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Example of trial sequences. Happy–sad paired task and surprise–anger paired task were presented alternatively in a trial-by-trial manner. In the threatening context, a random electric shock could be given throughout a block
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The current study aimed to investigate whether induced anxiety, as well as trait anxiety, would lead to the failure of the regulation of emotional conflict. To measure the regulation of emotional conflict, the congruency sequence effect (CSE), which is a reduced effect of task-irrelevant distractor after incongruent trials compared to congruent tri...
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Metacognition refers to our capacity to reflect upon our experiences, thoughts and actions. Metacognition processes are linked to cognitive control functions that allow keeping our actions on-task. But it is unclear how the human brain builds an internal model of one’s cognition and behaviour. We conducted 2 fMRI experiments in which brain activity...
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... tasks. However, several studies have found that emotional and threat-related attentional biases can become more pronounced under conditions of high cognitive load (Jeong & Cho, 2020;Kobylińska & Kusev, 2019;McGuire et al., 2016;Pecchinenda & Petrucci, 2016). To the extent that regulation temporarily taxes cognitive resources, threatening or arousing information in an immediately subsequent target may become more captivating and difficult to reappraise. ...
Cognitive reappraisal is widely recognized as an effective emotion regulation strategy. In laboratory research, negative ratings from image-based reappraisal tasks are typically aggregated within trial condition, and the average difference in reported negative affect between conditions serves as a measure of reappraisal success. We aggregated and re-analyzed trial-level data from 27 picture-based reappraisal experiments to which we had access in order to examine the robustness of the reappraisal effect and estimate the power to detect this effect within different sample sizes. Then, we leveraged the database to conduct novel tests of potential trial-level factors (time and previous trial type) that may impact reappraisal success. These allowed us to test among competing hypotheses about how negative affect may change based on these factors: habituation, sensitization, practice, and fatigue. We observed a small but significant linear decrease in negative emotion over time in look and regulation conditions (habituation). We also observed a small but significant interaction between previous trial and current trial, such that seeing a negative image on a previous trial resulted in slightly higher ratings of negative emotion, but this effect was relatively diminished if the previous trial also involved reappraisal. The database is an open, novel resource for those designing and conducting picture-based reappraisal tasks.
... There is a debate regarding the impact of anxiety induced by the threat of shock on executive control, particularly in terms of inhibition function. A study using the emotional Stroop task found that the threat of shock did not affect inhibition function but did lead to an overall slower response time (Jeong & Cho, 2021). However, Lago et al. (2022) demonstrated that the threat of shock reduced the emotional Stroop effect and promoted the response to the incongruent trials. ...
The present study used a combination of the Threat-of-Shock paradigm and the Attention Network Test (ANT) to investigate how induced anxiety affects alerting, orienting, and executive control and whether individual differences in threat sensitivity moderate these effects. Forty-two female subjects completed the ANT task in alternation under shock-threat and no-shock (“safe”) conditions while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The results showed that anxiety induced by the threat of shock had a significant impact on alerting and executive control functions at the neural level. Specifically, alerting-related N1 and stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) differences between double cue and no cue conditions were greater in the threat versus safe state, suggesting that the induced anxiety promoted the early perception of cues and preparation for the target. Moreover, executive control-related P3 and sustained potential (SP) differences between incongruent and congruent trials were greater in the threat versus safe state, indicating that the induced anxiety might improve the attentional allocation efficiency and stimulate subjects to recruit more cognitive resources to resolve conflicts. However, orienting-related ERPs were not affected by the threat of shock, but the threat of shock promoted the processing efficiency of spatial-cue at the behavioral level. Analysis of individual differences revealed that trait anxiety moderated the attentional allocation efficiency when performing executive control related tasks in the threat versus safe state. Our findings demonstrate the adaptive significance of the threat of shock-induced anxiety in that being in an anxious state can enhance individuals’ alerting, orienting, and executive functions.
... Since then, this effect has been observed with all of the conflict tasks discussed in this article (cf. [41] for review). It has been shown that conflict adaptation is compromised by high trait anxiety [42], whereas the evidence with respect to other pathologies, such as schizophrenia [43] and depression [44], is rather mixed. One reason why there is currently no clear picture regarding the effects of certain pathologies on the conflict adaptation effect is possibly that the effect has become the target of experimental investigations only relatively recently, with its underlying mechanisms still being heavily disputed. ...
