Kissler Johanna, Hauswald Anne
Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany.
Center of Cognitive Interaction Technology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2022 Sep 15;16:957227. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.957227. eCollection 2022.
Emotional stimuli, including faces, receive preferential processing and are consequently better remembered than neutral stimuli. Therefore, they may also be more resistant to intentional forgetting. The present study investigates the behavioral and electrophysiological consequences of instructions to selectively remember or forget angry and neutral faces. In an item-method directed forgetting experiment, angry and neutral faces were randomly presented to 25 student participants (4 males). Each face was followed by an instruction to either forget or remember it and the participants' EEG was recorded. Later, recognition memory was unexpectedly tested for all items. Behaviorally, both hit and false alarm rates were higher for angry alike than for neutral faces. Directed forgetting occurred for neutral and angry faces as reflected in a reduction of both recognition accuracy and response bias. Event-related potentials revealed a larger late positive potential (LPP, 450 - 700 ms) for angry than for neutral faces during face presentation and, in line with selective rehearsal of remember items, a larger LPP following remember than forget cues. Forget cues generally elicited a larger frontal N2 (280 - 400 ms) than remember cues, in line with the forget instruction eliciting conflict monitoring and inhibition. Selectively following angry faces, a larger cue-evoked P2 (180 - 280 ms) was observed. Notably, forget cues following angry faces elicited a larger late frontal positivity (450 - 700 ms) potentially signaling conflict resolution. Thus, whereas both angry and neutral faces are subject to directed forgetting, on a neural level, different mechanisms underlie the effect. While directed forgetting for neutral faces may be achieved primarily by selective rehearsal, directed forgetting of angry faces involves an additional late frontal positivity, likely reflecting higher cognitive demands imposed by forgetting angry faces.
包括面部在内的情绪刺激会得到优先处理,因此比中性刺激更容易被记住。所以,它们可能也更能抵抗有意遗忘。本研究调查了选择性记住或忘记愤怒和中性面孔的指令所产生的行为和电生理后果。在一项项目法定向遗忘实验中,愤怒和中性面孔被随机呈现给25名学生参与者(4名男性)。每张面孔之后都会出现一个忘记或记住它的指令,并记录参与者的脑电图。后来,对所有项目进行了意外的识别记忆测试。在行为上,愤怒面孔的命中率和误报率都高于中性面孔。中性和愤怒面孔都出现了定向遗忘,这反映在识别准确性和反应偏差的降低上。事件相关电位显示,在面孔呈现过程中,愤怒面孔比中性面孔有更大的晚期正电位(LPP,450 - 700毫秒),并且,与记住项目的选择性复述一致,记住提示后的LPP比忘记提示后的更大。忘记提示通常比记住提示引发更大的额叶N2(280 - 400毫秒),这与忘记指令引发冲突监测和抑制一致。在选择性关注愤怒面孔时,观察到更大的提示诱发P2(180 - 280毫秒)。值得注意的是,愤怒面孔后的忘记提示引发了更大的晚期额叶正电位(450 - 700毫秒),这可能表明冲突得到了解决。因此,虽然愤怒和中性面孔都受到定向遗忘的影响,但在神经层面上,其影响的潜在机制不同。中性面孔的定向遗忘可能主要通过选择性复述来实现,而愤怒面孔的定向遗忘则涉及额外的晚期额叶正电位,这可能反映了忘记愤怒面孔所带来的更高认知需求。