Cortical oscillations and event-related brain potentials during the preparation and execution of deceptive behavior.

Deception often occurs in response to a preceding cue (e.g., a precarious question) alerting us about the need to subsequently lie. Here, we simulate this process by adapting a previously established paradigm of intentionally false responding, now instructing participants about the need for deception (vs. truthful responses) by means of a simple cue occurring before each response-relevant target. We analyzed event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as well as cortical oscillations recorded from the scalp. In an experimental study (N = 44), we show that a cue signaling the need for deception involves increased attentional selection (P2, P3a, P3b). Moreover, in the period following the cue and leading up to the target, ERP and oscillatory signatures of anticipation and preparation (Contingent Negative Variation, alpha suppression) were found to be increased during trials requiring a deceptive as compared to a truthful response. Additionally, we replicated earlier findings that target processing involves enhanced motivated attention toward words requiring a deceptive response (LPC). Moreover, a signature of integration effort and semantic inhibition (N400) was observed to be larger for words to which responses have to be intentionally false as compared to those to which responses must be truthful. Our findings support the view of the involvement of a series of basic cognitive processes (especially attention and cognitive control) when responses are deliberately wrong instead of right. Moreover, preceding cues signaling the subsequent need for lying already elicit attentional and preparatory mechanisms facilitating the cognitive operations necessary for later successful lying.

Event-related potentials of food-induced blindness in the rapid serial visual presentation paradigm.

Emotion-induced blindness is known as the impairment in the identification of targets that follow shortly after emotional distractors in the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. Besides negative or erotic stimuli, food distractors have also been found to elicit a similar effect. This indicates an attentional bias for food stimuli in the temporal dimension of visual attention, which is highly relevant in the context of eating behaviour. So far, the neural mechanisms of this food-induced blindness are widely unknown. In the present study (N = 53), we investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to food distractors and non-food targets in a single-target RSVP task. Automatic capture of visual attention by task-irrelevant food distractors was evident in enhanced Distractor Negativity (N2) and Early Food Positivity (P1). However, food distractors did not elicit a P3b. Thus, apparently, not the encoding of food distractors in working memory but alternative attentional processes are responsible for the food-induced blindness. Reduced target P3b reflected errors in target identification but was unaffected by the preceding distractor. In contrast, target N2 was specifically reduced for unidentified targets preceded by food distractors. Presumably, the attentional capture of food distractors may have caused a reduction of target N2, thereby contributing to the impairment in target identification. However, future research is needed to confirm this assumption and bridge the gap between the food-induced blindness on the behavioural level and the attentional capture of food stimuli reflected in the distractor ERPs.

Effects of the calorie content of visual food stimuli and simulated situations on event-related frontal alpha asymmetry and event-related potentials in the context of food choices.

Approach and avoidance tendencies play an important role in everyday food choices when choosing between high-caloric, rather unhealthy, and low-caloric, rather healthy options. On a neuronal level, approach and avoidance motivation have been associated with asymmetrical activity of the frontal cortex, often quantified by alpha power averaged over several seconds of resting electroencephalogram (EEG). Going beyond the analysis of resting EEG, the present study aimed to investigate asymmetrical frontal activity in direct response to food stimuli in an event-related design and in combination with event-related potentials (ERPs). Therefore, a sample of 56 young and healthy participants completed a food choice task. They were asked to choose from a selection of high-caloric and low-caloric foods which they would want to eat on a normal day (baseline), when being on a diet, and in a reward situation. On the behavioural level, there was a clear preference for low-caloric foods. Well in line with that, time-frequency analyses of alpha asymmetry revealed relatively stronger temporary (950-1175 ms) left-hemispheric frontal activity, that is, a stronger approach tendency, in response to low-caloric as compared to high-caloric foods. Furthermore, larger P300 for low-caloric foods indicated an increased task relevance of low-caloric foods in the baseline and the reward situation. In contrast, the late positive potential (LPP), an index of subjective value, was larger for high-as compared to low-caloric foods, reflecting the intrinsic rewarding properties of high-caloric foods. ERPs, but not frontal alpha asymmetry, were influenced by the situational context.

On ignoring words-exploring the neural signature of inhibition of affective words using ERPs.

