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Children with ADHD suffer from impaired attentional, executive, and emotional processing. This study aimed to compare attentional and executive processing using (non)emotional stimuli in children with and without ADHD. Eighty-five children with ADHD and 72 matched typically developing children performed the Stroop, continuous performance, and Go/No-Go tasks using (non)emotional stimuli. Greater performance in selective attention, inhibitory control, and sustained attention was found in emotional stimuli compared to non-emotional stimuli in both groups. Emotional stimuli facilitated attentional and executive functions in children with and without ADHD. Impaired attentional and executive functions in children with ADHD are not valence-sensitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is ongoing debate about whether control‐related processing related to cognitive conflict and emotional conflict operate independently. This study manipulated the proportion of congruent to incongruent trials to determine the domain specificity or generality of these two types of conflict control. Two experiments were conducted in which spatial Simon conflict was combined with emotional face‐word conflict. In Experiment 1, the proportion congruency (PC) of spatial conflict was manipulated, and in Experiment 2, the PC of emotional conflict was manipulated. The aim was to determine whether control‐related processes elicited by cognitive or emotional conflict show domain‐specific (within cognitive or within emotional control‐related effects) or domain‐general effects, where control elicited by cognitive conflict benefits emotional control processes and vice versa. Behavioral findings indicated that spatial and emotional conflict exhibited within‐domain PC effects. For event‐related brain potential (ERP) activity, PC effects were primarily reflected in a late slow potential, rather than an early negativity, suggesting that control‐related adjustments impacted conflict resolution rather than conflict detection. Furthermore, the results did not show evidence of PC effects across domains for behavioral or ERP data, indicating that proactive control elicited by PC manipulation does not transfer across cognitive and emotional conflict. This study supports the modular nature of proactive control for processes related to cognitive and emotional control. This study explores whether cognitive and emotional conflict control operates independently by manipulating congruency proportions. Results suggest domain‐specific effects, with spatial and emotional conflicts showing within‐domain congruency effects. Findings indicate that proactive control does not transfer across cognitive and emotional conflict. Our findings support the modular nature of proactive control, advancing the understanding of conflict resolution mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People can learn to control their thoughts and emotions. The scientific study of control has been conducted mostly independently for cognitive and emotional conflicts. However, recent theoretical proposals suggest a close link between emotional and cognitive control processes. Indeed, mounting evidence from clinical sciences, social and personality psychology, and developmental neuroscience suggests that the ability to control thoughts and behavior goes hand in hand with the ability to control emotions. Yet, the precise interface between control over cognition and emotions remains controversial. The present study investigates the question whether control is a general-purpose mechanism or rather a set of domain-specific mechanisms. Following previous research, we tested participants' control in a cognitive and an emotional Stroop task and assessed the congruency sequence effect (CSE) which has been taken as a marker of cognitive or (implicit) emotional control, respectively. Going beyond previous research, we asked how control in one domain (e.g., cognitive) interacts with control in the other domain (e.g., emotional) on a trial-by-trial basis. In four experiments (N = 259) presented participants with a task-switching design that intermixed cognitive and emotional conflicts. This procedure produced significant CSEs across cognitive-emotional domains, suggesting that control can interact across domains. However, effect sizes of within-domain CSEs were twice as large, indicating that control is also domain-specific. These results neither support the general-purpose account nor the domain-specificity hypothesis of control. Rather, a hybrid account fits the data best, which also reconciles previous behavioral and neurophysiological findings, suggesting domain-general and specific processes. Public Significance Statement: Emotional conflict such as irony, in which the emotion represented by a person's face and the person's voice do not match, is an inherent part of human social interactions. We investigate whether the control mechanisms of our cognitive system that suppress interference from task-irrelevant distractions and lead to control-related adjustments are confined to cognitive disturbances or whether they can also be applied to tasks that elicit emotional conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the self-reported impact of children's psychiatric disorders on their siblings and assesses what forms of support such children most value. We used a qualitative research design with open interviews to stimulate children between 8 and 15 years old to talk about their experiences living with a brother or sister with a psychiatric disorder. Their stories were analysed within a hermeneutic phenomenological framework in order to identify narrative themes and interpret the meaning of shared experiences. From our analysis, nine shared narrative themes emerge. Overall, siblings report feeling conflicted about adapting their lives to their brother's or sister's disorder and signal a need for personalized attention from parents. They also indicate that being involved in the care for their brother or sister helps them to better understand their behaviour. Finally, siblings reveal that, in their experience, formal, protocolized forms of support foreground family problems and stress. Thus, we recommend to involve children in the care process; to acknowledge their personal needs and conflicts; and to be mindful of the style of support: help offered in an informal or playful way, instead of formal and protocolized, could be a more effective way of meeting siblings' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• High schizotypy individuals showed significantly decreased N170 and N2 amplitudes in reactive control of emotional conflict. • No significant differences in N170 or N2 were found between groups in proactive control of emotional conflict. • A dissociation in the reactive and proactive control of emotional conflict was found in high schizotypy individuals. The present study aimed to examine how individuals with high schizotypy, a high risk group of schizophrenia patients, resolve emotional conflict in proactive and reactive control and the underlying neural mechanisms. Thirty-two individuals with high schizotypy and 30 matched individuals with low