scholarly journals Attending to Eliza: rapid brain responses reflect competence attribution in virtual social feedback processing

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 1073-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schindler ◽  
Gregory A Miller ◽  
Johanna Kissler
Keyword(s):  
Online Communication ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Linear Increase ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
Social Feedback ◽  
Feedback Processing ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Content Processing ◽  
Socially Motivated

Abstract In the age of virtual communication, the source of a message is often inferred rather than perceived, raising the question of how sender attributions affect content processing. We investigated this issue in an evaluative feedback scenario. Participants were told that an expert psychotherapist, a layperson or a randomly acting computer was going to give them online positive, neutral or negative personality feedback while high-density EEG was recorded. Sender attribution affected processing rapidly, even though the feedback was on average identical. Event-related potentials revealed a linear increase with attributed expertise beginning 150 ms after disclosure and most pronounced for N1, P2 and early posterior negativity components. P3 and late positive potential amplitudes were increased for both human senders and for emotionally significant (positive or negative) feedback. Strikingly, feedback from a putative expert prompted large P3 responses, even for inherently neutral content. Source analysis localized early enhancements due to attributed sender expertise in frontal and somatosensory regions and later responses in the posterior cingulate and extended visual and parietal areas, supporting involvement of mentalizing, embodied processing and socially motivated attention. These findings reveal how attributed sender expertise rapidly alters feedback processing in virtual interaction and have implications for virtual therapy and online communication.

scholarly journals Neural correlates of negative expectancy and impaired social feedback processing in social anxiety

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruolei Gu ◽  
Xiang Ao ◽  
Licheng Mo ◽  
Dandan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Social Feedback ◽  
Feedback Processing ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
High Social Anxiety

Abstract Social anxiety has been associated with abnormalities in cognitive processing in the literature, manifesting as various cognitive biases. To what extent these biases interrupt social interactions remains largely unclear. This study used the Social Judgment Paradigm that could separate the expectation and experience stages of social feedback processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs) in these two stages were recorded to detect the effect of social anxiety that might not be reflected by behavioral data. Participants were divided into two groups according to their social anxiety level. Participants in the high social anxiety (HSA) group were more likely to predict that they would be socially rejected by peers than did their low social anxiety (LSA) counterparts (i.e. the control group). Compared to the ERP data of the LSA group, the HSA group showed: (a) a larger P1 component to social cues (peer faces) prior to social feedback presentation, possibly indicating an attention bias; (b) a difference in feedback-related negativity amplitude between unexpected social acceptance and unexpected social rejection, possibly indicating an expectancy bias; and (c) a diminished sensitivity of the P3 amplitude to social feedback valence (be accepted/be rejected), possibly indicating an experience bias. These results could help understand the cognitive mechanisms that comprise and maintain social anxiety.

scholarly journals Charged With a Crime: The Neuronal Signature of Processing Negatively Evaluated Faces Under Different Attentional Conditions

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762199666
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schindler ◽  
Maximilian Bruchmann ◽  
Claudia Krasowski ◽  
Robert Moeck ◽  
Thomas Straube
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Feature Based ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
Emotional Knowledge ◽  
Late Stages

Our brains rapidly respond to human faces and can differentiate between many identities, retrieving rich semantic emotional-knowledge information. Studies provide a mixed picture of how such information affects event-related potentials (ERPs). We systematically examined the effect of feature-based attention on ERP modulations to briefly presented faces of individuals associated with a crime. The tasks required participants ( N = 40 adults) to discriminate the orientation of lines overlaid onto the face, the age of the face, or emotional information associated with the face. Negative faces amplified the N170 ERP component during all tasks, whereas the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components were increased only when the emotional information was attended to. These findings suggest that during early configural analyses (N170), evaluative information potentiates face processing regardless of feature-based attention. During intermediate, only partially resource-dependent, processing stages (EPN) and late stages of elaborate stimulus processing (LPP), attention to the acquired emotional information is necessary for amplified processing of negatively evaluated faces.

Duration Estimation of Angry and Neutral Faces: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Correlates

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 254-278
Author(s):  
Lisa V. Eberhardt ◽  
Ferdinand Pittino ◽  
Anna Scheins ◽  
Anke Huckauf ◽  
Markus Kiefer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Emotional Stimuli ◽  
Information Processing Model ◽  
Emotional Faces ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Stimulus Offset ◽  
Duration Estimation

Abstract Emotional stimuli like emotional faces have been frequently shown to be temporally overestimated compared to neutral ones. This effect has been commonly explained by induced arousal caused by emotional processing leading to the acceleration of an inner-clock-like pacemaker. However, there are some studies reporting contradictory effects and others point to relevant moderating variables. Given this controversy, we aimed at investigating the processes underlying the temporal overestimation of emotional faces by combining behavioral and electrophysiological correlates in a temporal bisection task. We assessed duration estimation of angry and neutral faces using anchor durations of 400 ms and 1600 ms while recording event-related potentials. Subjective ratings and the early posterior negativity confirmed encoding and processing of stimuli’s emotionality. However, temporal ratings did not differ between angry and neutral faces. In line with this behavioral result, the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV), an electrophysiological index of temporal accumulation, was not modulated by the faces’ emotionality. Duration estimates, i.e., short or long responses toward stimuli of ambiguous durations of 1000 ms, were nevertheless associated with a differential CNV amplitude. Interestingly, CNV modulation was already observed at 600–700 ms after stimulus onset, i.e., long before stimulus offset. The results are discussed in light of the information-processing model of time perception as well as regarding possible factors of the experimental setup moderating temporal overestimation of emotional stimuli. In sum, combining behavioral and electrophysiological measures seems promising to more clearly understand the complex processes leading to the illusion of temporal lengthening of emotional faces.