In the present study event-related potentials were used to shed further light on the neural signatures of active inhibition of the (affective) content of written words. Intentional inhibition was implemented by simply asking participants (N = 32) to ignore single words that served as primes in an affective priming (AP) task. In AP, evaluations about a priori neutral targets typically tend to shift towards the valence of preceding primes, denoting an AP effect (APE). To create a plausible cover-context emphasizing the usefulness of word inhibition, participants were asked to avoid this shift, that is, to make unbiased target evaluations. Ignoring the prime words was suggested as the most efficient strategy to achieve this aim. Effective inhibition of the words' (affective) content, as suggested by a significant APE present for words processed without any further instruction, but not for ignored ones, affected multiple stages of processing. On the neuronal level, word inhibition was characterized by reduced early perceptual (left-lateralized word-specific N170), later attentional (parietal P300), and affective-semantic processing (reduced posterior semantic asymmetry). Furthermore, an additional recruitment of top-down inhibitory control processes, which was mirrored in increased amplitudes of medial-frontal negativity, showed to be critically involved in intentional word inhibition.

Effects of distinctiveness and memory on lateralized and unlateralized brain-electrical activity during visual word encoding.

The present study investigated a recently introduced left-lateralized component in the event-related potential (ERP), the posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA), in the context of an isolation paradigm. The PSA is a relative negativity that is most pronounced at temporoparietal electrodes, peaks around 300 ms, and is assumed to reflect early semantic processing of visual words. A free-recall, word-list-learning paradigm was conducted. The learning list comprised two stimuli which were physically isolated from the other stimuli (by different font size or different typeface). The typical behavioral isolation effect with higher recall for isolated stimuli was observed. Furthermore, ERP effects of stimulus type and subsequent memory were analyzed. A left-lateralized negativity that matched the topography of the PSA but occurred somewhat later showed an effect of stimulus distinctiveness, with increased amplitudes for isolates, thus suggesting their deeper semantic processing. However, PSA amplitude did not predict subsequent recall. Unlateralized ERPs replicated previous findings of a greater late frontal positivity during elaborated encoding of both isolated stimuli and subsequently recalled stimuli. This recall effect was greater for isolated than standard stimuli. We argue that physical distinctiveness during encoding facilitates recall to the extent that it promotes the frontally-mediated processes that predict better recall in general.

Independent ERP predictors of affective priming underline the importance of depth of prime and target processing and implicit affect misattribution.

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the mental processes that contribute to affective priming (AP), a systematic shift of evaluative judgments about neutral targets toward the valence of preceding primes. 64 participants rated their liking of a priori neutral ideographs preceded by 800-ms emotional primewords, while 64-channel EEG was recorded. We observed a significant AP effect that was closely associated with prime valence dependent variations of the right central-to-parieto-occipital positive slow wave (PSW) amplitude in the target ERP, providing evidence for implicit affect misattribution as one source of the effect. While deeper target processing mirrored in valence unspecific central-to-parieto-occipital target PSW amplitude was negatively associated with AP, deeper prime processing indicated by valence unspecific central-to-parieto-occipital prime PSW amplitude was positively related to AP. These depth of processing effects underline the importance of strategic processes in AP. In a stepwise linear regression analysis, the prime valence effect on right central-to-parieto-occipital target PSW indicating affect misattribution and the two valence-unspecific ERP indices of processing depth (central-to-parieto-occipital prime- and target PSW) were independent predictors of the size of the AP effect. Together they accounted for 60% of the variance. Furthermore, an explorative analysis provided first evidence for the relevance of early discrimination of prime valence for AP.

Food has the right of way: Evidence for prioritised processing of visual food stimuli irrespective of eating style.

Visual attention for food is likely to play an important role for overeating. The attentional bias for visual food stimuli was investigated with respect to self-reported restrained, external and emotional eating style. Using a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation task (N = 103), the effects of visual food stimuli in the context of the attentional blink were examined. Food targets enhanced the attentional blink when presented as first targets in a rapid stream of pictures and impaired the identification of preceding non-food targets in terms of a backward interference when presented as second targets. Task irrelevant food distractors interfered with the identification of subsequent non-food targets. The effects provide evidence for a prioritisation of food stimuli in the allocation of attentional resources. The attentional bias for food emerged as a universal phenomenon irrespective of personal eating style. Therefore, enhanced attention for visual food stimuli seems to play no direct causal role in eating styles associated with overeating.

The posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA): specific to written not auditory semantic word processing.

The present study replicates the finding of a posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA; Koppehele-Gossel et al., Brain Lang 157-158:35-43, 2016), a lateralized event-related potential (ERP) suggested to reflect semantic activation from visually presented single words. This ERP negativity, derived from the subtraction of right-side from left-side scalp activity, again peaked around 300 ms at temporoparietal electrodes and was more pronounced in a semantic task, compared to both a silent naming task and a passive viewing task. With analogous tasks, no comparable negativity was found for auditorily presented words. This suggests that the PSA specifically reflects visual-verbal semantic activation. For auditory words, a later variation with the demands on semantic processing was observed for a left-lateralized late positive potential (500-800 ms), which, however, showed a remarkably similar topography as the PSA. Thus, while semantic processing of visual and auditory words converges on left temporoparietal brain areas, the exact patterns of brain electrical activation in terms of time course and polarity are different.

The posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA): An early brain electrical signature of semantic activation from written words.

This study replicates and extends the findings of Koppehele-Gossel, Schnuerch, and Gibbons (2016) of a posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA) in event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which closely tracks the time course and degree of semantic activation from single visual words. This negativity peaked 300 ms after word onset, was derived by subtracting right- from left-side activity, and was larger in a semantic task compared to two non-semantic control tasks. The validity of the PSA in reflecting the effort to activate word meaning was again attested by a negative correlation between the meaning-specific PSA increase and verbal intelligence, even after controlling for nonverbal intelligence. Extending prior work, current source density (CSD) transformation was used. CSD results were consistent with a left temporo-parietal cortical origin of the PSA. Moreover, no PSA was found for pictorial material, suggesting that the component reflects early semantic processing specific to verbal stimuli.

From Positivity to Negativity Bias: Ambiguity Affects the Neurophysiological Signatures of Feedback Processing.

Previous studies on the neurophysiological underpinnings of feedback processing almost exclusively used low-ambiguity feedback, which does not fully address the diversity of situations in everyday life. We therefore used a pseudo trial-and-error learning task to investigate ERPs of low- versus high-ambiguity feedback. Twenty-eight participants tried to deduce the rule governing visual feedback to their button presses in response to visual stimuli. In the blocked condition, the same two feedback words were presented across several consecutive trials, whereas in the random condition feedback was randomly drawn on each trial from sets of five positive and five negative words. The feedback-related negativity (FRN-D), a frontocentral ERP difference between negative and positive feedback, was significantly larger in the blocked condition, whereas the centroparietal late positive complex indicating controlled attention was enhanced for negative feedback irrespective of condition. Moreover, FRN-D in the blocked condition was due to increased reward positivity (Rew-P) for positive feedback, rather than increased (raw) FRN for negative feedback. Our findings strongly support recent lines of evidence that the FRN-D, one of the most widely studied signatures of reinforcement learning in the human brain, critically depends on feedback discriminability and is primarily driven by the Rew-P. A novel finding concerned larger frontocentral P2 for negative feedback in the random but not the blocked condition. Although Rew-P points to a positivity bias in feedback processing under conditions of low feedback ambiguity, P2 suggests a specific adaptation of information processing in case of highly ambiguous feedback, involving an early negativity bias. Generalizability of the P2 findings was demonstrated in a second experiment using explicit valence categorization of highly emotional positive and negative adjectives.

How personal standards perfectionism and evaluative concerns perfectionism affect the error positivity and post-error behavior with varying stimulus visibility.

