title: Dissociable early attentional control mechanisms underlying cognitive and affective conflicts.
abstract: It has been well documented that cognitive conflict is sensitive to the relative proportion of congruent and incongruent trials. However, few studies have examined whether affective conflict processing is modulated as a function of proportion congruency (PC). To address this question we recorded event-related potentials (ERP) while subjects performed both cognitive and affective face-word Stroop tasks. By varying the proportion of congruent and incongruent trials in each block, we examined the extent to which PC impacts both cognitive and affective conflict control at different temporal stages. Results showed that in the cognitive task an anteriorly localized early N2 component occurred predominantly in the low proportion congruency context, whereas in the affective task it was found to occur in the high proportion congruency one. The N2 effects across the two tasks were localized to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, where responses were increased in the cognitive task but decreased in the affective one. Furthermore, high proportions of congruent items produced both larger amplitude of a posteriorly localized sustained potential component and a larger behavioral Stroop effect in cognitive and affective tasks. Our findings suggest that cognitive and affective conflicts engage early dissociable attentional control mechanisms and a later common conflict response system.
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, PR China.|State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, PR China.
authors.forename: Taolin
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, PR China.|Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, PR China.
authors.forename: Keith M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Kendrick
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, PR China.
authors.forename: Chunliang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, PR China.
authors.forename: Shiyue
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: School of Sociology and Psychology, Southwest University for Nationalities, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: School of Sociology and Psychology, Southwest University for Nationalities, Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Xiaogang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, PR China.
authors.forename: Wenbo
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, PR China.
authors.forename: Suyong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, PR China.
authors.forename: Xiaoqi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, PR China.
authors.forename: Pedro A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Valdés-Sosa
authors.affiliation: Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, PR China.
authors.forename: Qiyong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Queens College, City University of New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, PR China.|Shenzhen Institute of Neuroscience, Shenzhen 518057, PR China.|Collaborative Innovation Center of Sichuan for Elder Care and Health, Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, 610500 PR China.
authors.forename: Yue-Jia
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D057190:Stroop Test; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult