Modulatory effects of goal relevance on emotional attention reveal that fear has a distinct value.

Threat-related stimuli can capture attention. However, it remains debated whether this capture is automatic or not. To address this question, we compared attentional biases to emotional faces using a dot-probe task (DPT) where emotion was never goal-relevant (Experiment 1) or made directly task-relevant by means of induction trials (Experiments 2-3). Moreover, the contingency between the DPT and induction trials was either partial (Experiment 2) or full (Experiment 3). Eye-tracking was used to ascertain that the emotional cue and the subsequent target were processed with peripheral vision. Experiments 1 and 2 both showed that negative faces captured attention, with faster target processing when it appeared on the same side as the preceding fearful face (i.e. fear-valid trials) compared to the opposite side where the neutral face was shown (i.e. fear-invalid trials), but also when it appeared on the side of the preceding neutral face (i.e. happy-invalid trials) compared to the happy face (i.e. happy-valid trials). Importantly, this preferential spatial orienting to negative emotion was not observed in Experiment 3, where the goal relevance of emotion was high. However, in that experiment, fearful faces produced a specific attentional bias during the DPT, which was mostly driven by the induction trials themselves.

Expectancy and attention bias to spiders: Dissecting anticipation and allocation processes using ERPs.

The current registered report focused on the temporal dynamics of the relationship between expectancy and attention toward threat, to better understand the mechanisms underlying the prioritization of threat detection over expectancy. In the current event-related potentials experiment, a-priori expectancy was manipulated, and attention bias was measured, using a well-validated paradigm. A visual search array was presented, with one of two targets: spiders (threatening) or birds (neutral). A verbal cue stating the likelihood of encountering a target preceded the array, creating congruent and incongruent trials. Following cue presentation, preparatory processes were examined using the contingent negative variation (CNV) component. Following target presentation, two components were measured: early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP), reflecting early and late stages of natural selective attention toward emotional stimuli, respectively. Behaviorally, spiders were found faster than birds, and congruency effects emerged for both targets. For the CNV, a non-significant trend of more negative amplitudes following spider cues emerged. As expected, EPN and LPP amplitudes were larger for spider targets compared to bird targets. Data-driven, exploratory, topographical analyses revealed different patterns of activation for bird cues compared to spider cues. Furthermore, 400-500 ms post-target, a congruency effect was revealed only for bird targets. Together, these results demonstrate that while expectancy for spider appearance is evident in differential neural preparation, the actual appearance of spider target overrides this expectancy effect and only in later stages of processing does the cueing effect come again into play.

Need for cognition moderates the relief of avoiding cognitive effort.

When making decisions, humans aim to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. The exertion of mental or physical effort has been proposed to be one those costs, translating into avoidance of behaviors carrying effort demands. This motivational framework also predicts that people should experience positive affect when anticipating demand that is subsequently avoided (i.e., a "relief effect"), but evidence for this prediction is scarce. Here, we follow up on a previous study [1] that provided some initial evidence that people more positively evaluated outcomes if it meant they could avoid performing an additional demanding task. However, the results from this study did not provide conclusive evidence that this effect was driven by effort avoidance. Here, we report two experiments that are able to do this. Participants performed a gambling task, and if they did not receive reward they would have to perform an orthogonal effort task. Prior to the gamble, a cue indicated whether this effort task would be easy or hard. We probed hedonic responses to the reward-related feedback, as well as after the subsequent effort task feedback. Participants reported lower hedonic responses for no-reward outcomes when high vs. low effort was anticipated (and later exerted). They also reported higher hedonic responses for reward outcomes when high vs. low effort was anticipated (and avoided). Importantly, this relief effect was smaller in participants with high need for cognition. These results suggest that avoidance of high effort tasks is rewarding, but that the size off this effect depends on the individual disposition to engage with and expend cognitive effort. They also raise the important question of whether this disposition alters the cost of effort per se, or rather offset this cost during cost-benefit analyses.

Parsing the contributions of negative affect vs. aversive motivation to cognitive control: an experimental investigation.

Introduction: Punishment is a powerful drive that fosters aversive motivation and increases negative affect. Previous studies have reported that this drive has the propensity to improve cognitive control, as shown by improved conflict processing when it is used. However, whether aversive motivation per se or negative affect eventually drives this change remains unclear because in previous work, the specific contribution of these two components could not be isolated. Methods: To address this question, we conducted two experiments where we administered the confound minimized Stroop task to a large group of participants each time (N = 50 and N = 47 for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively) and manipulated punishment and feedback contingency using a factorial design. These two experiments were similar except that in the second one, we also measured awareness of feedback contingency at the subjective level. We reasoned that cognitive control would improve the most when punishment would be used, and the contingency between this motivational drive and performance would be reinforced, selectively. Results: Both experiments consistently showed that negative affect increased at the subjective level when punishment was used and the feedback was contingent on task performance, with these two effects being additive. In Experiment 1, we found that when the feedback was contingent on task performance and punishment was activated, conflict processing did not improve. In Experiment 2, we found that conflict processing improved when punishment was contingent on task performance, and participants were aware of this contingency. Discussion: These results suggest that aversive motivation can improve conflict processing when participants are aware of the link created between punishment and performance.

A systematic exploration of attentional load effects on the C1 ERP component.

