Semantic satiation of emotional words impedes facial expression processing in two stages.

To explore the mechanism of emotional words semantic satiation effect on facial expression processing, participants were asked to judge the facial expression (happiness or sadness) after an emotional word ((cry) or (smile)) or a neutral word ((Ah), baseline condition) was presented for 20 s. The results revealed that participants were slower in judging valence-congruent facial expressions and reported a more enlarged (Experiment 1) and prolonged (Experiment 2) N170 component than the baseline condition. No significant difference in behavior and N170 appeared between the valence-incongruent and the baseline condition. However, the amplitude of LPC (Late Positive Complex) under both valence-congruent/incongruent conditions was smaller than the baseline condition. It indicates that, in the early stage, the impeding effect of satiated emotional words is specifically constrained to facial expressions with the same emotional valence; in the late stage, such an impeding effect might spread to facial expressions with the opposite valence of the satiated emotional word.

The availability of attentional resources modulates the anger superiority effect.

It is much debated whether there is an anger superiority effect (ASE) in the recognition of facial expressions. Recent research has shown that the attentional demand of a task plays a vital role in the emergence and magnitude of the ASE. However, only a visual crowding task was employed to manipulate attentional demands, and it is unclear whether the emergence and magnitude of the ASE was contingent on the availability of attentional resources in general. The present study employed a dual-task paradigm to manipulate the availability of attentional resources for facial expression discrimination in which participants were instructed to perform a central letter discrimination task and a peripheral facial expression discrimination task concurrently. Experiment 1 showed an ASE in the dual task but no ASE was yielded when the facial expression discrimination task was performed alone. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and further demonstrated a gradual shift from no ASE to an attenuated ASE and finally to a strong ASE as attentional resources that were available for facial expression discrimination gradually became limited. Together, these results suggest that the emergence and magnitude of the ASE is modulated by the availability of attentional resources, which supports an Attentional Demands Modulation Hypothesis of the ASE.

The impact of sensation seeking personality trait on acute alcohol-induced disinhibition.

BACKGROUND: Acute alcohol-related behavioral disinhibition has been well studied. But whether individual differences in the personality trait sensation seeking affect alcohol-induced behavioral disinhibition remains uncertain. METHODS: The present study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technique and a response inhibition task (i.e., Go/No-Go) to determine the impact of the sensation seeking trait on the relationship between acute alcohol administration and inhibitory control capacity, and further investigate the neural mechanisms underlying this behavioral effect. Twenty-five high-sensation seekers and twenty-six low-sensation seekers were enrolled in this study. These participants attended two sessions: once for alcohol intake (0.5g/kg) and once for placebo intake (0g/kg). RESULTS: Our results showed that high-sensation seekers relative to low-sensation seekers showed a significant decrease in inhibition accuracy under alcohol versus the placebo condition. Moreover, reduced prefrontal activity following acute alcohol consumption was more pronounced in high-sensation seekers compared with low-sensation seekers. CONCLUSIONS: These findings showed that alcohol-induced behavioral disinhibition was affected by the personality trait sensation seeking and that recruitment of the prefrontal cortex contributed to the observed behavioral effect.

Attention relieves visual crowding: Dissociable effects of peripheral and central cues.

Visual crowding can be reduced when attention is directed to the target by peripheral cues. However, it is unclear whether central cues relieve visual crowding to the same extent as peripheral cues. In this study, we combined the Posner cueing task and the crowding task to investigate the effect of exogenous and endogenous attention on crowding. In Experiment 1, five different stimulus-onset asychronies (SOAs) between the cue and the target and a predictive validity of 100% were adopted. Both attentional cues were shown to significantly reduce the effect of visual crowding, but the peripheral cue was more effective than the central cue. Furthermore, peripheral cues started to relieve visual crowding at the shortest SOA (100 ms), whereas central cues worked only at later SOAs (275 ms or above). When the predictive validity of the cue was decreased to 70% in Experiment 2, similar results to Experiment 1 were found, but the valid cue was less effective in reducing crowding than that in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, when the predictive validity was decreased to 50%, a valid peripheral cue improved performance but a valid central cue did not, suggesting that endogenous attention but not exogenous attention can be voluntarily controlled when the cues are not predictive of the target's location. These findings collectively suggest that both peripheral and central cues can alleviate crowding, but they differ in terms of strength, time dynamics, and flexibility of voluntary control.

Clinical correlates of irritability, anger, hostility, and aggression in posttraumatic stress disorder.

