The counseling process involves attention, emotional perception, cognitive appraisal, and decision-making. This study aimed to investigate cognitive appraisal and the associated emotional processes when reading short therapists' statements of motivational interviewing (MI). Thirty participants with work injuries were classified into the pre-contemplation (PC,n= 15) or readiness stage of the change group (RD,n= 15). The participants viewed MI congruent (MI-C), MI incongruent (MI-INC), or control phrases during which their electroencephalograms were captured. The results indicated significant Group × Condition effects in the (...) frontally oriented late positive complex (P600/LPC). The P600/LPC's amplitudes were more positive-going in the PC than in the RD group for the MI congruent statements. Within the PC group, the amplitudes of the N400 were significantly correlated (r= 0.607–0.649) with the participants' level of negative affect. Our findings suggest that the brief contents of MI statements alone can elicit late cognitive and emotional appraisal processes beyond semantic processing. (shrink)

To study the different mechanisms of understanding figurative language in a speaker’s native language and their second language, this study investigated how scientific metaphors in Chinese and English are electrophysiologically processed via event-related potential experimentation. Compared with the metaphors from daily life or in literary works, scientific metaphors tend to involve both a more complicated context structure and a distinct knowledge-inferencing process. During the N400 time window, English scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400s than Chinese ones at the parietal region. (...) In the late positive component time window, English scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPCs than Chinese ones at the parietal region, and larger late negativities encompassing smaller areas of the brain. The findings might indicate that for late unbalanced bilingual speakers, L2 scientific metaphor comprehension requires more effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route. Altogether, the possible findings are that non-native and non-dominant language processing involves decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms, and decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings. (shrink)

In two experiments, we tested whether fearful facial expressions capture attention in an awareness-independent fashion. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a visible neutral face presented at one of two positions. Prior to the target, a backward-masked and, thus, invisible emotional or neutral face was presented as a cue, either at target position or away from the target position. If negative emotional faces capture attention in a stimulus-driven way, we would have expected a cueing effect: better performance where fearful or (...) disgusted facial cues were presented at target position than away from the target. However, no evidence of capture of attention was found, neither in behavior, nor in event-related lateralizations. In Experiment 2, we went one step further and used fearful faces as visible targets, too. Thereby, we sought to boost awareness-independent capture of attention by fearful faces. However, still, we found no significant attention-capture effect. Our results show that fearful facial expressions do not capture attention in an awareness-independent way. Results are discussed in light of existing theories. (shrink)

Anxiety disorders are more predominant in women than men, however there is a lack of understanding as to what neurocognitive mechanisms drive this sex difference. Recent investigation has found a potential moderating role of sex in the relationship between anxiety and the error related negativity —a component of error-monitoring that is prevalent in high anxiety individuals—such that females display a positive relationship between anxiety/worry and ERN amplitude. We strove to further explore the influence of sex on the relationship between trait (...) anxiety and performance monitoring, specifically with ERN, as well as extend this work to include another hallmark of anxiety, attentional bias to threat. To meet this end, participants performed the flanker and dot-probe tasks, respectively. We did not find a significant difference in the relationship between attention bias scores and anxiety for female vs. males participants. Furthermore, ΔERN amplitudes were greater in males compared to females, and males had more positive CRN amplitudes than females. There were no significant associations between ERN or ΔERN with anxiety in both male and female participants. However, there was a significant relationship between CRN amplitudes and trait anxiety in male but not female participants. Given these results, the effect of sex on the relationship between components of performance monitoring—namely the CRN and ERN—and anxiety may be more nuanced than the current understanding. Our study was limited to detecting medium to large sized moderation effects. Our findings may be important for future meta-analysis on sex differences in anxiety. (shrink)

Event-related potentials to hierarchical stimuli have been compared for global/local target trials, but the pattern of results across studies is mixed with respect to understanding how ERPs differ with local and global bias. There are reliable interindividual differences in attentional breadth biases. This study addresses two questions. Can these interindividual differences in attentional breadth be predicted by interindividual ERP differences to hierarchical stimuli? Can attentional breadth changes over time within participants be predicted by ERPs changes over time when viewing hierarchical (...) stimuli? Here, we estimated attentional breadth and isolated ERPs in response to Navon letter stimuli presented at two time points. We found that interindividual differences in ERPs at Time 1 did not predict attentional breadth differences across individuals at Time 1. However, individual differences in changes to P1, N1, and P3 ERPs to hierarchical stimuli from Time 1 to Time 2 were associated with individual differences in changes in attentional breadth from Time 1 to Time 2. These results suggest that attentional breadth changes within individuals over time are reflected in changes in ERP responses to hierarchical stimuli such that smaller N1s and larger P3s accompany a shift to processing the newly prioritized level, suggesting that the preferred level required less perceptual processing and elicited more attention. (shrink)

Field dependence-independence (FDI) is a widely studied dimension of cognitive styles designed to measure an individual’s ability to identify embedded parts of an organized visual field as entities separate from that given field. The research aims to determine whether the brain activity features that are considered to be perceptual switching indicators could serve as robust features, differentiating Field-Dependent (FD) from Field-Independent (FI) participants. Previous research suggests that various features derived from event related potentials (ERP) and frequency features are associated with (...) the perceptual reversal occurring during the observation of a bistable image. In this study, we combined these features in the context of a different experimental scheme using ambiguous and unambiguous stimuli during participants’ perceptual observations. We assessed the participants’ FD-I classification with the use of the Hidden Figures Test (HFT). Results show that the peak amplitude of the frontoparietal positivity, the late positive deflection in frontal and parietal areas, is higher for the FD group at specific locations of the left lobe, whereas it occurs later for the FD group at the central and occipital electrodes. Additionally, the FD group exhibits higher levels of gamma power before stimulus onset at channel TP10 and higher gamma power during reversal at the right centroparietal electrodes (T8, CP6 and TP10). The peak amplitude of the reversal positivity, the positive deflection during the reversal, is higher for the FD group at the rear right lobe (P4). (shrink)