Li Ya, Wang Yongchun, Zhang Baoqiang, Wang Yonghui, Zhou Xiaolin
School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China.
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Front Neurosci. 2018 Mar 20;12:169. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00169. eCollection 2018.
Dynamically evaluating the outcomes of our actions and thoughts is a fundamental cognitive ability. Given its excellent temporal resolution, the event-related potential (ERP) technology has been used to address this issue. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) component of ERPs has been studied intensively with the averaged linked mastoid reference method (LM). However, it is unknown whether FRN can be induced by an expectancy violation in an antonym relations context and whether LM is the most suitable reference approach. To address these issues, the current research directly compared the ERP components induced by expectancy violations in antonym expectation and gambling tasks with a within-subjects design and investigated the effect of the reference approach on the experimental effects. Specifically, we systematically compared the influence of the LM, reference electrode standardization technique (REST) and average reference (AVE) approaches on the amplitude, scalp distribution and magnitude of ERP effects as a function of expectancy violation type. The expectancy deviation in the antonym expectation task elicited an N400 effect that differed from the FRN effect induced in the gambling task; this difference was confirmed by all the three reference methods. Both the amplitudes of the ERP effects (N400 and FRN) and the magnitude as the expectancy violation increased were greater under the LM approach than those under the REST approach, followed by those under the AVE approach. Based on the statistical results, the electrode sites that showed the N400 and FRN effects critically depended on the reference method, and the results of the REST analysis were consistent with previous ERP studies. Combined with evidence from simulation studies, we suggest that REST is an optional reference method to be used in future ERP data analysis.
动态评估我们行为和思想的结果是一种基本的认知能力。鉴于其出色的时间分辨率，事件相关电位（ERP）技术已被用于解决这一问题。ERP的反馈相关负波（FRN）成分已通过平均链接乳突参考方法（LM）进行了深入研究。然而，尚不清楚在反义关系背景下，预期违背是否能诱发FRN，以及LM是否是最合适的参考方法。为了解决这些问题，本研究采用被试内设计，直接比较了反义预期和赌博任务中预期违背诱发的ERP成分，并研究了参考方法对实验效果的影响。具体而言，我们系统地比较了LM、参考电极标准化技术（REST）和平均参考（AVE）方法对ERP效应的幅度、头皮分布和大小的影响，这些效应是预期违背类型的函数。反义预期任务中的预期偏差引发了与赌博任务中诱发的FRN效应不同的N400效应；这一差异在所有三种参考方法中都得到了证实。在LM方法下，随着预期违背程度的增加，ERP效应（N400和FRN）的幅度和大小均大于REST方法下的，其次是AVE方法下的。基于统计结果，显示N400和FRN效应的电极位点严重依赖于参考方法，REST分析的结果与先前ERP研究一致。结合模拟研究的证据，我们建议REST是未来ERP数据分析中可选用的参考方法。
