Emotion recognition in individuals with elevated internet addiction scores: An event-related potential study

The current study aims to elucidate the electrophysiological correlates of performance patterns in an emotion recognition task among individuals with higher internet addiction (HIA) scores compared to those with lower internet addiction (LIA) scores. Forty participants, with twenty in the HIA group and twenty in the LIA group, completed an emotion recognition task, involving five facial expressions: anger, fear, disgust, neutral, and sadness. Additionally, cognitive flexibility and working memory were assessed to examine their link to emotion recognition abilities. No significant differences in accuracy or reaction times (RTs) were observed between the groups in the emotion recognition task. However, the HIA group showed reduced P150 amplitudes, but increased N250 amplitudes relative to the LIA group. There was a positive correlation between the RTs and cognitive flexibility, only in the LIA group. Although the groups demonstrated comparable behavioral performance, the stages of stimuli processing differed. The LIA group appeared to process the stimuli more efficiently in the early stage, while the HIA group required greater effort in decoding the stimuli at a later stage. This suggests that the HIA group may rely on over-processing at a later stage due to reduced early processing efficiency, potentially suggesting an early vulnerability marker.