Department of Psychology, University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
PLoS One. 2011;6(12):e29287. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029287. Epub 2011 Dec 21.
Based on introspectionist, semantic, and psychophysiological experimental frameworks, it has long been assumed that all affective states derive from two independent basic dimensions, valence and arousal. However, until now, no study has investigated whether valence and arousal are also dissociable at the level of affect-related changes in cognitive processing.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We examined how changes in both valence (negative vs. positive) and arousal (low vs. high) influence performance in tasks requiring executive control because recent research indicates that two dissociable cognitive components are involved in the regulation of task performance: amount of current control (i.e., strength of filtering goal-irrelevant signals) and control adaptation (i.e., strength of maintaining current goals over time). Using a visual pop-out distractor task, we found that control is exclusively modulated by arousal because interference by goal-irrelevant signals was largest in high arousal states, independently of valence. By contrast, control adaptation is exclusively modulated by valence because the increase in control after trials in which goal-irrelevant signals were present was largest in negative states, independent of arousal. A Monte Carlo simulation revealed that differential effects of two experimental factors on control and control adaptation can be dissociated if there is no correlation between empirical interference and conflict-driven modulation of interference, which was the case in the present data. Consequently, the observed effects of valence and arousal on adaptive executive control are indeed dissociable.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These findings indicate that affective influences on cognitive processes can be driven by independent effects of variations in valence and arousal, which may resolve several heterogeneous findings observed in previous studies on affect-cognition interactions.
基于内省主义、语义和心理生理学实验框架，人们长期以来一直认为所有的情感状态都来自于两个独立的基本维度，即效价和唤醒。然而，到目前为止，还没有研究调查效价和唤醒在与情感相关的认知加工变化层面上是否也是可分离的。
方法/主要发现：我们研究了效价（消极与积极）和唤醒（低与高）的变化如何影响需要执行控制的任务的表现，因为最近的研究表明，在调节任务表现时涉及两个可分离的认知成分：当前控制的量（即过滤目标不相关信号的强度）和控制适应（即随着时间的推移保持当前目标的强度）。使用视觉弹出干扰任务，我们发现控制仅受唤醒调节，因为目标不相关信号的干扰在高唤醒状态下最大，与效价无关。相比之下，控制适应仅受效价调节，因为在存在目标不相关信号的试验后，控制的增加在消极状态下最大，与唤醒无关。蒙特卡罗模拟表明，如果经验干扰和干扰驱动的调节之间没有相关性，那么两个实验因素对控制和控制适应的差异效应可以分离，而在本数据中就是这种情况。因此，观察到的效价和唤醒对自适应执行控制的影响确实是可分离的。
结论/意义：这些发现表明，情感对认知过程的影响可以由效价和唤醒变化的独立影响驱动，这可能解决了以前关于情感-认知相互作用的研究中观察到的几个异构发现。