An ERP Study of Expectation Violation in a Social Comparison Context

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xue Du ◽  
Glenn Hitchman ◽  
Qing-Lin Zhang ◽  
Jiang Qiu
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Cognitive Conflict ◽  
Parahippocampal Gyrus ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
Dipole Source ◽  
Conflict Task ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Unknown Event

Previous studies pay more attention to the cognitive control in classical cognitive conflict task but the time-course of the expectation violation in a social comparison context remains unknown. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore the electrophysiological correlates of expectation violation by using a reward feedback paradigm in a social comparison context. Results showed that: Expectation incongruent stimuli (EIS) elicited a more positive ERP deflection (P400-700) than did expectation congruent stimuli (ECS) between 400 and 700 ms. Furthermore, dipole source analysis revealed that the generator of P400-700 was localized near the posterior cingulate gyrus (PCC), which might be involved in the monitoring and controlling of reward expectation conflict (expectation violation). EIS also elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N1000-1500) than did ECS between 1,000 and 1,500 ms. The generator of N1000-1500 was localized near the parahippocampal gyrus, which might be related to unpleasant emotions induced by a lack of reward feedback.

scholarly journals Event-related Potential Additivity as an Index of Neural Independence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Valentine ◽  
Margarita Zeitlin ◽  
Chu-Hsuan Kuo ◽  
Lee Osterhout
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
Continuous Measure ◽  
Principle Of Superposition ◽  
Feature Similarity ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Font Color

Abstract Background Scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) are poorly suited for certain types of source analysis. For example, it is often difficult to precisely assess whether two ERP waveforms were produced by similar neural sources, especially when the waveforms share the same polarity and a similar scalp topography and temporal dynamics. We report here an alternative method to establishing independence of neural sources grounded in the principle of superposition, which stipulates that electrical fields summate where they intersect in time and space. We assessed the independence of two frequently reported positive waves in the ERP literature, the P300 (elicited by unexpected stimuli) and P600 (elicited by syntactic anomalies). Subjects read sentences that contained a word that was either non-anomalous, unexpected in one feature (capitalized, different font, different font color, or ungrammatical), or unexpected in two features (capitalized and different font style, capitalized and different font color, or capitalized and ungrammatical). Thus, in the double anomaly condition, the similarity between a shared feature (i.e., capitalization) and a second feature was systematically manipulated across conditions from larger degree (i.e., font style) to lesser degree (i.e., ungrammatical) of feature similarity. Results We quantified the degree of source independence for the features of interest by applying a novel Additivity Index, which compares ERPs elicited by the doubly anomalous words to composite waveforms formed by mathematically summing the ERP response to singly anomalous words. The degree of source independence is reflected by the degree of summation, with Additivity scores ranging from 0 (completely non-independent) to 1 (completely independent). The computed Additivity Index values varied with feature similarity in the predicted direction: similar features demonstrated lower Additivity Index values, or lower degrees of independence. On the other hand, dissimilar features manifested robust additivity, resulting in larger AI values. Conclusion We quantified the degree to which the P600 and P300 effects are neurally distinct across stimulus features with varying degrees of similarity by computing a continuous measure of independence via the Additivity Index. These findings indicate that the Additivity Index provides a valid and general method for quantifying the neural independence of scalp-recorded brain potentials.

scholarly journals Electrophysiological responses to negative evaluative person-knowledge: Effects of individual differences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Krasowski ◽  
Sebastian Schindler ◽  
Maximilian Bruchmann ◽  
Robert Moeck ◽  
Thomas Straube
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Trait Anxiety ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
N170 Component ◽  
Electrophysiological Responses ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Task Conditions ◽  
Study Participants

AbstractFaces transmit rich information about a unique personal identity. Recent studies examined how negative evaluative information affects event-related potentials (ERPs), the relevance of individual differences, such as trait anxiety, neuroticism, or agreeableness, for these effects is unclear. In this preregistered study, participants (N = 80) were presented with neutral faces, either associated with highly negative or neutral biographical information. Faces were shown under three different task conditions that varied the attentional focus on face-unrelated features, perceptual face information, or emotional information. Results showed a task-independent increase of the N170 component for faces associated with negative information, while interactions occurred for the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) and the Late Positive Potential (LPP), showing ERP differences only when paying attention to the evaluative information. Trait anxiety and neuroticism did not influence ERP differences. Low agreeableness increased EPN differences during perceptual distraction. Thus, we observed that low agreeableness leads to early increased processing of potentially hostile faces, although participants were required to attend to a face-unrelated feature.

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