by taking full advantage of the high temporal resolution of ERP technology, we can specifically identify that in which stage(s) (encoding stage, retrieval stage, and reaction stage) the influence of emotional experience (explicit and implicit) on estimation strategy utilization occurs. This study provides a new perspective for effectively overcoming the shortcomings of mathematics learning and learning strategies in other disciplines. Secondly, this study introduces emotion regulation into the field of estimation for the first time, which paves a new direction for research estimation strategies as well as extends studies about estimation strategy from “cold cognition” to “hot cognition”, by which may promote further studies on the intersection of emotion (emotion regulation) and estimation strategy. Thirdly, the natural science methods will be used to study the problem of learning strategies in the present study, which helps to better understand the cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying the effect of emotional experience on the utilization of estimation strategies, and provides an empirical basis for optimizing the estimation strategy utilization.
Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology submitted time 2022-06-21
Abstract：
Uncovering the cognitive neural mechanism underlying the effect of emotional experience on individuals’ various cognitive task performances has been a hot research topic. Previous studies mainly employed questionnaires and behavioral experiments as measurements and focused solely on the impact of anxiety on the estimation strategy utilization, leaving the underlying brain mechanism unclear. Few studies have explored the relationships betweenemotional experience other than anxiety and estimation strategy utilization, or emotion regulation and estimation strategy utilization. To fill in the gap, the present project will adopt the event-related potential (ERP) technology, combined with the facial expression images as emotional priming stimuli, to examine the influence of different emotional experience valences on estimation strategy utilization. Distinguishing between the explicit and implicit emotional experiences, our study will shed light on the role of different emotional valences on estimation strategy utilization as well as the temporal dynamic characteristics and brain activation patterns underlying the effect. This project will deepen people’s understanding about the cognitive and brain mechanisms of how different emotional experience influence estimation strategy utilization, and provide further empirical evidence for optimal estimation strategy utilization effect.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Facial trustworthiness plays a key role in how we express and understand social signals. During social interactions, people quickly judge the trustworthiness of others through subtle facial cues in order to make choices in daily life. The researchers delved into behavioral and ERP studies related to the time course of facial trustworthiness processing, and explored the life-span development of facial trustworthiness, as well as the influence of face emotions and face gender on the evaluation of facial trustworthiness. Further research is needed to improve the ecological validity of stimuli used in facial trustworthiness studies, to expand the study of facial trustworthiness in adolescents and aging population, and to consider the contextual effects on facial trustworthiness assessment.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-01-04
Abstract： Metacognition refers to individual's subjective judgment about process of ongoing cognitive activities. As one of the indicators reflecting metacognitive sensitivity, confidence plays an important role in the individual's understanding and adjustment of one’s own behaviors. Studies have shown that the common task types in self-confidence indicators involve basic and advanced mental processing. In addition, the prediction of self-confidence on joint decision making gradually changes from confidence itself to exploratory prediction parameters based on computational models. Finally, neurophysiological research on confidence has verified the importance of prefrontal cortex (PFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC). In order to optimize the predictive function of confidence, future research should explore other complementary computational models related to confidence in decision-making process. "
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The human parental brain could be defined as is the network of regions that support caregiving behaviors to identify and react to infant related stimuli (infant vocals and facial expressions). First, we reviewed the neural circuits that were demonstrated to be involved in establishing and maintaining parent-infant relationships, which included circuits for motivation-reward, empathy, emotion regulation and executive function. And the important brain areas incorporate the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, amygdala, and supplementary motor area. Second, the current review summed that human parental brain is sensitive to multiple parenting determinants, including parenting abilities, parental hormones and psychopathology. The growth of parenting abilities and the improvement of oxytocin levels are beneficial to the processing for infant stimuli. Finally, several advices were proposed for future directions: 1) prospective and longitudinal studies across important transition periods for parenting; 2) describing the neural basis of male psychopathologies and exploring targeted interventions and treatments; 3) employing some advanced neuroscience technique (e.g., hyper scanning) to highlight the simultaneous neural activity between mother and father or parents and infants; and 4) conducting parental brain research in Chinese culture.