OBJECTIVE: Although irritability, anger, and aggression are diagnostic symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their clinical significance and associations with psychopathology remain unclear. METHOD: In a sample of community adults with probable PTSD (n = 151), we measured irritability, physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility with the Brief Irritability Test and the Brief Aggression Questionnaire. Participants' psychopathology, including depression, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), psychotic-like experiences, insomnia, as well as suicidal behaviors were also assessed. RESULTS: Correlation analysis showed that irritability and anger were modestly related to all PTSD dimensions; physical aggression was related to avoidance, negative alterations in cognitions and mood (NACM), and hyperarousal; hostility was related to reexperiencing, NACM, and hyperarousal; while verbal aggression was not significantly related to any PTSD dimensions. After adjustment for trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms, irritability was associated with almost all psychopathology and suicidal behaviors, however, anger, hostility, and aggression were sparsely related to some psychopathology or suicidal behaviors. Particularly, anger was only related to ADHD and insomnia. Latent profile analysis based on PTSD, irritability, anger, hostility, and aggression indicated two discrete subgroups: the high severity group (33.8%) and the low severity group (66.2%), with high severity group reporting higher rates of comorbidity and suicidal behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: The findings support irritability, aggression, anger, and hostility as separate constructs; moreover, irritability, anger, and aggression should be independently measured in PTSD. Our findings also suggest the significance of irritability as a separate hallmark of PTSD and the need to incorporate PTSD dimensions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Working memory modulates the anger superiority effect in central and peripheral visual fields.

Angry faces have been shown to be detected more efficiently in a crowd of distractors compared to happy faces, known as the anger superiority effect (ASE). The present study investigated whether the ASE could be modified by top-down manipulation of working memory (WM), in central and peripheral visual fields. In central vision, participants held a colour in WM for a final memory test while simultaneously performing a visual search task that required them to determine whether a face showed a different expression from other coloured faces. The colour held in WM matched either the colour of the target face (target-matching), the colour of a distractor face (distractor-matching), or neither (non-matching). Results showed that the ASE was observed when the probability of target-matching trials was low. However, when the top-down WM effect was strengthened by raising the probability of target-matching trials, the ASE in the target-matching condition was completely eliminated. Intriguingly, when the visual search task was substituted by a peripheral crowding task, similar results to central vision were found in the target-matching condition. Taken together, our findings indicate that the ASE is subject to the top-down WM effect, regardless of the visual field.

On the relation between crowding and ensemble perception: Examining the role of attention.

Ensemble perception of a crowd of stimuli is very accurate, even when individual stimuli are invisible due to crowding. The ability of high-precision ensemble perception can be an evolved compensatory mechanism for the limited attentional resolution caused by crowding. Thus the relationship of crowding and ensemble coding is like two sides of the same coin wherein attention may play a critical factor for their coexistence. The present study investigated whether crowding and ensemble coding were similarly modulated by attention, which can promote our understanding of their relation. Experiment 1 showed that diverting attention away from the target harmed the performance in both crowding and ensemble perception tasks regardless of stimulus density, but crowding was more severely harmed. Experiment 2 showed that directing attention toward the target bar enhanced the performance of crowding regardless of stimulus density. Ensemble perception of high-density bars was also enhanced but to a lesser extent, while ensemble perception of low-density bars was harmed. Together, our results indicate that crowding is strongly modulated by attention, whereas ensemble perception is only moderately modulated by attention, which conforms to the adaptive view.

Attentional demand induced by visual crowding modulates the anger superiority effect.

Previous research on emotional bias in face perception has shown inconsistent findings, proposing either angry or happy faces to be detected more efficiently. A recent study showed that the anger superiority effect (ASE), which showed in the high attentional demand condition, vanished in the low attentional demand condition. The authors thus proposed an attentional demands modulation hypothesis to interpret the inconsistent findings. The present study tested this hypothesis in a visual crowding task in which participants were instructed to determine whether the target face was happy or angry. Attentional demands were manipulated by changing the strength of crowding, including presenting stimuli in different configurations (Experiment 1), and setting different target-flanker separations and presenting stimuli in different eccentricities (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed an ASE when the stimulus configuration incurred a high attentional demand. Intriguingly, the ASE became weaker and then disappeared as the attentional demand became lower. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that the ASE decreased as the target-flanker separation became larger. Together, these results suggest that the emergence and magnitude of ASE is modulated by attentional demands, which supports the attentional demands modulation hypothesis.

The anger superiority effect revisited: a visual crowding task.

Visual search studies have shown that threatening facial expressions are more efficiently detected among a crowd of distractor faces than nonthreatening expressions, known as the anger superiority effect (ASE). However, the opposite finding has also been documented. The present study investigated the ASE in the visual periphery with a visual crowding task. In the study, the target face either appeared alone (uncrowded condition) or was crowded by four neutral or emotional faces (crowded condition). Participants were instructed to determine whether the target face was happy or angry. Experiment 1 showed an ASE when crowded by neutral faces. Intriguingly, this superiority vanished when the target face was crowded by emotional faces that had a different expression from the target as well as when the target face was presented alone. Experiment 2 replicated this result in an independent sample of East Asians (vs. Caucasians in Experiment 1) and thus demonstrated the robustness and cross-cultural consistency of our findings. Together, these results suggest that the ASE in the visual periphery is contingent on task demands induced by visual crowding.

