Emotional conflict occurs at a late stage: evidence from the paired-picture paradigm

The present study used paired-picture paradigm, where either congruent or incongruent emotional expressions were presented side by side to measure the neural correlates underlying the processing of emotional conflict effect. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants identified whether the valences of the paired-picture were consistent or not. The results showed that incongruent and congruent picture pairs both elicited larger N2 (210-310 ms) amplitudes than neutral pairs. In contrast, the conflict picture pairs elicited a larger conflict slow potential (conflict SP, 700-1000 ms) than did the positive and neutral picture pairs. There was no significant difference in conflict SP amplitudes between incongruent and congruent picture pairs (i.e., the mean amplitudes of negative and positive picture pairs). The results demonstrated that emotional information was identified and processed during the stage from about 210 ms to 310 ms. However, the emotional conflict effect did not appear until late stage (700-1000 ms). These results supported the distributed attention theory of emotions (DATE).