Distributional analyses reveal the polymorphic nature of the Stroop interference effect: It's about (response) time.

The study addressed the still-open issue of whether semantic (in addition to response) conflict does indeed contribute to Stroop interference (which along with facilitation contributes to the overall Stroop effect also known as Congruency effect). To this end, semantic conflict was examined across the entire response time (RT) distribution (as opposed to mean RTs). Three (out of four) reported experiments, along with cross-experimental analyses, revealed that semantic conflict was absent in the participants' faster responses. This result characterizes Stroop interference as a unitary phenomenon (i.e., driven uniquely by response conflict). When the same participants' responses were slower, Stroop interference became a composite phenomenon with an additional contribution of semantic conflict that was statistically independent of both response conflict and facilitation. While the present findings allow us to account for the fact that semantic conflict has not been consistently found in past studies, further empirical and theoretical efforts are still needed to explain why exactly it is restricted to longer responses. Indeed, since neither unitary nor composite models can account for this polymorphic nature of Stroop interference on their own, the implications for the current state of theory are outlined.

Anorexia nervosa: Enhancing motivation to change with self-determination theory.

Motivational deficits (little or no motivation to change) are often reported in patients with eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa. The motivational approaches frequently used by French clinicians rely solely on a dichotomous view of motivation (intrinsic vs. extrinsic). In self-determination theory, certain forms of extrinsic motivation can strengthen an individual's commitment to an activity, providing they are self-determined. This theory therefore extends and enriches the dual motivational approach by highlighting potentially useful forms of extrinsic motivation and by emphasizing the importance of behavioral regulation. Empirical work is now needed to assess how clinicians can use self-determination theory to enhance motivation to change among patients with anorexia nervosa and encourage their adherence to care management plans.

Impact of emotionally negative information on attentional processes in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease.

Impairments of emotional processing have been reported in Alzheimer's disease (AD), consistently with the existence of early amygdala atrophy in the pathology. In this study, we hypothesized that patients with AD might show a deficit of orientation toward emotional information under conditions of visual search. Eighteen patients with AD, 24 age-matched controls, and 35 young controls were eye-tracked while they performed a visual search task on a computer screen. The target was a vehicle with implicit (negative or neutral) emotional content, presented concurrently with one, three, or five non-vehicle neutral distractors. The task was to find the target and to report whether a break in the target frame was on the left or on the right side. Both control groups detected negative targets more efficiently than they detected neutral targets, showing facilitated engagement toward negative information. In contrast, patients with AD showed no influence of emotional information on engagement delays. However, all groups reported the frame break location more slowly for negative than for neutral targets (after accounting for the last fixation delay), showing a more difficult disengagement from negative information. These findings are the first to highlight a selective lack of emotional influence on engagement processes in patients with AD. The involvement of amygdala alterations in this behavioral impairment remains to be investigated.

Attentional allocation to task-irrelevant fearful faces is not automatic: experimental evidence for the conditional hypothesis of emotional selection.

A growing body of research indicates that attentional biases toward emotional stimuli are not automatic, but may depend on the relevance of emotion to the top-down search goals of the observer. To determine whether and how this relevance factor modulates attentional allocation to irrelevant fearful faces, four spatial cueing tasks were designed, in which the goal-relevance of completely task-irrelevant (neutral or fearful) cue faces was systematically manipulated by changing the target defining feature. No attentional capture by cue faces (be they neutral or fearful) was observed when the cue faces were completely goal-irrelevant. When faces - but not facial expressions - were goal-relevant, fearful cue faces captured attention, but so did neutral cue faces to a similar extent. Only when facial expressions were explicitly goal-relevant did we observe a difference between attentional allocation to fearful and neutral cue faces, with larger cueing effects for neutral cue faces in the Neutral task, and for fearful cue faces in the Fearful task. Therefore, rather than automatic, attentional allocation to irrelevant fearful faces proved conditional to the explicit relevance of fearful expressions to top-down search goals.

The role of perceptual and cognitive load on inattentional blindness: A systematic review and three meta-analyses.

