Associated valence impacts early visual processing of letter strings: Evidence from ERPs in a cross-modal learning paradigm

Abstract

Emotion effects in event-related potentials (ERPs) during reading have been observed at very short latencies of around 100 to 200 ms after word onset. The nature of these effects remains a matter of debate: First, it is possible that they reflect semantic access, which might thus occur much faster than proposed by most reading models. Second, it is possible that associative learning of a word's shape might contribute to the emergence of emotion effects during visual processing. The present study addressed this question by employing an associative learning paradigm on pseudowords. In a learning session, pseudowords were associated with positive, neutral or negative valence by means of monetary gain, loss or zero-outcome. Crucially, half of the pseudowords were learned in the visual modality, while the other half was presented acoustically, allowing for experimental separation of associated valence and physical percept. In a test session 1 to 2 days later, acquired pseudowords were presented in an old/new decision task while we recorded event-related potentials. Behavioural data showed an advantage for gain-associated pseudowords both during learning and in a delayed old/new task. In the visual test session, early emotion effects in ERPs were limited to visually acquired pseudowords, but absent for acoustically acquired pseudowords. These results imply that associative learning of a word's visual features might play an important role in the emergence of emotion effects at the stage of perceptual processing.

Neurophysiological Effects Associated With Subliminal Conditioning of Appetite Motivations

“…A second concern may be raised regarding the relatively small sample size ( n = 10). In response, we point out that our ERC effects were quite robust, replicating earlier EEG findings ( Amd et al, 2013 ; Bayer et al, 2017 ). We also report large effects for our saliva and performance-based motivation checks.…”

“…Previous research has demonstrated valence-associated event-related components (ERCs) within 100–200 ms of stimulus onset using EEG, typically over regions associated with language processing and feature redintegration ( Amd et al, 2013 ; Kuchinke et al, 2015 ; Blechert et al, 2016 , p. 14; Bayer et al, 2017 ). As our CS and US were naturally occurring words, we predicted ERCs localized over language areas would discriminate between neutral and positive US within 200–300 ms of US onset.…”

Differential effects of learned associations with words and pseudowords on event-related brain potentials

“…In contrast, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that not only orthographic, but also lexico-semantic features can be accessed within the first 200 ms after stimulus onset (Hauk, Coutout, Holden, & Chen, 2012;Hauk, Davis, Ford, Pulvermüller, & Marslen-Wilson, 2006;Pulvermüller, Shtyrov, & Hauk, 2009;Rabovsky, Sommer, & Rahman, 2012). In particular, early modulations based on associated outcome have recently been observed for written pseudowords (Bayer, Grass, & Schacht, 2018). These findings are in accordance with evidence for fast activation of lexical information based on word frequency effects on fixation durations (Sereno & Rayner, 2003).…”

“…In addition to emotion effects, associative learning has been demonstrated to induce Old/New effects (for an overview, see Rugg & Curran, 2007), which have also been observed in emotional association paradigms (Martínez-Galindo & Cansino, 2017), and can lead to larger P3 (also referred to as centro-parietal LPC), but not P1 amplitudes towards previously associated compared to novel stimuli (Bayer et al, 2018;Fritsch & Kuchinke, 2013). These effects will also be investigated in the current study to identify differences in the processing of acquired compared to novel stimuli.…”

Rapid neural representations of personally relevant faces

“…The finding of increased P1 amplitudes is especially noteworthy, since it is related to perceptual processing at around 100 ms after stimulus onset in the extrastriate cortex, and thus precedes structural face encoding as indexed by the N170 component (Eimer, 2000), as well as subsequent face identification processes (Bruce & Young, 1986). Increased activation in visual areas within 100 ms after stimulus onset have been reported for stimuli with emotional and motivational relevance (Pourtois, Schettino, & Vuilleumier, 2013), and have recently been related to associative learning of physical stimulus properties (Bayer, Grass, & Schacht, 2018;Rossi et al, 2017;Steinberg, Bröckelmann, Rehbein, Dobel, & Junghöfer, 2013). Thus, our results are not necessarily in conflict with models of face recognition based on structural encoding and associative memory (Bruce & Young, 1986), but might reflect reward value associated with (the physical features of) a loved one's face, extracted prior to structural encoding mechanisms.…”