schizotypy completed an emotional face–word Stroop task with electroencephalographic data recorded. The proportion of incongruent trials was manipulated in the task to induce proactive control (mostly incongruent trials context, MI context) or reactive control (mostly congruent trials context, MC context). Two event-related potential (ERP) components (N170 and N2) were examined, which represent face processing and cognitive control processes, respectively. In the MC context, significantly decreased N2 and N170 amplitudes were found in high schizotypy individuals compared with low schizotypy individuals, suggesting abnormal neural activity of reactive control in high schizotypy individuals. No significant differences were found between the two groups in the MI context. These results provide initial evidence for dissociation of neural activity of proactive and reactive control on emotional conflict in individuals with high schizotypy. The current findings provide important insight into the emotional conflict resolution in the schizophrenia spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional conflict control is impaired in major depression disorders (MDDs) and affects decision-making with further consequent social interactions dysfunction. However, neural correlates of conflict monitoring processes being modulated by different affective distractor stimuli are not clear in MDDs. In this article, we investigated abnormal neural basis of conflict monitoring processes in MDD patients by applying dynamic causal modeling (DCM) technique on electroencephalography (EEG). The results indicated that MDD patients showed lower N2 amplitudes regardless of stimulus conditions, and reduced activation within ACC region for incongruent stimuli, relative to healthy controls. Especially, MDDs had more negative N2 amplitudes to happy incongruent trials than happy congruent trials. Source localization analyses revealed that MDD patients had significantly enhanced left inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) activation, which is involved in written words processing. Further DCM analysis provided abnormal neural correlates through greater backward connections (fusiform→ITG, amygdala→ITG) on happy incongruent trials than happy congruent trials in MDD group. These findings indicate that only sad words induce significantly greater interference effects to positive target faces in MDD patients, which may be associated with ITG activity dysfunction. The findings may share new insights into the neural mechanisms of emotional conflict processing in MDDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention bias is a tendency to preferably detect, orient and select emotionally valued stimuli, as compared to neutral stimuli, and plays a crucial role in the psychopathology of various psychiatric disorders. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been applied for the alteration of attention bias in health and disease with different parameters and conditions, but the contribution of these factors to the magnitude and directionality of effects has not previously been comprehensively reviewed. In this review, we aimed to systematically explore the effects of tDCS on attention bias in different tasks, tDCS conditions, and health states. Data were collected in accordance with the PRISMA approach. A literature search identified 22 original experiments that explored the effects of tDCS on attention bias. Determinants of tDCS effects on attention bias were cortical target areas, the specific task under study, stimulation parameters, and the presence of psychopathology. Relevant cortical areas for modification of attention bias via tDCS were the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). The observed heterogeneity of the impact of tDCS on the modulation of attention bias can be explained by the area of stimulation, valence of stimuli, task characteristics, and the intensity of stimulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain networks involved in emotional conflict processing have been extensively studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging in adults. Yet, the temporal correlates of these brain activations are still largely unknown, particularly in a key phase of emotional development, adolescence. Here, we elucidate the spatiotemporal profile of emotional conflict processing in 24 typically developing adolescents (10-18 years; 22 Caucasian) during an emotional face-word Stroop task. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we calculated dynamic statistical parametric maps and compared trials with and without emotional conflict whole-brain cluster-based permutation tests, followed by cluster-based ROI time-frequency analyses. Cluster analysis revealed four significant clusters, including early activation of the cingulate and temporal cortices, which may be related to dorsal and ventral streams of processing, respectively. This was followed by late components in the middle frontal and prefrontal cortices, which are likely related to response execution and post-response monitoring. Time-frequency analysis revealed event-related synchronizations and desynchronizations in beta and gamma bands across the cingulate cortex, which highlight the different roles of the cingulate subdivisions. Our findings provide further evidence of the cingulate's key role in emotional conflict processing across time. Improving our understanding of this key cognitive process will guide future work with neuropsychiatric populations, which may aid diagnosis and treatment outcomes., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Semi-supervised learning has always been a hot topic in machine learning. It uses a large number of unlabeled data to improve the performance of the model. This paper combines the co-training strategy and random forest to propose a novel semi-supervised regression algorithm: semi-supervised random forest regression model based on co-training and grouping with information entropy (E-CoGRF), and applies it to the evaluation of depression symptoms severity. The algorithm inherits the ensemble characteristics of random forest, and combines well with co-training. In order to balance the accuracy and diversity of co-training random forests, the algorithm proposes a grouping strategy to decision trees. Moreover, the information entropy is used to measure the confidence, which avoids unnecessary repeated training and improves the efficiency of the model. In the practical application of evaluation of depression symptoms severity, we collect cognitive behavioral data of emotional conflict based on the depressive affective disorder. And on this basis, feature construction and normalization preprocessing are carried out. Finally, the test is conducted on 35 labeled and 80 unlabeled depression patients. The result shows that the proposed algorithm obtains MAE (Mean Absolute Error) = 3.63 and RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error) = 4.50, which is better than other semi-supervised regression algorithms. The proposed method effectively solves the modeling difficulties caused by insufficient labeled samples, and has important reference value for the diagnosis of depression symptoms severity.

Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) have deficits in emotion regulation, which plays a putative role in psychopathology. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) are assumed to be involved in respective processes. In the present study, we aimed to explore the effect of stimulation over the dlPFC and vmPFC on emotion regulation in female with MDD. Twenty women with MDD performed the Emotional Stroop, Emotional Go/No-Go, and Emotional 1-Back tasks during transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in three separate sessions with the following electrode montages: anodal dlPFC (F3)/cathodal vmPFC (Fp2), anodal vmPFC (Fp2)/cathodal dlPFC (F3), and sham stimulation. Independent of the valence of the respective stimuli, accuracy and speed of interference control, accuracy of pre-potent inhibition, and accuracy, but not speed, of working memory performance improved during anodal left dlPFC/cathodal right vmPFC stimulation. Independent of stimulation conditions, interference control was reduced for sad faces, as compared to happy and neutral faces, and working memory performance was faster for happy than for neutral and sad faces. For the impact of stimulation on specific emotional qualities, anodal left dlPFC/cathodal right vmPFC, compared to sham stimulation, led to improved interference control of sad and neutral faces in the emotional Stroop task, as shown by faster reaction times. Furthermore, in that task accuracy with respect to neutral and happy face conditions was higher during both real stimulation conditions, as compared to sham stimulation. The dlPFC is involved in emotion regulation in MDD. Emotional valence is moreover relevant for the effect of stimulation over this area on interference control in MDD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aimed to explore whether there are emotional conflicts and gender differences in the cognitive processing of user interface layouts. By taking the basic layout framework of a shopping interface as the research object and using behavioral experiments and NIRS (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy) technology, this study evaluated the emotional conflict response of men and women to 9 interface layouts formed by the combination of different numbers of layout elements. The results showed that there is a gender difference ( $p < 0.05$ ) in cognition of the interface layout with combinations of 3 and 4 layout elements in the behavioral experiment. Behavioral response was positively correlated with brain function. Oriented by positive emotions, the HbO (oxygenated hemoglobin in the brain) concentration in the cerebral cortex is significantly activated ( $p < 0.05$ ) with gender differences in the case of interfaces combining four elements in the H-type layout frame and three elements in the left-I-type layout frame. These research conclusions can be extended to the application of personalized design and evaluation process of the interface and provide a reference for style changes to digital interface products in actual projects.

In everyday life, individuals successively and simultaneously encounter multiple stimuli that are emotionally incongruent. Emotional incongruence elicited by preceding stimuli may alter emotional experience with ongoing stimuli. However, the underlying neural mechanisms of the modulatory influence of preceding emotional stimuli on subsequent emotional processing remain unclear. In this study, we examined self-reported and neural responses to negative and neutral pictures whose emotional valence was incongruent with that of preceding images of facial expressions. Twenty-five healthy participants performed an emotional intensity rating task inside a brain scanner. Pictures of negative and neutral scenes appeared, each of which was preceded by a pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant facial expression to elicit a degree of emotional incongruence. Behavioral results showed that emotional incongruence based on preceding facial expressions did not influence ratings of subsequent pictures’ emotional intensity. On the other hand, neuroimaging results revealed greater activation of the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in response to pictures that were more emotionally incongruent with preceding facial expressions. The dmPFC had stronger functional connectivity with the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) during the presentation of negative pictures that followed pleasant facial expressions compared to those that followed unpleasant facial expressions. Interestingly, increased functional connectivity of the dmPFC was associated with the reduced modulatory influence of emotional incongruence on the experienced intensity of negative emotions. These results indicate that functional connectivity of the dmPFC contributes to the resolution of emotional incongruence, reducing the emotion modulation effect of preceding information on subsequent emotional processes.