The inattentional blindness phenomenon refers to situations in which a visible but unexpected stimulus remains consciously unnoticed by observers. This phenomenon is classically explained as the consequence of insufficient attention, because attentional resources are already engaged elsewhere or vary between individuals. However, this attentional-resources view is broad and often imprecise regarding the variety of attentional models, the different pools of resources that can be involved in attentional tasks, and the heterogeneity of the experimental paradigms. Our aim was to investigate whether a classic theoretical model of attention, namely the Load Theory, could account for a large range of empirical findings in this field by distinguishing the role of perceptual and cognitive resources in attentional selection and attentional capture by irrelevant stimuli. As this model has been mostly built on implicit measures of distractor interference, it is unclear whether its predictions also hold when explicit and subjective awareness of an unexpected stimulus is concerned. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analyses of inattentional blindness studies investigating the role of perceptual and/or cognitive resources. The results reveal that, in line with the perceptual account of the Load Theory, inattentional blindness significantly increases with the perceptual load of the task. However, the cognitive account of this theory is not clearly supported by the empirical findings analysed here. Furthermore, the interaction between perceptual and cognitive load on inattentional blindness remains understudied. Theoretical implications for the Load Theory are discussed, notably regarding the difference between attentional capture and subjective awareness paradigms, and further research directions are provided.

Does an increase in physiological indexes predict better cognitive performance: the PhyCog randomised cross-over protocol in type 2 diabetes.

INTRODUCTION: There has been a growing interest towards cognitive-training programmes to improve cognition and prevent cognitive impairment despite discrepant findings. Physical activity has been recognised in maintaining or improving cognitive ability. Based on a psychoneurophysiological approach, physiological indexes should partly determine neuronal dynamics and influence cognition as any effects of cognitive training. This study's primary aim was to examine if improved physiological indexes predict improved cognitive variables in the context of a clinical intervention programme for type 2 diabetes (T2D). METHOD AND ANALYSIS: PhyCog will be a 22-week randomised controlled trial comparing cognitive performance between three arms: (1) physical activity (1 month), a 15-day wash-out, then cognitive training (1 month), (2) cognitive training (1 month), a 15-day wash-out and physical activity (1 month), and (3) an active breathing condition (psychoeducation and resonance frequency breathing for 1 month), then a 15-day wash-out, and combined physical activity and cognitive training (1 month), allowing to determine the most effective intervention to prevent cognitive impairment associated with T2D. All participants will be observed for 3 months following the intervention. The study will include a total of 81 patients with T2D.Cognitive performance and physiological variables will be assessed at baseline (week 0-W0), during the washout (W5, 72-96 hours after week 4), at the end of the intervention (W10), and at the end of the follow-up (W22). The main variables of interest will be executive function, memory and attention. Physiological testing will involve allostatic load such as heart rate variability, microcirculation, cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate levels. Sociodemographic and body composition will also be a consideration. Assessors will all be blinded to outcomes. To test the primary hypothesis, the relationship between improvement in physiological variables and improvement in cognitive variables (executive, memory and attention) will be collected. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This protocol was approved by the Est III French Ethics Committee (2020-A03228-31). Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04915339.

Reward history modulates perceptual load effects.

The reward history of a stimulus can yield strong attentional selection biases. Indeed, attentional capture can be triggered by previously rewarded items which are neither salient nor relevant for the ongoing task, even when selection is clearly counter-productive to actually obtain the reward outcome. Therefore, value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) has been argued to be an automatic attention mechanism. Our study aimed at putting the VDAC automaticity directly to the test. For this purpose, the Load Theory offers a comprehensive framework where distraction is observed under low but not high perceptual load condition. Nevertheless, if VDAC is indeed automatic, distraction by reward-stimuli should be observed on both perceptual load conditions. We used a feature vs. conjunction discrimination of a go/no-go cue to manipulate perceptual load. As expected, our results revealed that perceptual load decreased interference produced by low-reward distractor. However, this effect was not significant for high-reward distractor, giving support to VDAC automaticity. We discussed our results in light of the Load Theory literature and we strongly encourage to consider reward history along with perceptual load in determining attentional capture.

Fear of Missing Out Predicts Distraction by Social Reward Signals Displayed on a Smartphone in Difficult Driving Situations.