Redox-controlled syndio-specific polymerization of styrene catalyzed by ferrocenyl functionalized half-sandwich scandium complexes.

Redox-controlled polymerization is one of the new and efficient strategies to precisely construct the microstructures of polymeric materials, and thus has received increasing attention in the chemical community. Salt metathesis of ScCl3 with 1 equiv. of Fc(1-C9H6)Li (where Fc = ferrocenyl group), followed by the addition of 2 equiv. of LiCH2C6H4NMe2-o in THF at room temperature gave the ferrocenyl functionalized half-sandwich scandium bis(o-dimethylaminobenzyl) complex [Fc(1-C9H6)]Sc(CH2C6H4NMe2-o)2 (1) in 89% isolated yield. This complex was characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR spectroscopy, NMR spectroscopy and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Treatment of 1 with 1 equiv. of [Ph3C][B(C6F5)4] in THF generated the THF-coordinated cationic half-sandwich scandium mono(o-dimethylaminobenzyl) complex {[Fc(1-C9H6)]Sc(CH2C6H4NMe2-o)}{[B(C6F5)4]} (2-THF2). Switching in situ between the oxidized and reduced forms of active THF-free species (originally generated from 1/[Ph3C][B(C6F5)4] in situ) resulted in the redox-controlled syndio-specific polymerization of styrene.

The extraction of natural scene gist in visual crowding.

The gist of natural scenes can be extracted very rapidly and even without focal attention. However, it is unclear whether and to what extent the gist of natural scenes can break through the bottleneck of crowding, a phenomenon in which object recognition will be immensely impaired. In the first two experiments, a target scene, either presented alone or surrounded by four flankers, was categorized at basic (Experiment 1) or global levels (Experiment 2). It was showed that the elimination of high-level semantic information of flankers greatly alleviated the crowding effect, demonstrating that high-level information played an important role in crowding of scene gist. More importantly, participants were able to categorize the scenes in crowding at rather high accuracies, suggesting that the extraction of scene gist might be a prioritized process. To test this hypothesis, in Experiment 3 we compared the crowding effect of three types of stimuli, namely, scenes, facial expressions and letter "E"s. The results showed that scenes could be better categorized than the other two types of stimuli in the crowding condition. This scene gist advantage thus supported our hypothesis. Together, the present studies suggest that scene gist is highly recognizable in crowding, probably due to its prioritization in visual processing.

The impairing effects of mental fatigue on response inhibition: An ERP study.

Mental fatigue is one of the main reasons for the decline of response inhibition. This study aimed to explore the impairing influence of mental fatigue on a driver's response inhibition. The effects of mental fatigue on response inhibition were assessed by comparing brain activity and behavioral indices when performing a Go/NoGo task before and after a 90-min fatigue manipulation task. Participants in the driving group performed a simulated driving task, while individuals in the control group spent the same time watching movies. We found that participants in the driving group reported higher levels of mental fatigue and had a higher percentage of eye closure and larger lateral deviations from their lane positions, which indicated there was effective manipulation of mental fatigue through a prolonged simulated driving task. After manipulation of mental fatigue, we observed increased reaction time and miss rates, delayed NoGo-N2 latency and Go-P3 latency, and decreased NoGo-P3 amplitude, which indicated that mental fatigue may slow down the speed of the inhibition process, delay the evaluation of visual stimuli and reduce the availability of attentional resources. These findings revealed the underlying neurological mechanisms of how mental fatigue impaired response inhibition.

The Effect of Consistency on Short-Term Memory for Scenes.

Which is more detectable, the change of a consistent or an inconsistent object in a scene? This question has been debated for decades. We noted that the change of objects in scenes might simultaneously be accompanied with gist changes. In the present study we aimed to examine how the alteration of gist, as well as the consistency of the changed objects, modulated change detection. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the semantic content by either keeping or changing the consistency of the scene. Results showed that the changes of consistent and inconsistent scenes were equally detected. More importantly, the changes were more accurately detected when scene consistency changed than when the consistency remained unchanged, regardless of the consistency of the memory scenes. A phase-scrambled version of stimuli was adopted in Experiment 2 to decouple the possible confounding effect of low-level factors. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the effect found in Experiment 1 was indeed due to the change of high-level semantic consistency rather than the change of low-level physical features. Together, the study suggests that the change of consistency plays an important role in scene short-term memory, which might be attributed to the sensitivity to the change of semantic content.