IntroductionNumerous studies have explored the effect of cognitive reappraisal before or after emotion‐inducing events. However, only a few studies have examined the influence of regulatory timing on the effectiveness of reappraisal. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of regulatory timing and goals in reappraisal regulation, which would help promote the specific application of cognitive reappraisal in emotion regulation. We hypothesized that decrease reappraisal would be more effective when initiated early rather than late, but increase reappraisal would be more effective when initiated in the emotional high‐activation phase.MethodsThis study, via event‐related potential (ERP) technique, probed the influence of the timing and regulatory goal on negative emotion when reappraisal was introduced, respectively 500 ms before (anticipatory), 2,000 ms after (online 2,000 ms) picture onset (in Experiment 1), 500 ms after (online 500 ms) picture onset, and 1,500 ms after (online 1,500 ms) picture onset (in Experiment 2).ResultsBased on the ERP results, under the anticipatory regulation condition, the LPP amplitude in the parietal area was significantly reduced by decrease reappraisal during 700–2,100 ms after picture onset, and under the online 500 ms regulation condition, the LPP in central and parietal areas was significantly enhanced by increase reappraisal during 450–750 ms after regulatory cue onset. Moreover, our results showed that increase reappraisal evoked a larger prefrontal or frontal LPP than decrease reappraisal beginning at about 700 ms after picture onset under the anticipatory regulation condition and beginning at 450 ms after regulatory cue onset under the online 500 ms regulation condition, which may reflect increased cognitive effort and mental conflict associated with increase reappraisal.ConclusionThe anticipatory reappraisal successfully decreased negative emotion, and online 500 ms reappraisal successfully increased negative emotion. Our results support the hypothesis.

Previous studies on the joint effect of reward motivation and emotion on memory retrieval have obtained inconsistent results. Furthermore, whether and how any such joint effect might vary over time remains unclear too. Accordingly, using the event-related potential (ERP) measurement of high temporal resolution, our study investigates the cognitive and brain mechanisms of monetary reward and emotion affecting the retrieval processes of episodic memory. Twenty undergraduate and graduate students participated in the research, and our study’s behavioral results indicated that reward (relative to no reward) and negative emotion (relative to positive and neutral emotion) significantly improved recognition performance. The ERP results showed that there were significant interactions between monetary reward and emotion on memory retrieval, and the reward effects of positive, neutral, and negative memory occurred at varied intervals in mean amplitude. The reward effect of positive memory appeared relatively early, at 260–330 ms after the stimulus onset in the frontal-frontocentral area, at 260–500 ms in the centroparietal-parietal area and at 500–700 ms in the frontocentral area. However, the reward effects of neutral and negative memory occurred relatively later, and that of negative memory appeared at 500–700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal area and that of neutral memory was at 500–700 ms in the frontocentral and centroparietal-parietal area. Meanwhile, significant FN400 old/new effects were observed in the negative and rewarded positive items, and the old/new effects of negative items appeared earlier at FN400 than positive items. Also, significant late positive component (LPC) old/new effects were found in the positive, negative, and rewarded neutral items. These results suggest that, monetary reward and negative emotion significantly improved recognition performance, and there was a mutual influence between reward and emotion on brain activity during memory retrieval.

Previous studies have found differences in the cognitive and neural mechanisms between cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression in the regulation of various negative emotions and the recognition of regulated stimuli. However, whether these differences are valid for sadness remains unclear. As such, we investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression on sadness regulation and the recognition of sad scenes adopting event-related potentials (ERPs). Twenty-eight healthy undergraduate and graduate students took part in this study. In the regulation phase, the participants were asked to down-regulation, expressive suppression, or maintain their sad emotion evoked by the sad images, and then to perform an immediately unexpected recognition task involving the regulated images. The behavioral results show that down-regulation reappraisal significantly diminished subjective feelings of sadness, but expressive suppression did not; both strategies impaired the participants’ recognition of sad images, and expressive suppression had a greater damaging effect on the recognition of sad images than down-regulation reappraisal. The ERP results indicate that reappraisal (from 300 ms to 1,500 ms after image onset) and expressive suppression (during 300–600 ms) significantly reduced the late positive potential (LPP) induced by sadness. These findings suggest that down-regulation reappraisal and expression suppression can effectively decrease sadness, and that down-regulation reappraisal (relative to expression suppression) is a more effective regulation strategy for sadness. Both strategies impair the recognition of sad scenes, and expression suppression (compared to down-regulation reappraisal) leads to relatively greater impairment in the recognition of sad scenes.