Error detection is required in order to correct or avoid imperfect behavior. Although error detection is beneficial for some people, for others it might be disturbing. We investigated Gaudreau and Thompson's (Personality and Individual Differences, 48, 532-537, 2010) model, which combines personal standards perfectionism (PSP) and evaluative concerns perfectionism (ECP). In our electrophysiological study, 43 participants performed a combination of a modified Simon task, an error awareness paradigm, and a masking task with a variation of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 33, 67, and 100 ms). Interestingly, relative to low-ECP participants, high-ECP participants showed a better post-error accuracy (despite a worse classification accuracy) in the high-visibility SOA 100 condition than in the two low-visibility conditions (SOA 33 and SOA 67). Regarding the electrophysiological results, first, we found a positive correlation between ECP and the amplitude of the error positivity (Pe) under conditions of low stimulus visibility. Second, under the condition of high stimulus visibility, we observed a higher Pe amplitude for high-ECP-low-PSP participants than for high-ECP-high-PSP participants. These findings are discussed within the framework of the error-processing avoidance hypothesis of perfectionism (Stahl, Acharki, Kresimon, Völler, & Gibbons, International Journal of Psychophysiology, 97, 153-162, 2015).

[Assessment of Social-Communicative Behaviour Problems and Expression of Emotions in Three- to Six-Year Old Children in Nursery School and Kindergarten]. / Beurteilung von sozial-kommunikativem Problemverhalten und Emotionsausdruck Drei- bis Sechsjähriger in einer Kindertageseinrichtung.

Developmental support and promotion of children with behavioural disorders received little attention in nursery school and kindergarten in the last years. Parents expect that their children exhibiting psychosocial deficits or problems in social-communicative competence will also get support by the said educational institutions. This requires a preliminary, but reliable and economic monitoring, estimation and evaluation of selected behaviour patterns. Therefore, we developed and validated a scale to rate social-communicative behaviour problems and expression of emotions. Factor analysis suggested two factors which corresponded to the intended measurement object and the defined taxonomy of behavioural problems (scale 1: mainly internalized behaviour; scale 2: externalized behaviour). Both internal consistency and split-half reliability proved to be good. High convergent criterion validity was found for scale 1 and still substantial, although lower, for scale 2. The rating is simple and can be performed within ten and scored within five minutes. The result is a reliable indicator for a step-by-step approach to recommend an expanded specific psycho-diagnostics, so that therapeutic interventions as well as prevention programmes for vulnerable children and appropriate social training programmes can start timely.

The more you ignore me the closer I get: An ERP study of evaluative priming.

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the various mental processes contributing to evaluative priming-that is, more positive judgments for targets preceded by affectively positive, as opposed to negative, prime stimuli. To ensure ecological validity, we employed a priori meaningful landscape pictures as targets and emotional adjectives as visual primes and presented both primes and targets for relatively long durations (>1 s). Prime-related lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) revealed response priming as one source of the significant evaluative priming effect. On the other hand, greater right-frontal positive slow wave in the ERP for pictures following negative, as compared with positive, primes indicated altered impression formation, thus supporting automatic spreading activation and/or affect misattribution accounts. Moreover, target LRPs suggested conscious counter-control to reduce the evaluative priming net effect. Finally, when comparing prime ERPs for two groups of participants showing strong versus weak evaluative priming, we found strong evidence for the role of depth of prime processing: In the weak-effect group, prime words evoked an increased visual P1/N1 complex, a larger posterior P2 component, and a greater left-parietal processing negativity presumably reflecting semantic processing. By contrast, a larger medial-frontal P2/N2 complex in the strong-effect group suggested top-down inhibition of the prime's emotional content. Thus, trying to ignore the primes can actually increase, rather than decrease, the evaluative priming effect.

You're Beautiful When You Smile: Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Evidence of Early Opposite-Gender Bias in Happy Faces.

Studies of social cognition have shown gender differences regarding human face processing. One interesting finding is the enhanced processing of opposite-gender faces at different time stages, as revealed by event-related brain potentials. Crucially, from an evolutionary perspective, such a bias might interact with the emotional expression of the face. To investigate this, 100 participants (50 female, 50 male) completed an expression-detection task while their EEG was recorded. In three blocks, fearful, happy and neutral faces (female and male) were randomly presented, with participants instructed to respond to only one predefined target expression level in each block. Using linear mixed models, we observed both faster reaction times as well as larger P1 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes for women compared to men, supporting a generally greater female interest in faces. Highly interestingly, the analysis revealed an opposite-gender bias at P1 for happy target faces. This suggests that participants' attentional templates may include more opposite-gender facial features when selectively attending to happy faces. While N170 was influenced by neither the face nor the participant gender, LPP was modulated by the face gender and specific combinations of the target status, face gender and expression, which is interpreted in the context of gender-emotion stereotypes. Future research should further investigate this expression and attention dependency of early opposite-gender biases.

