title: Negative Emotion Weakens the Degree of Self-Reference Effect: Evidence from ERPs.
abstract: We investigated the influence of negative emotion on the degree of self-reference effect using event-related potentials (ERPs). We presented emotional pictures and self-referential stimuli (stimuli that accelerate and improve processing and improve memory of information related to an individual's self-concept) in sequence. Participants judged the color of the target stimulus (self-referential stimuli). ERP results showed that the target stimuli elicited larger P2 amplitudes under neutral conditions than under negative emotional conditions. Under neutral conditions, N2 amplitudes for highly self-relevant names (target stimulus) were smaller than those for any other names. Under negative emotional conditions, highly and moderately self-referential stimuli activated smaller N2 amplitudes. P3 amplitudes activated by self-referential processing under negative emotional conditions were smaller than neutral conditions. In the left and central sites, highly self-relevant names activated larger P3 amplitudes than any other names. But in the central sites, moderately self-relevant names activated larger P3 amplitudes than non-self-relevant names. The findings indicate that negative emotional processing could weaken the degree of self-reference effect.
authors.affiliation: Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China; State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology (CAS)Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University Changsha, China.
authors.forename: Yiping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.affiliation: Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University Changsha, China.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University Changsha, China.
authors.forename: Zilu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University Changsha, China.
authors.forename: Youlong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhan
authors.affiliation: Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University Changsha, China.
authors.forename: Ronghua
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology (CAS) Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xiaolan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Fu
keywords: N2; P3; degree of self-reference effect; negative emotion; self-reference processing