Individual differences in processing emotional images after reading disgusting and neutral sentences

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Affective Science
• Psychophysiology

Background:

• Emotional perception is influenced by individual traits and situational factors.
• Event-related potentials (ERPs) offer insights into the temporal dynamics of emotional processing.
• Understanding how disgust propensity and attentional control interact with emotional stimuli is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of disgust propensity, disgust sensitivity, and attentional control on ERPs evoked by disgusting, threatening, and neutral images.
• To examine how prior exposure to disgusting information modulates emotional cognition and associated ERPs.
• To explore emotion-specific ERP effects within the unpleasant emotional category.

Main Methods:

• Participants underwent memory encoding for either disgusting or neutral sentences.
• Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants viewed emotional photographic images.
• Measures included disgust propensity, disgust sensitivity, and attentional control (shifting capacity).

Main Results:

• Disgust propensity reduced the Late Positive Potential (LPP) difference between threatening and neutral stimuli after exposure to disgusting sentences.
• Attentional shifting capacity diminished the typical LPP increase for disgust over neutral stimuli in participants not previously exposed to disgust.
• A persistent occipital positivity, enhanced for disgust, was observed independently of prior exposure.

Conclusions:

• Emotion-specific ERP effects can arise within the unpleasant category, modulated by individual differences and prior emotional experiences.
• Short-term cognitive influences and long-term individual variations significantly impact emotional perception.
• Findings highlight the dynamic interplay between cognitive control, individual predispositions, and emotional processing.