... With respect to the flanker task, [55] provided evidence that a stronger tendency for rumination goes along with larger facilitation by negative flankers and smaller interference by positive flankers when the central target is a negative word [56]. With respect to the conflict adaptation effect it has been shown that conflict adaptation is compromised by high trait anxiety [42], whereas the evidence with respect to other pathologies, such as schizophrenia [43] and depression [44], is rather mixed. Apart from diagnostic usages, carefully designed clinical versions of conflict tasks allow for testing hypotheses of the functional locus of these effects, which promises to yield insight into the underlying pathology. ...
This article reviews the historical usage of the concept of ‘conflict’ in psychology and delineates the design and development of three basic conflict tasks (Stroop, Flanker, Stop Signal). Afterwards, important theoretical concepts to account for conflict processing are introduced. In the second part, the usage of these tasks in clinical psychology is considered. The article closes with some reflections regarding factors that may have been hitherto largely neglected in this respect.
... This is consistent with the growing body of recent literature that has placed more emphasis on the need for adopting this confoundminimized cross-task design (for review, Braem et al., 2019;Schmidt, 2019). Using this design, CSEs were obtained between two prime-probe tasks (Schmidt & Weissman, 2014), two Stroop tasks (Aschenbrenner & Balota, 2017), two emotional facial Stroop tasks (Jeong & Cho, 2020), and two Simon tasks (Lim & Cho, 2020), indicating that the CSE can occur without feature integration or contingency learning. ...
The confound-minimized cross-task design has been widely used to examine the characteristics of top-down cognitive control underlying the congruency sequence effect (CSE) without feature integration and contingency learning confounds. The present study reanalyzed our previous data obtained with the confound-minimized cross-task design, this time including the preceding congruency repetition type, to examine whether the cross-task CSE is confounded by feature integration from two-back (n-2) trials or multiple expectancies regarding the congruency and the congruency repetition type of the upcoming trial. As a result, the cross-task CSE interacted with the arbitrariness of S-R mapping or response mode regardless of the preceding congruency repetition type, indicating the contribution of top-down control triggered by conflict. Feature integration from n-2 trials, but not multiple expectancies, was found to have a lingering effect on the sequential modulation of the congruency effect between previous and current trials. However, because the influence of feature integration operated in opposite directions depending on the preceding congruency repetition type, the contribution of feature integration to the cross-task CSE can be minimized when the combined datasets of trials following a congruency repetition trial and those following a congruency alternation trial are analyzed. These findings are consistent with recent perspectives on cognitive control, which posit that top-down cognitive control and bottom-up feature integration operate independently to optimize task performance.
The emotional conflict task measures emotional conflict resolution and adaptation, but some studies are unable to find resolution or adaptation effects using this task. We examined boundary conditions and replicability of the emotional conflict resolution and adaptation effects through secondary data analysis, systematic review, and meta-analysis of studies in the field. In our data, we were unable to fully replicate the emotional conflict resolution or adaptation effects and found that most studies using this task (n = 94) do not report analysis of emotional conflict resolution, with only 28% (n = 26) studies doing so. Our meta-analysis suggests that studies reporting emotional conflict resolution and adaptation analyses overall report significant but small effects, suggesting the effect is difficult to consistently replicate. Our meta-analysis revealed that controlling for contingency learning may impact the ability of studies to identify conflict resolution. These findings have implications for assessment and interpretation of the emotional conflict task.
Attentional control theory (ACT) was proposed to account for trait anxiety's effects on cognitive performance. According to ACT, impaired processing efficiency in high anxiety is mediated through inefficient executive processes that are needed for effective attentional control. Here we review the central assumptions and predictions of ACT within the context of more recent empirical evidence from neuroimaging studies. We then attempt to provide an account of ACT within a framework of the relevant cognitive processes and their associated neural mechanisms and networks, particularly the fronto-parietal, cingular-opercula, and default mode networks. Future research directions, including whether a neuroscience-informed model of ACT can provide a platform for novel neurocognitive intervention for anxiety, are also discussed.