Smartphones are particularly likely to elicit driver distraction with obvious negative repercussions on road safety. Recent selective attention models lead to expect that smartphones might be very effective in capturing attention due to their social reward history. Hence, individual differences in terms of Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) - i.e., of the apprehension of missing out on socially rewarding experiences - should play an important role in driver distraction. This factor has already been associated with self-reported estimations of greater attention paid to smartphones while driving, but the potential link between FoMO and smartphone-induced distraction has never been tested empirically. Therefore, we conducted a preliminary study to investigate whether FoMO would modulate attentional capture by reward distractors displayed on a smartphone. First, participants performed a classical visual search task in which neutral stimuli (colored circles) were associated with high or low social reward outcomes. Then, they had to detect a pedestrian or a roe deer in driving scenes with various levels of fog density. The social reward stimuli were displayed as distractors on the screen of a smartphone embedded in the pictures. The results showed a significant three-way interaction between FoMO, social reward distraction, and task difficulty. More precisely, under attention-demanding conditions (i.e., high-fog density), individual FoMO scores predicted attentional capture by social reward distractors, with longer reaction times (RTs) for high rather than low social reward distractors. These results highlight the importance to consider reward history and FoMO when investigating smartphone-based distraction. Limitations are discussed, notably regarding our sample characteristics (i.e., mainly young females) that might hamper the generalization of our findings to the overall population. Future research directions are provided.

Electrical autonomic correlates of emotion.

This paper focussed on how electrophysiological autonomic data may contribute to better understand neural substrates of emotional processing. The utility of autonomic electrophysiological markers for assessing emotional and cognitive processes is presented in the context of an important bodily arousal interface. Components of general autonomic control are reviewed and relevant neural modulations of specific autonomic variables were discussed. The role of autonomic feedback on central processes is emphasized and neural influences on autonomic activities as an index of arousal dimension, the electrodermal activity (EDA), are outlined. An overview of brain mechanisms governing generation and control of EDA is presented, and the contribution of electrodermal parameters as indices of emotional activation illustrated by data related to diurnal emotional reactivity and to non consciously subjective emotionality. Conclusions highlight the role of electrical autonomic expressions as tools to explore emotional components of mind-body-mind relationships.

Further investigation of distinct components of Stroop interference and of their reduction by short response-stimulus intervals.

The aim of this paper is to extend the so-called semantic Stroop paradigm (Neely & Kahan, 2001) - which already successfully distinguishes between the contribution of the semantic vs. response conflict to Stroop interference - so that it can take account of and capture the separate contribution of task conflict. In line with this idea, the Stroop interference observed using the aforementioned paradigm with both short and long RSIs (500 vs. 2000ms) did indeed reflect the specific contribution of the task, semantic and response conflicts. However, the contribution of task conflict (as opposed to the semantic and response conflicts) failed to reach significance when the semantic Stroop paradigm was administered with manual (Experiment 1) as opposed to vocal responses (Experiment 2). These experiments further tested the extent to which the specific contribution of the different conflicts can be influenced by the increased cognitive control induced by a short (vs. long) RSI. The corresponding empirical evidence runs contrary to the assumption that the reduction of overall Stroop interference by a short (vs. long) RSI is due to the reduced contribution of the task (Parris, 2014) and/or semantic (De Jong, Berendsen, & Cools, 1999) conflicts. Indeed, in neither experiment was the contribution of these conflicts reduced by a short RSI. In both experiments, this manipulation only reduced the contribution of the response conflict to the overall Stroop interference (e.g., Augustinova & Ferrand, 2014b). Thus these different results clearly indicate that Stroop interference is a composite phenomenon involving both automatic and controlled processes. The somewhat obvious conclusion of this paper is that these processes are more successfully integrated within multi-stage accounts than within the historically favored single-stage response competition accounts that still dominate current psychological research and practice.

Early Emotional Attention is Impacted in Alzheimer's Disease: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Emotional deficits have been repetitively reported in Alzheimer's disease (AD) without clearly identifying how emotional processing is impaired in this pathology. This paper describes an investigation of early emotional processing, as measured by the effects of emotional visual stimuli on a saccadic task involving both pro (PS) and anti (AS) saccades. Sixteen patients with AD and 25 age-matched healthy controls were eye-tracked while they had to quickly move their gaze toward a positive, negative, or neutral image presented on a computer screen (in the PS condition) or away from the image (in the AS condition). The age-matched controls made more AS mistakes for negative stimuli than for other stimuli, and triggered PSs toward negative stimuli more quickly than toward other stimuli. In contrast, patients with AD showed no difference with regard to the emotional category in any of the tasks. The present study is the first to highlight a lack of early emotional attention in patients with AD. These results should be taken into account in the care provided to patients with AD, since this early impairment might seriously degrade their overall emotional functioning.

Emotional experiences one year after a traffic accident: An exploratory study of verbatim accounts of the ESPARR cohort.

The aim of this study was to characterize different possible profiles of emotional experiences of victims of traffic accident based on verbatim accounts collected one year after the accident, and to relate these profiles to various socio-demographic and health data. A hierarchical cluster analysis of the emotional lexicon was made by categorizing and quantifying the EMOTAIX© lexicon using Tropes© text analysis software. Out of the 751 selected subjects, 328 expressed one or more emotional experiences. A link appeared between quality of life (QoL), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the valence of expressed emotions. Injury severity and history distinguished two sets expressing negative-valence emotional experience. Paradoxically, a group also emerged with a large proportion of severely injured persons, associated with the expression of positive-valence emotional experiences and with domains of QoL and PTSD. The analysis of subjective data sheds light on the experience of traffic accident victims and shows a way forward for research and clinical intervention.

Arousal and valence effects on event-related P3a and P3b during emotional categorization.

Due to the adaptive value of emotional situations, categorizing along the valence dimension may be supported by critical brain functions. The present study examined emotion-cognition relationships by focusing on the influence of an emotional categorization task on the cognitive processing induced by an oddball-like paradigm. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from subjects explicitly asked to categorize along the valence dimension (unpleasant, neutral or pleasant) deviant target pictures embedded in a train of standard stimuli. Late positivities evoked in response to the target pictures were decomposed into a P3a and a P3b and topographical differences were observed according to the valence content of the stimuli. P3a showed enhanced amplitudes at posterior sites in response to unpleasant pictures as compared to both neutral and pleasant pictures. This effect is interpreted as a negativity bias related to attentional processing. The P3b component was sensitive to the arousal value of the stimulation, with higher amplitudes at several posterior sites for both types of emotional pictures. Moreover, unpleasant pictures evoked smaller amplitudes than pleasant ones at fronto-central sites. Thus, the context updating process may be differentially modulated by the affective arousal and valence of the stimulus. The present study supports the assumption that, during an emotional categorization, the emotional content of the stimulus may modulate the reorientation of attention and the subsequent updating process in a specific way.

When do fearful faces override inhibition of return?

Inhibition of return (IOR) occurs when more than about 300 ms elapses between the cue and the target in atypical peripheral cueing task: reaction times (RTs) become longer when the cue and target locations are the same versus different. IOR could serve the adaptive role of optimizing visual search by discouraging the re-inspection of previously attended locations. As such, IOR should not reduce our chances of noticing relevant event information and emotional stimuli, in particular. However, previous studies have led to inconsistent results. The present study offers a systematic investigation of the conditions under which target fearful faces can modulate either the magnitude or the time course of the IOR effect. Notably, we manipulated the depth of facial processing required to perform the task and/or the task relevance of the facial expressions. When participants localized target faces (Experiment 1) or discriminated them from non-face stimuli (Experiment 2), their emotional expression had no impact on IOR whatsoever. However, IOR occurred later for fearful versus neutral faces when the participants performed emotion (Experiment 3) or gender (Experiment 4) discrimination tasks. These findings are discussed with regard to the mechanisms responsible for IOR and to the processing of emotional facial expressions.

Event-related P3a and P3b in response to unpredictable emotional stimuli.

In natural situations, unpredictable events processing often interacts with the ongoing cognitive activities. In a similar manner, the insertion of deviant unpredictable stimuli into a classical oddball task evokes both the P3a and P3b event-related potentials (ERPs) components that are, respectively, thought to index reallocation of attentional resources or inhibitory process and memory updating mechanism. This study aims at characterising the influence of the emotional arousal and valence of a deviant and unpredictable non-target stimulus on these components. ERPs were recorded from 28 sites during a visual three-stimulus oddball paradigm. Unpleasant, neutral and pleasant pictures served as non-target unpredictable items and subjects were asked to realize a perceptually difficult standard/target discrimination task. A temporal principal component analysis (PCA) allowed us to show that non-target pictures elicited both a P3a and a P3b. Moreover, the P3b component was modulated by the emotional arousal and the valence of the pictures. Thus, the memory updating process may be modulated by the affective arousal and valence of unpredictable disturbing stimuli, even if the task does not require any explicit emotional categorization.