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The integration of various emotional information from different modalities (e.g., face and voice) plays an important role in our interpersonal communication. In order to understand its brain mechanism, more and more researchers found that the interaction between facial expression and vocal emotional information begins in the early stage of perception, and the integration of emotional information content occurs in the late decision-making stage. In the early stage, the primary sensory cortex is responsible for encoding information; while in the late stage, the amygdala, temporal lobe and other advanced brain regions are responsible for cognitive evaluation. In addition, the functional coupling of oscillation activities on multiple frequency bands facilitates the integration of emotional information cross channels. Future research needs to explore whether facial expression and vocal emotional information integration is associated with emotional conflict, and whether inconsistent emotional information has advantages. Lastly, we should find out how the neural oscillations of different frequency bands promotes the integration of facial expression and vocal emotional information, so as to further understand its dynamic basis.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The studies for body recognition processing often focus on inverted body. And the body inversion effect refers to the fact that the reaction time to identify the inverted body is longer and the correct rate is lower than that to the upright body. Recently, researchers have used a variety of techniques to examine the effect and its configural processing mechanism, in which there are still controversy about the role of head information. In addition, now available body inversion effect mainly concentrated on the configural processing theory and the configural processing continuum theory, however there are still some discrepancies between the two theories in terms of the subcomponents involved in the configural processing. Further researches, with more special populations involved, can focus on the improvements of relevant theories and the specific role of head information, through using materials of high ecological validity.
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2018-04-18 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： For humans, both face and body play important roles in conveying emotional information. Previous studies showed that body postures rather than faces could provide more valid information about valence in the recognition of victory and defeat. The present study aimed to compare the processing of the faces and the bodies of victory and defeat. The current study employed emotional expressions of Chinese professional players reacting to victory or defeat to compare the processing of emotional faces and body postures using behavioral and ERP recordings. 80 images (40 winners and 40 losers) were obtained through Google and Baidu image search, using the search keyword “reacting to winning a point” or “reacting to losing a point”, intersected with “tennis” or “table tennis” or “badminton”. In Experiment 1, the behavioral experiment asked participants to rate the valence and intensity of the faces and the body postures on a 9 point scale (valence: 1-the most negative and 9-the most positive; intensity: 1-the least intense and 9-the most intense). In Experiment 2, participants were asked to determine the type of emotion (neutral, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust) expressed by the faces and the body postures. In the ERP study (Experiment 3), participants were instructed to indicate the valence (positive or negative) of the faces and the body postures. The behavioral results showed that body postures rather than faces facilitated the discrimination between victory and defeat. Compared to body postures, the faces were more complex and involved a variety of facial expressions. The behavioral result of the ERP study showed that body postures rather than faces could provide more valid information about valence. The ERP results showed that the emotional information of body postures could be detected earlier than faces, as reflected by larger N170 amplitudes for winning body postures than losing body postures. However, there was no significant N170 difference between winning faces and losing faces. The emotional effect of faces was reflected by the EPN component, and losing faces elicited larger negative EPN amplitudes than winning faces. On the contrary, winning body postures elicited larger negative EPN amplitudes than losing body postures. Moreover, victory elicited larger LPP amplitudes than defeat under both face and body conditions. These data suggest that the higher rate of discrimination between winning body postures and losing body postures is possibly due to the stimulus evaluation and categorization of body postures at multiple stages of processing. It is hoped that the current results regarding the emotional processing of facial and body expressions will help us understand the mechanisms of the emotional brain.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2018-03-22 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： For humans, both face and body play important roles in conveying emotional information. Previous studies showed that body postures rather than faces could provide more valid information about valence in the recognition of victory and defeat. The present study aimed to compare the processing of the faces and the bodies of victory and defeat.
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