Leyh Rainer, Heinisch Christine, Kungl Melanie T, Spangler Gottfried
Institute of Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg Erlangen, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Jun 8;10:278. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00278. eCollection 2016.
The induction of emotional states has repeatedly been shown to affect cognitive processing capacities. At a neurophysiological level, P3 amplitude responses that are associated with attention allocation have been found to be reduced to task-relevant stimuli during emotional conditions as compared to neutral conditions suggesting a draining impact of emotion on cognitive resources. Attachment theory claims that how individuals regulate their emotions is guided by an internal working model (IWM) of attachment that has formed early in life. While securely attached individuals are capable of freely evaluating their emotions insecurely attached ones tend to either suppress or heighten the emotional experience in a regulatory effort. To explore how attachment quality moderates the impact of emotional contexts on information processing event-related potentials (ERPs) in 41 individuals were assessed. Subjects were instructed to detect neutral target letters within an oddball paradigm. Various images taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) served as background pictures and represented negative, positive and neutral task-irrelevant contexts. Attachment representation was assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and individuals were assigned to one of three categories (secure, insecure-dismissing, insecure-preoccupied). At a behavioral level, the study revealed that negative emotionally conditions were associated with the detection of less target stimuli in insecure-dismissing subjects. Accordingly, ERPs yielded reduced P3 amplitudes in insecure-dismissing subjects when given a negative emotional context. We interpret these findings in terms of less sufficient emotion regulation strategies in insecure-dismissing subjects at the cost of accurate behavioral performance. The study suggests that attachment representation differentially moderates the relationship between emotional contexts and information processing most evident in insecure-dismissing subjects.
情绪状态的诱发已被反复证明会影响认知加工能力。在神经生理学层面，与注意力分配相关的P3波幅反应在情绪状态下与中性状态相比，对任务相关刺激的反应有所降低，这表明情绪对认知资源有消耗作用。依恋理论认为，个体如何调节自己的情绪是由早年形成的依恋内部工作模型（IWM）所引导的。安全型依恋的个体能够自由地评估自己的情绪，而不安全型依恋的个体则倾向于在调节努力中抑制或增强情绪体验。为了探究依恋质量如何调节情绪背景对信息加工的影响，对41名个体进行了事件相关电位（ERP）评估。受试者被要求在oddball范式中检测中性目标字母。从国际情感图片系统（IAPS）中选取的各种图像作为背景图片，代表消极、积极和中性的任务无关背景。使用成人依恋访谈（AAI）评估依恋表征，个体被分为三类（安全型、不安全-回避型、不安全-焦虑型）之一。在行为层面，研究表明，消极情绪状态与不安全-回避型受试者检测到的目标刺激较少有关。相应地，当给予消极情绪背景时，不安全-回避型受试者的ERP显示P3波幅降低。我们从不安全-回避型受试者情绪调节策略不足以牺牲准确行为表现为代价的角度来解释这些发现。该研究表明，依恋表征以不同方式调节情绪背景与信息加工之间的关系，这在不安全-回避型受试者中最为明显。
