The negative priming effect in cognitive conflict processing

• Published in: Neuroscience letters Vol. 628; pp. 35 - 39
• Main Authors: Pan, Fada, Shi, Liang, Lu, Qingyun, Wu, Xiaogang, Xue, Song, Li, Qiwei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ireland Elsevier Ireland Ltd 15-08-2016
• Subjects: Adult; Affect - physiology; Cerebral Cortex - physiology; Cognitive control; Conflict (Psychology); Conflict monitoring; Event-related potentials (ERPs); Evoked Potentials; Female; Humans; Male; Priming effect; Reaction Time; Stroop Test; Young Adult; Conflict monitoring; Event-related potentials (ERPs); Priming effect; Cognitive control
• ISSN: 0304-3940; 1872-7972
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2016.05.062

•The negative priming effect was studied using affective priming and Stroop tasks.•The Stroop effect N2 was larger for incongruent primes than for congruent primes.•The N400 was smaller for negative targets after incongruent than congruent primes.
The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the specific physiological mechanisms underlying the negative nature of cognitive conflict and its influence on affective word evaluations. The present study used an affective priming paradigm where Stroop stimuli were presented for 200ms after which affective target words had to be evaluated as being positive or negative. Behavioral results showed that reaction times (RTs) were shorter for positive targets following congruent primes relative to incongruent primes, and for negative targets following incongruent primes relative to congruent primes. The ERP results showed that the N2 amplitude (200–300ms) for incongruent stimuli was significantly larger than for congruent stimuli in the Stroop task, which indicated a significant conflict effect. Moreover, the N400 amplitude (300–500ms) was smaller for negative words following incongruent primes relative to congruent primes, and for positive words following congruent primes relative to incongruent primes. The results demonstrated that cognitive conflict modulated both behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of subsequent emotional processing, consistent with its hypothesized registration as an aversive signal.