title: Dynamic Effects of Self-Relevance and Task on the Neural Processing of Emotional Words in Context.
abstract: We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the interactions between task, emotion, and contextual self-relevance on processing words in social vignettes. Participants read scenarios that were in either third person (other-relevant) or second person (self-relevant) and we recorded ERPs to a neutral, pleasant, or unpleasant critical word. In a previously reported study (Fields and Kuperberg, 2012) with these stimuli, participants were tasked with producing a third sentence continuing the scenario. We observed a larger LPC to emotional words than neutral words in both the self-relevant and other-relevant scenarios, but this effect was smaller in the self-relevant scenarios because the LPC was larger on the neutral words (i.e., a larger LPC to self-relevant than other-relevant neutral words). In the present work, participants simply answered comprehension questions that did not refer to the emotional aspects of the scenario. Here we observed quite a different pattern of interaction between self-relevance and emotion: the LPC was larger to emotional vs. neutral words in the self-relevant scenarios only, and there was no effect of self-relevance on neutral words. Taken together, these findings suggest that the LPC reflects a dynamic interaction between specific task demands, the emotional properties of a stimulus, and contextual self-relevance. We conclude by discussing implications and future directions for a functional theory of the emotional LPC.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tufts University, MedfordMA, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, CharlestownMA, USA.
authors.forename: Eric C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Fields
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tufts University, MedfordMA, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, CharlestownMA, USA.
authors.forename: Gina R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Kuperberg
keywords: ERP; emotion; language; late positive component (LPC); late positive potential (LPP); perspective; self-relevance; task