Levels of visuo-spatial selection: an ERP study of negative priming.

Usually, a probe target appearing in a recently ignored distractor location is less efficiently processed. This robust phenomenon is called (visuo-) spatial negative priming (SNP). Among other explanations, concepts of persisting or retrieved spatial inhibition play a major role. Two relevant issues were investigated using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The first pertains to context sensitivity of inhibition: Is a probe distractor necessary for SNP? The second concerns levels of processing at which spatial inhibition operates: Does SNP affect perception, selection, and/or stimulus classification? A localization task with and without probe distractors was employed while 64-channel EEG was recorded. Obviously, SNP does not require a probe distractor; the distractor-absent SNP effect was larger than the distractor-present SNP effect. Distractor-present SNP had two lateralized ERP effects, N1pc amplitude reduction and N2pc amplitude increase. Smaller N1pc may indeed reflect perceptual decrement, but was inversely related to size of behavioral SNP. By contrast, only strong-SNP participants showed N2pc increase, which points to selection disadvantage due to persisting inhibition of higher-level spatial representations. Distractor-absent SNP had no N1pc/N2pc correlates; instead, reduced amplitude of a broadly distributed P300 component suggests impaired stimulus classification due to episodic retrieval of inappropriate prime information. Overall, SNP seems to emerge from relatively late stages of processing, thus challenging the idea of context-free persisting inhibition of low-level spatial representations. Furthermore, distractor-present and distractor-absent SNP are qualitatively different from each other.

Self-awareness and health-related quality of life after traumatic brain injury.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relations among self-awareness (SA), impaired SA, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) after traumatic brain injury (TBI). PARTICIPANTS: One hundred forty-one adults hospitalized with TBI and their significant others from a cross-sectional multicenter study. Using Glasgow Coma Scale classification, 32 participants had severe injuries, 29 moderate, 44 mild, and 25 complicated mild TBI. MEASURES: Patient Competency Rating Scale for Neurorehabilitation; Short Form-36 Health Survey; Cognitive Quality of Life; Quality Of Life after Brain Injury; Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; Profile of Mood States; Glasgow Outcome Scale Extended. METHOD: Patient Competency Rating Scale for Neurorehabilitation ratings made by participants and their significant others were used to assess SA and discrepancies between the 2 ratings were used to define impaired SA. RESULTS: Significant associations were identified between SA and HRQOL, anxiety, depression, and severity of injury. Participants with and without impaired SA differed in cognitive HRQOL and leisure activities. Using multiple regression, no direct predictors of SA were identified, although interaction effects were observed. CONCLUSION: After TBI, lower SA is associated with higher estimates of HRQOL, particularly in the cognitive domain. Although the associations are modest, the assessment of SA should play a role in the interpretation of reported HRQOL after TBI.

Of ugly gains and happy losses: An event-related potential study of interactions of the intrinsic and acquired valence of emotional pictures.

During the last decades, event-related potential research on the processing of intrinsic and acquired valence has made great progress, but the two dimensions rarely varied simultaneously. Only that way, however, can we investigate whether the acquisition of extrinsic valence varies with intrinsic valence and whether intrinsic and acquired valence share the same brain mechanisms. Forty-five participants performed associative learning of gains and losses, using pictures varying on intrinsic valence (positive, negative) and outcome (90 % gain, 50 %/50 %, 90 % loss). 64-channel EEG was recorded. During acquisition, one picture from each valence/outcome combination was repeatedly presented, followed by abstract outcome information (+10 ct, -10 ct) at the predefined probability. In the test phase, participants pressed buttons to earn the real gains and avoid the real losses associated with the pictures. Here, effects of outcome and/or its congruence with intrinsic valence were observed for RT, error rate, frontal theta power, posterior P2, P300, and LPP. Moreover, outcome systematically affected post-test valence and arousal ratings. During acquisition, a contingency effect (90 % > 50 %) on amplitude of a frontal negative slow wave accompanied the progress of learning, independently of outcome, valence, and congruence. The relative absence of outcome effects during acquisition suggests "cold" semantic rather than genuinely affective processing of gains and losses. However, with real gains and losses in the test phase, "hot" affective processing took place, and outcome and its congruence with intrinsic valence influenced behavior and neural processing. Finally, the data suggest both shared and distinct brain mechanisms of intrinsic and acquired valence.

