Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, 400076, India.
Sci Rep. 2022 Aug 26;12(1):14591. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-17736-5.
Response inhibition involves suppressing those responses that are no longer needed. Previous research has separately studied the role of attentional resources and emotional information in response inhibition. Here, we simultaneously manipulate attentional resources and emotional information to investigate the interactive role of emotional information and attentional resources. Attentional resources were manipulated by changing the levels of perceptual load (low and high) of go signals. Emotional information was manipulated by changing the emotional content (irrelevant positive and negative emotional information) of the stop signals. Participants made a go response based on searching for a target letter in conditions of either low perceptual load or high perceptual load. They withheld their response on the presentation of a stop signal. The stop-signal stimulus was selected from two classes: arousal matched positive and negative IAPS images (Experiment 1) and happy, angry, and neutral faces (Experiment 2). The result showed a consistent interaction pattern of perceptual load and emotional information across the two experiments, such that irrelevant positive emotional information consistently improved inhibitory control, albeit only under high load. These results have theoretical implications for understanding the nature of emotional information and their interaction with attentional resources in cognitive control functions.
反应抑制涉及抑制那些不再需要的反应。先前的研究分别研究了注意力资源和情绪信息在反应抑制中的作用。在这里，我们同时操纵注意力资源和情绪信息，以研究情绪信息和注意力资源的交互作用。注意力资源通过改变 Go 信号的感知负载（低和高）水平来操纵。情绪信息通过改变停止信号的情绪内容（无关的正性和负性情绪信息）来操纵。参与者在低感知负载或高感知负载条件下根据搜索目标字母做出 Go 反应。他们在停止信号出现时抑制反应。停止信号刺激选自两个类别：唤醒匹配的正性和负性 IAPS 图像（实验 1）和高兴、生气和中性面孔（实验 2）。结果显示，在两个实验中，感知负载和情绪信息之间存在一致的交互模式，即无关的正性情绪信息一致地改善了抑制控制，尽管只是在高负载下。这些结果对理解情绪信息的性质及其在认知控制功能中与注意力资源的相互作用具有理论意义。