• N450 still can be detected when distracters of Stroop tasks were encoded consciously. • Emotional conflict control inhibited memory retrieval on Stroop tasks' distractors. • The 300–400 ms old/new effect regulated by congruency may be a subcomponent of FN400. • The LPN component was also offline regulated by the congruency factor. Evidence is mounting that emotional conflict is mainly resolved by the rostral anterior cingulate inhibiting the processing of emotional distractors. However, this theory has not been verified from the perspective of memory retrieval. This experiment aimed to explore the offline effect of emotional conflict processing on memory retrieval. We adopted a modified encoding-retrieval paradigm to explore this issue. Participants' electroencephalography (EEG) signal were also collected. A face-word Stroop task was used to create the congruency factor. In addition, an old/new judgment task was used to evaluate the recognition performance. During the retrieval phase, the response time of the incongruent condition was longer and the recognition accuracy was lower compared with congruent and neutral conditions in the behavioral data. For event-related potentials (ERP), we detected two well-established old/new effects related to memory retrieval under both neutral and emotional conditions: the frontal negativity (FN400) related to familiarity-driven recognition and the late posterior negativity (LPN) related to reconstructive processing or evaluation of retrieval outcomes. More importantly, the old/new effects were missing for incongruent condition during the early stage of FN400 (300–400 ms). Besides, for LPN (700–900 ms), the old/new effects of the incongruent condition are greater than the congruent condition. The results prove that the encoding phase's emotional congruency factor has a regulatory effect on the retrieval phase's early familiarity processing and evaluation of retrieval outcomes. Our data confirm the inhibitory effect of emotional conflict control on memory retrieval and support the emotional conflict control mechanism found in previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In everyday life, individuals successively and simultaneously encounter multiple stimuli that are emotionally incongruent. Emotional incongruence elicited by preceding stimuli may alter emotional experience with ongoing stimuli. However, the underlying neural mechanisms of the modulatory influence of preceding emotional stimuli on subsequent emotional processing remain unclear. In this study, we examined self-reported and neural responses to negative and neutral pictures whose emotional valence was incongruent with that of preceding images of facial expressions. Twenty-five healthy participants performed an emotional intensity rating task inside a brain scanner. Pictures of negative and neutral scenes appeared, each of which was preceded by a pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant facial expression to elicit a degree of emotional incongruence. Behavioral results showed that emotional incongruence based on preceding facial expressions did not influence ratings of subsequent pictures' emotional intensity. On the other hand, neuroimaging results revealed greater activation of the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in response to pictures that were more emotionally incongruent with preceding facial expressions. The dmPFC had stronger functional connectivity with the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) during the presentation of negative pictures that followed pleasant facial expressions compared to those that followed unpleasant facial expressions. Interestingly, increased functional connectivity of the dmPFC was associated with the reduced modulatory influence of emotional incongruence on the experienced intensity of negative emotions. These results indicate that functional connectivity of the dmPFC contributes to the resolution of emotional incongruence, reducing the emotion modulation effect of preceding information on subsequent emotional processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Major power theories assume that social power can play an important role in an individual’s goal-related behaviors. However, the specific psychological mechanisms through which this occurs remain unclear. Some studies suggested that having power enhanced individuals’ goal-related behaviors, by contrast, other studies suggested that low-power individuals were associated with a greater performance in goal-directed tasks. We were particularly interested in how social power changes individuals’ goal-related behaviors during an emotional face-word Stroop task. Method Social power was primed by asking participants to recall a past situation in which they were in a position of power (high-power individuals), or a situation in which they were lacking power (low-power individuals). Afterward, participants were asked to complete an emotional face-word Stroop task. In the task, words representing specific emotions were written in a prominent red color across a face, and these words and facial expressions were either congruent or incongruent. The participant’s task was to judge the emotion of the face while ignoring the red emotional words. Results Our behavioral data showed that these individuals displayed faster reaction time and better accuracy in congruent conditions, slower reaction time for fearful faces and worse accuracy for happy faces in both incongruent and congruent conditions. The event-related potential analyses showed that, compared with low-power individuals, high-power individuals showed greater P1 amplitudes when faced with emotional stimuli (both incongruent and congruent conditions), indicating that power affects individuals’ attention in the early sensory processing of emotional stimuli. For the N170 component, low-power individuals showed more negative amplitudes when facing emotional stimuli, indicated that low-power individuals paid more attention to the construct information of emotional stimuli. For the N450 component, compared with congruent conditions, incongruent conditions elicited more negative amplitudes for both high- and low-power individuals. More importantly, fearful faces provoked enhanced P1 amplitudes in incongruent conditions than in congruent conditions only for low-power individuals, while, happy faces elicited larger P1 amplitudes in congruent conditions than in incongruent conditions only for high-power individuals. The findings suggested that during the initial stage of stimuli processing low-power individuals are more sensitive to negative stimuli than high-power individuals. Conclusion These findings provided electrophysiological evidence that the differences in the emotional conflict process between high- and low-power individuals mainly lies in the early processing stages of emotional information. Furthermore, evidence from P1 and N170 showed that there was also a redistribution of attentional resources in low-power individuals.

Videotape recordings obtained during an initial and conventional psychiatric interview were used to assess possible emotional differences in facial expressions and acoustic parameters of the voice between Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) female patients and matched controls. The incidence of seven basic emotion expressions, emotional valence, heart rate, and vocal frequency (f0), and intensity (dB) of the discourse adjectives and interjections were determined through the application of computational software to the visual (FaceReader) and sound (PRAAT) tracks of the videotape recordings. The extensive data obtained were analyzed by three statistical strategies: linear multilevel modeling, correlation matrices, and exploratory network analysis. In comparison with healthy controls, BPD patients express a third less sadness and show a higher number of positive correlations (14 vs. 8) and a cluster of related nodes among the prosodic parameters and the facial expressions of anger, disgust, and contempt. In contrast, control subjects showed negative or null correlations between such facial expressions and prosodic parameters. It seems feasible that BPD patients restrain the facial expression of specific emotions in an attempt to achieve social acceptance. Moreover, the confluence of prosodic and facial expressions of negative emotions reflects a sympathetic activation which is opposed to the social engagement system. Such BPD imbalance reflects an emotional alteration and a dysfunctional behavioral strategy that may constitute a useful biobehavioral indicator of the severity and clinical course of the disorder. This face/voice/heart rate emotional expression assessment (EMEX) may be used in the search for reliable biobehavioral correlates of other psychopathological conditions.