Behavioral and electrophysiological investigation of semantic and response conflict in the Stroop task.

By combining the semantic Stroop paradigm (e.g., Klein in American Journal of Psychology 77:576-588, 1964) with a single-letter coloring (SLC) procedure (e.g., Besner et al. in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 4:221-225, 1997), this research investigated whether the frequently reported Stroop-related event-related potential (ERP) effect arising about 400 ms after stimulus onset (Ninc) is sensitive to the semantic and/or the response conflict. Consistent with our past findings (e.g., Augustinova et al. in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17:827-833, 2010), SLC speeded up reaction times for standard-incongruent items only, indicating that SLC reduced the response conflict that these (but not color-associated and neutral) items involve. Ninc amplitudes were more negative for standard-incongruent and color-associated than for color-neutral items. Importantly, this difference was not modulated by SLC. Hence, the behavioral and ERP results conjointly suggest that the Stroop-related Ninc is sensitive to semantic rather than to response and/or general conflict.

Modulation of cognitive processing by emotional valence studied through event-related potentials in humans.

This experiment investigated whether the emotional content of a stimulus could modulate its cognitive processing. Particularly, we focused on the influence of the valence dimension on the cognitive processing triggered by a non emotional oddball task. To this end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 25 sites during a visual oddball paradigm. Three sets of pictures (unpleasant, neutral and pleasant) with low arousal values served as rare target items. Subjects were simply asked to realize a standard/target categorization task, irrespective of the picture valence. A temporal principal component analysis allowed us to identify several evoked components (i.e. P1, P2, N2, P3a and P3b). Emotional effects observed on P1, P2 and P3b showed that the valence content of the stimulus modulates the cognitive processes at several points in the information processing stream.

Autonomic responding to aversive words without conscious valence discrimination.

A growing body of data suggests that the emotional dimension of a stimulus can be processed without conscious identification of the stimulus. The arousal system could be activated by unrecognised biologically significant stimuli through simple physical stimulus features related to threat, without any evaluation of the meaning of the stimulus. However, unconscious processing of emotionally laden words cannot rely only on perceptual features but must include some analysis of symbolic meaning. The first aim of the present study was to assess whether masked (unrecognised) aversive words can elicit enhanced skin conductance responses (SCRs), a major autonomic index of emotional arousal, in normal participants. Our second aim was to determine whether any autonomic activation related to affective value of words is independent from access of this value to consciousness. Thus, the presentation duration of masked aversive and neutral words was determined, for each participant, in such a way that (1) identification was precluded, (2) valence discrimination was at chance, as indicated by performance in a forced-choice two-alternative task and by confidence ratings of the responses, and (3) emotional and neutral words were not detected differentially. SCRs were recorded during masked and unmasked presentations of both types of word. SCRs elicited by unmasked words, and also by masked words, were of greater magnitude when the words were emotional than when they were neutral. Consequently, in normal participants, autonomic activation can be a discriminative marker of the affective dimension of unrecognised verbal material in the absence of conscious valence identification.

N400 modulation by categorical or associative interference in a famous face naming task.

It is controversial whether the organization of biographical information relating to known persons is categorical or associative. To shed light on semantic organization, researchers have studied semantic access of proper names using priming or interference paradigms with associated and/or category-specific primes or distractors, in recognition, familiarity or naming tasks. Depending on the task, categorical and/or associative effects have been obtained. In order to disambiguate those conflicting results, in the present event-related potentials (ERP) study, we capitalized on the fact that the N400 component is sensitive to the congruity of a stimulus with the current semantic context. We used an interference paradigm with delayed naming, in which a celebrity face target and a proper name distractor (auditory stimulus) were either associated or belonged to the same category (in the control condition, the face was preceded by a white noise). The results showed an associative interference effect with a more negative N400 component for associated name distractors than in the other conditions. These results are consistent not only with a categorical organization but also with an associative organization of biographical information for people.

Social contact and other-race face processing in the human brain.

The present study investigated the influence social factors upon the neural processing of faces of other races using event-related potentials. A multi-tiered approach was used to identify face-specific stages of processing, to test for effects of race-of-face upon processing at these stages and to evaluate the impact of social contact and individuating experience upon these effects. The results showed that race-of-face has significant effects upon face processing, starting from early perceptual stages of structural encoding, and that social factors may play an important role in mediating these effects.