Tasting inhibition: A proof-of-concept study of the food stop-signal game.

Self-Control is an important skill in everyday life when attention is automatically drawn toward certain stimuli. For instance, food stimuli automatically capture visual attention and are processed preferentially. Therefore, efficient response inhibition is crucial to refrain from careless overeating. In the present proof-of-concept study we use a novel adaptation of a previously evaluated Stop-Signal Game (SSG) to measure reactive, food-specific, response inhibition in healthy adults. We analyzed a sample of 83 participants (60 female, mean age=24.1, mean BMI=21.71kg/m2) split into three groups. In a gamified stop-signal task, participants navigated an avatar in an urban environment toward high-calorie food, low-calorie food, or non-food stimuli in go-trials and were asked to inhibit the approach reaction in stop-trials. Hunger, eating styles, food craving, and impulsivity were assessed via self-reports to investigate their relationship with (food-specific) response inhibition. Results showed that response inhibition (in terms of stop-signal reaction time, SSRT) did not differ between the high-calorie, low-calorie, and non-food SSG which might be explained by characteristics of the sample. However, impulsivity was positively correlated with SSRT in the low-calorie SSG, whereas food-craving and hunger were positively related to response inhibition in the high-calorie SSG. Future studies could build upon the food SSG to measure and train food-specific response inhibition in the treatment of overeating.

Attentional tuning of valent word forms.

Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we tested the hypothesis of valent word forms (Kissler et al., 2006, Prog Brain Res) stating that the mere visual shapes of emotional words acquire valence through numerous co-occurrences with affective activation over an experienced reader's life. Thereby, associations between neuronal representations of visual word forms and affect are strengthened. If so, selective attention to a specific level of the valence of single visual words should not only pre-activate neuronal representations of that level of valence, but this activation should also spread to the associated word forms. This should improve their processing and/or affective discrimination. In a valence-detection task, N = 53 participants made speeded responses only to words of the current target level of valence (negative, neutral, or positive), which varied across separate blocks. We focused on posterior visual P1 and N170 components, two well-established ERP markers of low-level and structural word form processing, respectively. P1 increased from negative over neutral to positive words; this effect was stronger in target compared to nontarget words. N170 was larger for emotional compared to neutral target words, whereas nontarget words showed a strong reverse pattern. The P1 effect for target words and the N170 effect for nontarget words both were driven by good task performers in terms of fast hit responses. Results support the idea of valent word forms that can be tuned by selective attention to valence, which implies both, facilitated affective discrimination and processing of target words, and inhibition of the processing of nontarget words.

The influence of selective attention to specific emotions on the processing of faces as revealed by event-related brain potentials.

Event-related potential studies using affective words have indicated that selective attention to valence can increase affective discrimination at early perceptual stages. This effect most likely relies on neural associations between perceptual features of a stimulus and its affective value. Similar to words, emotional expressions in human faces are linked to specific visual elements. Therefore, selectively attending to a given emotion should allow for the preactivation of neural networks coding for the emotion and associated first-order visual elements, leading to enhanced early processing of faces expressing the attended emotion. To investigate this, we employed an expression detection task (N = 65). Fearful, happy, and neutral faces were randomly presented in three blocks while participants were instructed to respond only to one predefined target level of expression in each block. Reaction times were the fastest for happy target faces, which was accompanied by an increased occipital P1 for happy compared with fearful faces. The N170 yielded an arousal effect (emotional > neutral) while both components were not modulated by target status. In contrast, the early posterior negativity (EPN) arousal effect tended to be larger for target compared with nontarget faces. The late positive potential (LPP) revealed large effects of status and expression as well as an interaction driven by an increased LPP specifically for nontarget fearful faces. These findings tentatively indicate that selective attention to facial affect may enhance early emotional processing (EPN) even though further research is needed. Moreover, late controlled processing of facial emotions appears to involve a negativity bias.