On the role of conflict and control in social cognition: Event-related brain potential investigations

Abstract

Numerous social-cognitive models posit that social behavior largely is driven by links between constructs in long-term memory that automatically become activated when relevant stimuli are encountered. Various response biases have been understood in terms of the influence of such ''implicit'' processes on behavior. This article reviews event-related potential (ERP) studies investigating the role played by cognitive control and conflict resolution processes in social-cognitive phenomena typically deemed automatic. Neurocognitive responses associated with response activation and conflict often are sensitive to the same stimulus manipulations that produce differential behavioral responses on social-cognitive tasks and that often are attributed to the role of automatic associations. Findings are discussed in the context of an overarching social cognitive neuroscience model in which physiological data are used to constrain social-cognitive theories.

Greater positive schizotypy relates to reduced N100 activity during rejection scenes

“…Larger frontal (topographical) and dACC (source) LSW amplitude during rejection compared to neutral scenes suggests sustained processing of rejection following voluntary orientation because of deeper semantic processing, in terms of resolving semantic conflict (Bartholow, 2010;Herbert, Herbert, Ethofer, & Pauli, 2011) and preference for motivationally salient scenes (Foti et al, 2009;Franz, Schaefer, Schneider, Sitte, & Bachor, 2004). The LSW may also respond to minimizing social pain, because larger medial frontal LSW amplitude during exclusion from a ball-tossing game was associated with lower ostracism-related distress (Crowley et al, 2010).…”

“…The EEG task employed affective priming, because affective primes lead to 'activation spreading' of a semantic context to a target stimulus and anticipation of the prime (Bartholow, 2010;Hietanen & Astikainen, 2013;Lu et al, 2011). Rejection is a complex emotion (Çelik, Lammers, van Beest, Bekker, & Vonk, 2013;Power, 2005) requiring awareness of the circumstances that caused the emotion and therefore higher-order cognitive evaluation (JohnsonLaird & Oatley, Jun 1989).…”

“…The dACC is the neural generator of the frontal early P300 when processing SCHIZOTYPY AND REJECTION SENSITIVITY 7 personally-salient faces and detecting novelty in auditory odd-ball tasks (Dai, Zhai, Zhou, Gong, & Luo, 2013;Friedman, Cycowicz, & Gaeta, 2001;Merlotti et al, 2013). The LSW occurs at approximately 600 ms as a frontal negative potential and a centro-parietal positive potential (Bartholow, 2010;Foti, Hajcak, & Dien, 2009) and reflects evaluation of the motivational salience of affective stimuli and behavioural control in the context of emotions (Aguado, Dieguez-Risco, Mendez-Bertolo, Pozo, & Hinojosa, 2012;Gibbons, 2009). …”

The evidence of dual conflict in the evaluation of brand extension: An event-related potential study

“…The results showed that modulation of the N400 was observed for association and association + semantic word pairs but not for those that only shared a semantic relationship. NSW is another well-known component of ERP broadly distributed over the scalp, which reflects a cognitive conflict or the cognitive control of the conflict, such as the conflict elicited in incongruent Stroop trials (Bartholow, 2010;Curtin & Fairchild, 2003;West & Alain, 1999), or which reflects the difficulty of conceptual operations, such as the semantic processing (Silva-Pereyra, Rivera-Gaxiola, & Kuhl, 2005), complex mnemonic memorization activity (Cansino, Ruiz, & López-Alonso, 1999), and memory search (Kramer, Schneider, Fisk, & Donchin, 1986;Okita, Wijers, Mulder, & Mulder, 1985). The topography of NSWs varies across tasks; Okita et al (1985) found that NSWs with a duration of 400-700 ms were maximal over the centro-posterior scalp in memory scanning tasks, while Kramer et al (1986) revealed that NSWs with a duration of 500-1200 ms were maximal over the frontal scalp.…”

What would my avatar do? Video games and risky decision making

“…The P3 is sensitive to individual difference variables (Bartholow, 2010;Polich, 2007), including video game experience (Engelhardt, Bartholow, Kerr, & Bushman, 2011;Bartholow et al, 2006).…”