The C1 ERP component reflects the earliest visual processing in V1. However, it remains debated whether attentional load can influence it or not. We conducted two EEG experiments to investigate the effect of attentional load on the C1. Task difficulty was manipulated at fixation using an oddball detection task that was either easy (low load) or difficult (high load), while the distractor was presented in the upper visual field (UVF) to score the C1. In Experiment 1, we used a block design and the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the central stimulus and the peripheral distractor was either short or long. In Experiment 2, task difficulty was manipulated on a trial-by-trial basis using a visual cue, and the peripheral distractor was presented either before or after the central stimulus. The results showed that the C1 was larger in the high compared to the low load condition irrespective of SOA in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, no significant load modulation of the C1 was observed. However, we found that the contingent negative variation (CNV) was larger in the low compared to the high load condition. Moreover, the C1 was larger when the peripheral distractor was presented after than before the central stimulus. Combined together, these results suggest that different top-down control processes can influence the initial feedforward stage of visual processing in V1 captured by the C1 ERP component.

The selective use of punishments on congruent versus incongruent trials in the Stroop task.

Conflict adaptation refers to the dynamic modulation of conflict processing across successive trials and reflects improved cognitive control. Interestingly, aversive motivation can increase conflict adaptation, although it remains unclear through which process this modulation occurs because previous studies presented punishment feedback following suboptimal performance on both congruent and incongruent trials. According to integrative accounts of conflict monitoring and aversive motivation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, punishment feedback following slow or erroneous performance on incongruent trials in particular should lead to improved conflict adaptation. Second, selectively increasing motivation on incongruent trials should reduce the overall congruency effect. The current study sought to test both hypotheses. Specifically, we administered the confound-minimized Stroop task to a large group of participants and manipulated the position of feedback (following either congruent or incongruent trials) and aversive motivation (tied to a monetary loss or not) across different blocks. As expected, the congruency effect was found to be smaller when punishment was coupled with incongruent versus congruent trials. However, results showed that conflict adaptation was increased when punishment feedback was selectively coupled with congruent rather than incongruent trials. Together, these results suggest that aversive motivation does not uniformly improve cognitive control but this gain appears to be context dependent.

Effects of selective attention on the C1 ERP component: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

The C1 event-related potential (ERP) captures the earliest stage of feedforward processing in the primary visual cortex (V1). An ongoing debate is whether top-down selective attention can modulate the C1. One side of the debate pointed out that null findings appear to outnumber positive findings; thus, selective attention does not seem to influence the C1. However, this suggestion is not based on a valid approach to summarizing evidence across studies. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis investigating the effects of selective attention on the C1, involving 47 experiments and 794 subjects in total. Despite heterogeneity across studies, results suggested that attention has a moderate effect on the C1 (Cohen's d z  = 0.33, p < .0001); that is, C1 amplitude is larger for visual stimuli that are attended than unattended. These results suggest that C1 is affected by top-down selective attention.

Modulation of Conflict Processing by Reappraisal: An Experimental Investigation.

Negative affect facilitates conflict processing. Here we sought to assess whether symmetrically, its downregulation by means of reappraisal could lower it. To this end, 105 participants performed the confound-minimized Stroop task eliciting negative affect that was followed by a simple reward-related visual discrimination task. Conflict processing was induced with the former task. Half of them (experimental group) were instructed to use this second task to downregulate negative affect arising from the Stroop task. The other half (control group) did not receive these appraisal-related instructions. Group comparisons showed that negative affect and the conflict effect were similar for these two groups. However, when we added and modeled the subjective ratings related to emotion regulation, we found that conflict processing significantly improved for participants who reported using reappraisal spontaneously, and this gain occurred irrespective of negative affect. These results suggest that reappraisal can influence conflict processing but this change does not depend on negative affect.

Top-Down Modulation of Early Visual Processing in V1: Dissociable Neurophysiological Effects of Spatial Attention, Attentional Load and Task-Relevance.

Until today, there is an ongoing discussion if attention processes interact with the information processing stream already at the level of the C1, the earliest visual electrophysiological response of the cortex. We used two highly powered experiments (each N = 52) and examined the effects of task relevance, spatial attention, and attentional load on individual C1 amplitudes for the upper or lower visual hemifield. Bayesian models revealed evidence for the absence of load effects but substantial modulations by task-relevance and spatial attention. When the C1-eliciting stimulus was a task-irrelevant, interfering distracter, we observed increased C1 amplitudes for spatially unattended stimuli. For spatially attended stimuli, different effects of task-relevance for the two experiments were found. Follow-up exploratory single-trial analyses revealed that subtle but systematic deviations from the eye-gaze position at stimulus onset between conditions substantially influenced the effects of attention and task relevance on C1 amplitudes, especially for the upper visual field. For the subsequent P1 component, attentional modulations were clearly expressed and remained unaffected by these deviations. Collectively, these results suggest that spatial attention, unlike load or task relevance, can exert dissociable top-down modulatory effects at the C1 and P1 levels.

Reduced flexibility of cognitive control: reactive, but not proactive control, underpins the congruency sequence effect.

The congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to facilitated conflict processing following incongruent than congruent trials, and reflects enhanced cognitive control during conflict processing. Although this effect is mostly conceived as being reactive, proactive control can also unlock it under specific circumstances according to previous studies (e.g., when an informative cue is used). However, whether or not humans can flexibly switch between these two complementing control modes remains unclear. To address this question, 55 participants completed the confound-minimized Stroop task in different blocks where the cue about the upcoming trial's congruency was either informative or not, and orthogonally to it, the cue-stimulus interval (CSI) was either short or long. We tested if the size of the CSE could change depending on the specific combination of these two factors, which would indicate that cognitive control depends on the subtle balance between reactive and proactive control, and is therefore flexible. However, results showed that the CSE was significant and comparable across the four combinations of CSI and Cue type, suggesting that it primarily stemmed from reactive control. We discuss our results against the dual mechanism of control (DMC) framework (Braver in Trends Cogn Sci 16:106-113, 2012).