Videotape recordings obtained during an initial and conventional psychiatric interview were used to assess possible emotional differences in facial expressions and acoustic parameters of the voice between Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) female patients and matched controls. The incidence of seven basic emotion expressions, emotional valence, heart rate, and vocal frequency (f0), and intensity (dB) of the discourse adjectives and interjections were determined through the application of computational software to the visual (FaceReader) and sound (PRAAT) tracks of the videotape recordings. The extensive data obtained were analyzed by three statistical strategies: linear multilevel modeling, correlation matrices, and exploratory network analysis. In comparison with healthy controls, BPD patients express a third less sadness and show a higher number of positive correlations (14 vs. 8) and a cluster of related nodes among the prosodic parameters and the facial expressions of anger, disgust , and contempt. In contrast, control subjects showed negative or null correlations between such facial expressions and prosodic parameters. It seems feasible that BPD patients restrain the facial expression of specific emotions in an attempt to achieve social acceptance. Moreover, the confluence of prosodic and facial expressions of negative emotions reflects a sympathetic activation which is opposed to the social engagement system. Such BPD imbalance reflects an emotional alteration and a dysfunctional behavioral strategy that may constitute a useful biobehavioral indicator of the severity and clinical course of the disorder. This face/voice/heart rate emotional expression assessment (EMEX) may be used in the search for reliable biobehavioral correlates of other psychopathological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic review of 37 empirical studies that explored English teacher identity, and its formation through classroom practices from 1997 to 2020. After excluding 26 non-relevant studies from 63 articles, the remaining research has been analyzed through a systematic process to get salient themes that can be best cognized in terms of identity (re)construction issues among English language teachers, how they implement critical and post-method pedagogy, and reflect it in their classroom practices. More specifically, the following themes emerged: classroom practice as a reflection of teacher identity, native/non-native English speakers’ (NES/NNES) dichotomy, emotional tensions in identity formation, teachers’ knowledge of post-method pedagogy, and post-method barriers. This review also provided practical teaching tips for novice English teachers and teacher educators to better manage their identity tensions as teachers, improve their classroom practices and teacher education programs, and propose areas of investigation for future research. It calls for more in-depth qualitative and quantitative longitudinal studies that employ a positivist psychometric approach to measure and examine different facets of teacher identity development.

Task‐based functional neuroimaging methods are increasingly being used to identify biomarkers of treatment response in psychiatric disorders. To facilitate meaningful interpretation of neural correlates of tasks and their potential changes with treatment over time, understanding the reliability of the blood‐oxygen‐level dependent (BOLD) signal of such tasks is essential. We assessed test–retest reliability of an emotional conflict task in healthy participants collected as part of the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression. Data for 36 participants, scanned at three time points (weeks 0, 2, and 8) were analyzed, and intra‐class correlation coefficients (ICC) were used to quantify reliability. We observed moderate reliability (median ICC values between 0.5 and 0.6), within occipital, parietal, and temporal regions, specifically for conditions of lower cognitive complexity, that is, face, congruent or incongruent trials. For these conditions, activation was also observed within frontal and sub‐cortical regions, however, their reliability was poor (median ICC < 0.2). Clinically relevant prognostic markers based on task‐based fMRI require high predictive accuracy at an individual level. For this to be achieved, reliability of BOLD responses needs to be high. We have shown that reliability of the BOLD response to an emotional conflict task in healthy individuals is moderate. Implications of these findings to further inform studies of treatment effects and biomarker discovery are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Turkish Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health / Çocuk ve Gençlik Ruh Sagligi Dergisi is the property of Galenos Yayinevi Tic. LTD. STI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: Identifying objective biomarkers can assist in predicting remission/non-remission to treatment, improving remission rates, and reducing illness burden in major depressive disorder (MDD).Methods: Sixteen MDD 8-week remitters (MDD-8), twelve 16-week remitters (MDD-16), 14 non-remitters (MDD-NR) and 30 healthy comparison participants (HC) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging emotional conflict task at baseline, prior to treatment with escitalopram, and 8 weeks after treatment initiation. Patients were followed 16 weeks to assess remitter status.Results: All groups demonstrated emotional Stroop in reaction time (RT) at baseline and Week 8. There were no baseline differences between HC and MDD-8, MDD-16, or MDD-NR in RT or accuracy. By Week 8, MDD-8 demonstrated poorer accuracy compared to HC. Compared to HC, the baseline blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal was decreased in MDD-8 in brain-stem and thalamus; in MDD-16 in lateral occipital cortex, middle temporal gyrus, and cuneal cortex; in MDD-NR in lingual and occipital fusiform gyri, thalamus, putamen, caudate, cingulate gyrus, insula, cuneal cortex, and middle temporal gyrus. By Week 8, there were no BOLD activity differences between MDD groups and HC.Limitations: The Emotional Conflict Task lacks a neutral (non-emotional) condition, restricting interpretation of how mood may influence perception of non-emotionally valenced stimuli.Conclusions: The Emotional Conflict Task is not an objective biomarker for remission trajectory in patients with MDD receiving escitalopram treatment. Escitalopram may have influenced emotion recognition in MDD groups in terms of augmented accuracy and BOLD signal in response to an Emotional Conflict Task, following 8 weeks of escitalopram treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined whether team conflict affects top management team (TMT) creativity, and if team climate moderates this relationship. Multiple regression analysis results obtained with 684 executives in 71 TMTs showed that cognitive conflict had a significant positive impact and emotional conflict had a significant negative impact on TMT creativity. In addition, team climate positively regulated the impact of cognitive conflict on TMT creativity and negatively regulated the impact of emotional conflict on TMT creativity. Theoretical and practical implications, including ways for enterprises to strengthen team building and enhance TMT creativity, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated emotional conflict in an educational context with an emotional body-word Stroop paradigm, examining whether the N450 (a late fronto-central phasic negative event-related potential signature) and slow potential (SP) effects could be evoked in trainee teachers. The N450 effect is characterized by topography and negative polarity of an incongruent minus congruent difference potential, and the SP effect has positive polarity (incongruent minus congruent difference potential). Positive and negative body language examples were obtained from pupils in an actual school context, and emotional words were selected. Compound stimuli were presented, each comprising a congruent or incongruent word displayed across a body image. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants judged body expression valence. Reaction times were longer and accuracies were lower for the incongruent compared to the congruent condition. The N450 component amplitude in the incongruent condition was more negative than in the congruent condition. Results showed a behavioral interference effect and an N450 effect for trainee teachers in this context, thus indicating that the body-word task was efficient in assessing emotional conflict in an educational context, and trainee teachers' perception of body expressions of students could be influenced by emotional signals. The findings further the understanding of emotional conflict in an educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Álabe is the property of Alabe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Parkinson's disease impairs the decoding of emotional stimuli reflecting alterations of the limbic cortico‐subcortical network. The objective of this study was to assess and compare the behavioral and electrophysiological effects of both levodopa and subthalamic stimulation on emotional processing in Parkinson's disease. Operated patients (n =16) and matched healthy subjects performed an emotional Stroop task, in which the emotion expressed by a face must be recognized while ignoring an emotional distractive word and that includes a neutral control sub‐task. Patients were tested in the four possible treatment conditions (off stim/off med; on stim/off med; off stim/on med; and on stim/on med). High‐resolution electroencephalography was recorded while performing the task. Patients made significantly more mistakes in facial emotion recognition than healthy subjects (p < .005). Untreated patients performed worse in the emotional trials than in the control sub‐task (p < .05). Fearful faces induced significantly slower reaction times than happy faces in patients (p = .0002), but not in the healthy subjects. The emotional Stroop effect with levodopa was significantly higher than with subthalamic stimulation when fearful faces were assessed (p = .0243). Conversely, treatments did not modulate the Stroop effect of the control sub‐task. EEG demonstrated that, compared with the untreated state, levodopa but not subthalamic stimulation significantly increases the amplitude of the event‐related potential N170 (p = .002 vs. p = .1, respectively), an electrophysiological biomarker of early aspects of facial processing. The activity of the N170 cortical sources within the right fusiform gyrus was increased by levodopa (p < .05) but not by stimulation. While levodopa normalizes the recognition of emotional facial expression and early EEG markers of emotional processing, subthalamic stimulation does not. Thus, operated patients require dopaminergic medication in addition to stimulation to treat emotional symptoms of Parkinson's disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical account of attachment proposed that individual differences in adult attachment styles play a key role in adjusting balance between affective evaluation and cognitive control. Yet, little is known about the temporal characteristics of emotional conflict processing modulated by attachment styles. Accordingly, the present study used event-related potentials (ERP) and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) combined with an emotional face-word Stroop task to investigate the temporal dynamics of attachment-related cognitive-affective patterns in emotional conflict processing. The ERP results demonstrated multiple-process of emotional conflict modulated by attachment styles. In early sensory processing, positive faces captured avoidant attachment individuals' attention as reflected in greater P1, while the same situation led to greater N170 in secure and anxious individuals. Crucially, impairment in conflict-monitoring function was found in anxious individuals as reflected by the absence of interference effect on N450, leading to impaired ability of inhibitory control as indicated by decreased slow potential. In contrast, avoidant individuals showed greater slow potential for inhibiting emotional interference. Furthermore, MVPA revealed that the corresponding time window for conflict monitoring was found for emotional distractors decoding rather than congruency decoding in the anxious attachment group. Convergent results from ERPs and MVPA indicated that the deficits in emotional conflict monitoring and resolution among anxious individuals might be due to the excessive approach to emotional distractors, as they habitually use emotional evaluation rather than cognitive control. In summary, the present study provides electrophysiological evidence that attachment styles modulated emotional conflict processing, which highlights the contribution of attachment to social information processing. • Attachment styles modulated multiple-process of emotional conflict. • Anxious attachment group showed deficits in conflict monitoring and resolution. • Anxious individuals relied more on emotional evaluation rather than cognitive control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fronto-parietal network is involved in top-down and bottom-up processes necessary to achieve cognitive control. We investigated the role of asymmetric enhancement of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) and right posterior parietal cortex (rPPC) in cognitive control under conditions of emotional conflict arising from emotional distractors. The effects of anodal tDCS over the lDLPFC/cathodal over the rPPC and the effects of anodal tDCS over the rPPC/cathodal over the lDLPFC were compared to sham tDCS in a double-blind design. The findings showed that anodal stimulation over the lDLPFC reduced interference from emotional distractors, but only when participants had already gained experience with the task. In contrast, having already performed the task only eliminated facilitation effects for positive stimuli. Importantly, anodal stimulation of the rPPC did not affect distractors’ interference. Therefore, the present findings indicate that the lDLPFC plays a crucial role in implementing top-down control to resolve emotional conflict, but that experience with the task is necessary to reveal this role.

