Extraversion and the P300 in a visual classification task

Abstract

Pergamon I'r~r.s,,,r. r~rdiird. I>ifl: v01 Summary-Amplitude differences between extraverts and introverts in the P300 component of visual event-related potentials were examined in a picture classification task. A set of pictorial stimuli was used with three t y p e of instructions, requiring responses based on colour, semantic category, or a combination of both criteria. Forty university students (22 men, 18 women) served as subjects. Based on their scores on the Eysench Personahty lntentory, they were divided into 3 groups of Low. Medium or High Extraversion. The pictures evoked large late positivities, with higher aniplitude in the right hemisphere. P300 amplitude increased with increasing degrees of extraversion. The effect of extraversion on amplitude (High > Medium > Low) was larger for target stimuli in posterior derivations. The extraversion effect was mainly attributable to the impulsivity subtrait. Whereas some earlier studies have found higher P300 amplitudes for introverts in tasks inducing habituation or attention decrement. the present tasks differed by using more varied stimuli and requiring more processing. The results are discussed in relation to theories on the biological basis of extroversion.

Electrocortical Correlates of Temperament

“…In the situations of high-intensity stimulation EP-amplitude will be decreased in reducers, and they will probably be able to endure rather intense stimulation before reaching their threshold of transmarginal inhibition, which is also the main characteristic of the strong nervous type. This is consistent with Eysenck's hypothesis that introverts are more cortically aroused, and that refl ects in their higher EP-amplitudes (Stenberg, 1994), but only in highly demanding tasks, where there is no habituation effect. Recent studies showed that differences in personality affect the intra-block changes especially for the P3-amplitude when the target stimulus is repeated.…”

“…Even though EP-researchers of personality mostly tried to confi rm the arousal hypothesis made by Eysenck (1967), with introverts having chronically higher levels of arousal than extraverts -higher amplitude in both auditory (Stelmack & Michaud, 1985;Stelmack & Geen, 1992) and visual EPs (Stenberg, Rosen & Risberg, 1988, some recent studies showed that obtained effects have been signifi cantly modifi ed by attention and habituation (Stenberg et al, 1990;Stenberg, 1994;. For a broader perspective it is interesting to mention the results of correlational analyses on the same sample but between EPs and extraversion .…”

Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b

“…Hence, a minimization of extraneous stimulus processing would facilitate the transference of incoming stimulus information from frontal to temporal-parietal areas to sharpen memory operations. This speculation is supported broadly by neurophysiological results (Friedman et al, 2001;Knight and Nakada, 1998;Nieuwenhuis et al, 2005;Ranganath and Rainer, 2003), experimental findings (Birbaumer and Elbert, 1988;Birbaumer et al, 1990), and personality ERP variation (DiTraglia and Polich, 1991;Orlebeke et al, 1989;Polich and Martin, 1992;Stenberg, 1994). Although these results are diverse, such an inhibition hypothesis cognitively encompasses the aggregate findings using a unitary mechanism.…”

“…Brocke, 2004;Brocke et al, 1997;De Pascalis, 2004;Stenberg, 1992). This relationship is modulated by biological factors (Polich and Kok, 1995), differences among paradigms (DiTraglia and Polich, 1991;Stenberg, 1994), and psychopathology (Iacono et al, 2002(Iacono et al, , 2003Justus et al, 2001). These effects could be related to individual differences for attentional resource capabilities that may stem from variability for neurotransmitter function (Hill et al, 1998(Hill et al, , 1999Polich and Criado, 2006).…”

The Task Complexity and Extraversion: An ERP Study

“…There are also literature data that opposite results, namely the introverts generated larger P3 amplitudes in comparison to the extraverts in two-tone auditory discrimination task were reported [26]. It was suggested [27] that in tasks with more difficult processing the increasing score of extraversion is related to the increase of P3 amplitude, while the opposite is right when the tasks paradigm suggest habituation and decreased attention. In an investigation of relationship between the cortical activation and the task complexity using event-related synchronization/desynchronization in the alpha frequency range [28] was found that in easier tasks the introverts are characterized with less cortical activity, but in more difficult tasks they have higher cortical activity in comparison with the extraverts.…”