Search

Uncertainty is unavoidable, and maladaptive responses to uncertainty may underlie the etiology and maintenance of psychopathology. A general tendency to associate uncertainty with aversive consequences, a type of covariation bias, can amplify aversive emotional experiences. To address questions about uncertainty during emotion regulation, we examined the Late Positive Potential (LPP) – an electrocortical marker of attention to and appraisal of motivationally relevant emotional stimuli – during a task designed to measure the effect of covariation bias and its emotional response consequences. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants (N = 52) were presented with a pre-stimulus cue that either conveyed information about the valence of an upcoming emotional image, or left them in ambiguity. We replicated findings that demonstrate expectancy biases in a priori and online expectancies of emotion-eliciting images, as well as in a posteriori estimates for concurrence of uncertainty cues and aversive images. Moreover, we demonstrate a novel finding that uncertainty cues amplify the LPP in response to subsequent aversive emotional stimuli. These findings advance research by conjoining existing emotion regulation research on the LPP with study of the effects of uncertainty on emotional appraisal and highlight the importance of accounting for stimulus uncertainty in emotion regulation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ostracism – being intentionally excluded – is painful, and when experienced vicariously, it elicits self-reported and neural responses correlated with compassion. This study examines event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to vicarious ostracism in a computer-simulated ball-toss game, called Cyberball. Participants observed three ostensible players at other universities play two rounds of Cyberball; in the first round all players were included, but in the second round, one player was ostracized. After the game, participants reported their compassion and wrote e-mails to the ostracism victims and perpetrators, coded for prosociality and harm. Condition differences in exclusion versus inclusion throws emerged in a frontal negative-going peak between 108 and 230 ms, and in a posterior long-latency positive-going deflection between 548 and 900 ms. It is believed that the former reflects the feedback error-related negativity component (fERN) and the latter the late positive potential (LPP). The fERN was not associated with self-reported compassion or helping behavior; however, the LPP was positively associated with empathic anger and helping ostracism victims. Self-reported compassion was positively correlated with a frontal positive-going peak between 190 and 304 ms, resembling the P3a. These findings highlight the importance of studying motivational dimensions of compassion alongside its cognitive and affective dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]