Progressive hearing loss is a common phenomenon in healthy aging and may affect the perception of emotions expressed in speech. Elderly with mild to moderate hearing loss often rate emotional expressions as less emotional and display reduced activity in emotion-sensitive brain areas (e.g., amygdala). However, it is not clear how hearing loss affects cognitive and emotional control mechanisms engaged in multimodal speech processing. In previous work we showed that negative, task-relevant and -irrelevant emotion modulates the two types of control in younger and older adults without hearing loss. To further explore how reduced hearing capacity affects emotional and cognitive control, we tested whether moderate hearing loss (>30 dB) at frequencies relevant for speech impacts cognitive and emotional control. We tested two groups of older adults with hearing loss (HL; N = 21; mean age = 70.5) and without hearing loss (NH; N = 21; mean age = 68.4). In two EEG experiments participants observed multimodal video clips and either categorized pronounced vowels (cognitive conflict) or their emotions (emotional conflict). Importantly, the facial expressions were either matched or mismatched with the corresponding vocalizations. In both conflict tasks, we found that negative stimuli modulated behavioral conflict processing in the NH but not the HL group, while the HL group performed at chance level in the emotional conflict task. Further, we found that the amplitude difference between congruent and incongruent stimuli was larger in negative relative to neutral N100 responses across tasks and groups. Lastly, in the emotional conflict task, neutral stimuli elicited a smaller N200 response than emotional stimuli primarily in the HL group. Consequently, age-related hearing loss not only affects the processing of emotional acoustic cues but also alters the behavioral benefits of emotional stimuli on cognitive and emotional control, despite preserved early neural responses. The resulting difficulties in the multimodal integration of incongruent emotional stimuli may lead to problems in processing complex social information (irony, sarcasm) and impact emotion processing in the limbic network. This could be related to social isolation and depression observed in the elderly with age-related hearing loss.

Objects: Effective psychological function requires that cognition is not affected by task-irrelevant emotional stimuli in emotional conflict. Depression is mainly characterized as an emotional disorder. The object of this study is to reveal the behavioral and electrophysiological signature of emotional conflict processing in major depressive disorder (MDD) using event-related potentials (ERPs) and standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) analysis.Method: We used a face–word Stroop task involving emotional faces while recording EEG (electroencephalography) in 20 patients with MDD and 20 healthy controls (HCs). And then ERPs were extracted and the corresponding brain sources were reconstructed using sLORETA.Results: Behaviorally, subjects with MDDs manifested significantly increased Stroop effect when examining the RT difference between happy incongruent trials and happy congruent trials, compared with HC subjects. ERP results exhibited that MDDs were characterized by the attenuated difference between P300 amplitude to sad congruent stimuli and sad incongruent stimuli, as electrophysiological evidence of impaired conflict processing in subjects with MDD. The sLORETA results showed that MDD patients had a higher current density in rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rostral ACC) within N450 time window in response to happy incongruent trials than happy congruent stimuli. Moreover, HC subjects had stronger activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) region in response to incongruent stimuli than congruent stimuli, revealing successful inhibition of emotional distraction in HCs, which was absent in MDDs.Conclusion: Our results indicated that rostral ACC was implicated in the processing of negative emotional distraction in MDDs, as well as impaired inhibition of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli, relative to HCs. This work furnishes novel behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that are closely related to emotional conflict among MDD patients.

