Cerebral Correlates of Automatic Associations Towards Performance Enhancing Substances

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Sports Science

Background:

• Direct assessment of attitudes toward performance-enhancing substances (e.g., doping) is prone to social desirability bias.
• Dual Process Theories suggest indirect measures like the Implicit Association Test (IAT) capture automatic associations, but their validation is challenging.
• Electroencephalography (EEG) offers superior temporal resolution to differentiate cognitive processing stages.

Purpose of the Study:

• To utilize EEG to examine cortical processing stages associated with attitudes toward doping.
• To determine if EEG-derived measures correlate with scores from a brief doping Implicit Association Test (BIAT).
• To validate the neural correlates of automatic associations measured by indirect testing.

Main Methods:

• 42 university students completed a BIAT assessing attitudes toward doping.
• High-density EEG recorded cerebral activity during BIAT completion.
• Analysis focused on event-related potentials (ERPs) and their relationship to BIAT D-scores.

Main Results:

• Behaviorally, participants displayed negative attitudes toward doping, indicated by faster reaction times for doping + dislike pairings.
• EEG revealed differences in ERPs between 200-300 ms (occipital positivity) and 400-600 ms (late positive potential, LPP) for doping + dislike pairings.
• LPP amplitudes significantly predicted participants' BIAT D-scores, suggesting later processing stages are key for implicit attitude measurement.

Conclusions:

• Event-related potentials can differentiate positive and negative doping attitudes at mid-latency processing stages.
• IAT scores are predictable by later occurring LPPs, supporting their role in reflecting automatic associations.
• This study provides the first investigation into the neural correlates of automatic associations toward doping using indirect testing methods.