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Mutual influence between emotional language and inhibitory control processes. Evidence from an event‐related potential study
Author(s) -
AgudeloOrjuela Paola,
Vega Manuel,
Beltrán David
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.13743
Subject(s) - psychology , facilitation , cognition , adjective , valence (chemistry) , inhibitory postsynaptic potential , priming (agriculture) , inhibitory control , negative priming , cognitive psychology , response inhibition , event related potential , inhibition of return , emotional valence , late positive component , neuroscience , selective attention , visual attention , chemistry , linguistics , philosophy , germination , botany , noun , organic chemistry , biology
There is abundant literature demonstrating that processing emotional stimuli modulates inhibitory control processes. However, the reverse effects, namely, how cognitive inhibition influences the processing of emotional stimuli, have been considerably neglected. This ERP study tries to fill this gap by studying the bidirectional interactions between emotional language and inhibitory processes. To this end, participants read emotional sentences, embedded in a cue‐based Go‐NoGo task. In Experiment 1, the critical emotional adjective preceded the Go‐NoGo visual cue. The ERPs showed a significant reduction in the inhibition‐related N2 component in NoGo trials when they were preceded by negative adjectives, compared to positive or neutral adjectives, indicating a priming‐like effect on inhibitory control. Consistently, the estimated source of this interaction was the dorsomedial PFC, a region associated with inhibitory and control processes. In Experiment 2, the Go‐NoGo cue preceded the emotional adjective, and the ERPs showed a sustained, broadly distributed LPP‐like positivity for NoGo negative trials, relative to all the other conditions. In this case, the presetting of an inhibition state modulated the processing of negatively charged words. Together, the two experiments suggest a mutual facilitation between inhibitory control and negative valence, supporting thereby recent integrative theories of cognition–emotion interactions.