Progressive hearing loss is a common phenomenon in healthy aging and may affect the perception of emotions expressed in speech. Elderly with mild to moderate hearing loss often rate emotional expressions as less emotional and display reduced activity in emotion-sensitive brain areas (e.g., amygdala). However, it is not clear how hearing loss affects cognitive and emotional control mechanisms engaged in multimodal speech processing. In previous work we showed that negative, task-relevant and -irrelevant emotion modulates the two types of control in younger and older adults without hearing loss. To further explore how reduced hearing capacity affects emotional and cognitive control, we tested whether moderate hearing loss (>30 dB) at frequencies relevant for speech impacts cognitive and emotional control. We tested two groups of older adults with hearing loss (HL; N = 21; mean age = 70.5) and without hearing loss (NH; N = 21; mean age = 68.4). In two EEG experiments participants observed multimodal video clips and either categorized pronounced vowels (cognitive conflict) or their emotions (emotional conflict). Importantly, the facial expressions were either matched or mismatched with the corresponding vocalizations. In both conflict tasks, we found that negative stimuli modulated behavioral conflict processing in the NH but not the HL group, while the HL group performed at chance level in the emotional conflict task. Further, we found that the amplitude difference between congruent and incongruent stimuli was larger in negative relative to neutral N100 responses across tasks and groups. Lastly, in the emotional conflict task, neutral stimuli elicited a smaller N200 response than emotional stimuli primarily in the HL group. Consequently, age-related hearing loss not only affects the processing of emotional acoustic cues but also alters the behavioral benefits of emotional stimuli on cognitive and emotional control, despite preserved early neural responses. The resulting difficulties in the multimodal integration of incongruent emotional stimuli may lead to problems in processing complex social information (irony, sarcasm) and impact emotion processing in the limbic network. This could be related to social isolation and depression observed in the elderly with age-related hearing loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on conflict adaptation suggests that complex networks are involved in the detection and resolution of conflicts. These networks are believed to be different depending on whether the conflict occurs in emotional or non-emotional contexts. In addition, the adaptation to both types of conflict also seems to have different neural bases. The main aim of the present study was to compare conflict adaptation in two clinical groups – patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) – and a healthy control group during emotional and non-emotional versions of a facial Stroop task. We considered that the neural impairment and neuropsychological profile of these populations would be interesting to examine the above-mentioned mechanisms. Results showed that the performance was worse with incongruent compared to congruent stimuli in both task contexts. The Stroop effect was more marked in both clinical groups and greater in the SZ group. By contrast, the Gratton effect was clearly present in the SZ group, but was inverted in the BPD group mainly in the emotional task. Specifically, participants with BDP had a higher error rate in the current incongruent trial when the previous trial was incongruent in the emotional task. These results suggest that SZ and BDP groups have different patterns of conflict adaptation. Results are discussed according to the clinical characteristics and neural systems affected in each of these psychopathological disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The androgen derivative androstadienone (AND) is a substance found in human sweat and thus may act as human chemosignal. With the current experiment, we aimed to explore in which way AND affects interference processing during an emotional Stroop task which used human faces as target and emotional words as distractor stimuli. This was complemented by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to unravel the neural mechanism of AND-action. Based on previous accounts we expected AND to increase neural activation in areas commonly implicated in evaluation of emotional face processing and to change neural activation in brain regions linked to interference processing. For this aim, a total of 80 healthy individuals (oral contraceptive users, luteal women, men) were tested twice on two consecutive days with an emotional Stroop task using fMRI. Our results suggest that AND increases interference processing in brain areas that are heavily recruited during emotional conflict. At the same time, correlation analyses revealed that this neural interference processing was paralleled by higher behavioral costs (response times) with higher interference related brain activation under AND. Furthermore, AND elicited higher activation in regions implicated in emotional face processing including right fusiform gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus and dorsomedial cortex. In this connection, neural activation was not coupled to behavioral outcome. Furthermore, despite previous accounts of increased hypothalamic activation under AND, we were not able to replicate this finding and discuss possible reasons for this discrepancy. To conclude, AND increased interference processing in regions heavily recruited during emotional conflict which was coupled to higher costs in resolving emotional conflicts with stronger interference-related brain activation under AND. At the moment it remains unclear whether these effects are due to changes in conflict detection or resolution. However, evidence most consistently suggests that AND does not draw attention to the most potent socio-emotional information (human faces) but rather highlights representations of emotional words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthy aging is characterized by a gradual decline in cognitive control and inhibition of interferences, while emotional control is either preserved or facilitated. Emotional control regulates the processing of emotional conflicts such as in irony in speech, and cognitive control resolves conflict between non-affective tendencies. While negative emotion can trigger control processes and speed up resolution of both cognitive and emotional conflicts, we know little about how aging affects the interaction of emotion and control. In two EEG experiments, we compared the influence of negative emotion on cognitive and emotional conflict processing in groups of younger adults (mean age = 25.2 years) and older adults (69.4 years). Participants viewed short video clips and either categorized spoken vowels (cognitive conflict) or their emotional valence (emotional conflict), while the visual facial information was congruent or incongruent. Results show that negative emotion modulates both cognitive and emotional conflict processing in younger and older adults as indicated in reduced response times and/or enhanced event-related potentials (ERPs). In emotional conflict processing, we observed a valence-specific N100 ERP component in both age groups. In cognitive conflict processing, we observed an interaction of emotion by congruence in the N100 responses in both age groups, and a main effect of congruence in the P200 and N200. Thus, the influence of emotion on conflict processing remains intact in aging, despite a marked decline in cognitive control. Older adults may prioritize emotional wellbeing and preserve the role of emotion in cognitive and emotional control.