Effects of alcohol on person perception: A social cognitive neuroscience approach.

Abstract

The acute effects of alcohol on cognitive processing of expectancy violations were investigated using event-related brain potentials and a cued recall task to index attentional and working memory processes associated with inconsistency resolution. As predicted, expectancy-violating behaviors elicited larger late positive potentials (LPP) and were recalled better than expectancy-consistent behaviors. These effects were moderated by alcohol and the valence of initial expectancies. For placebo group participants, positive targets performing negative behaviors elicited the largest LPP responses and were recalled best. For those in the alcohol groups, negative targets behaving positively elicited the largest LPP and recall responses. These findings suggest that alcohol does not globally impair working memory processes in person perception but instead changes the nature of valenced information processing. Findings are discussed in the context of alcohol's effects on working memory processes, reward sensitivity, and the prefrontal cortical structures thought to mediate them.

EEG components of spontaneous trait inferences

“…Because a P300 indicates the detection of a violation of an expectancy generated by the previous stimulus sequence history (Nieuwenhuis et al, 2005), the enhanced P300 amplitude for the trait-inconsistent sentences can be interpreted as indicating that traits had been inferred earlier. Interestingly, Bartholow et al (2003) found this P300 effect only after discrepant negative behaviors following a positive trait expectancy, consistent with earlier research on the higher diagnosticity of negative social behaviors (Reeder & Brewer, 1979;Skowronski & Carlston, 1989;Ybarra, 2002) and stronger ERP after negative inconsistencies embedded in series of positive trait words (for a review, see Cacioppo et al, 1999). The increase in P300 was paralleled by enhanced memory performance for trait-inconsistent sentences in comparison with trait-consistent sentences on a sentence completion task.…”

“…The inconsistency of the sentence was evident only after reading the last, critical word of the sentence, which allowed measure of ERP potentials that were time-locked on the last word. Bartholow et al (2001Bartholow et al ( , 2003 found greater P300 activation at 300Á800 ms after presenting the critical word for trait-inconsistent sentences as opposed to trait-consistent sentences. Because a P300 indicates the detection of a violation of an expectancy generated by the previous stimulus sequence history (Nieuwenhuis et al, 2005), the enhanced P300 amplitude for the trait-inconsistent sentences can be interpreted as indicating that traits had been inferred earlier.…”

“…Note that the trait was not inferred here, but simply given. Hence, of more interest is work by Bartholow and colleagues (Bartholow et al, 2001(Bartholow et al, , 2003, who instructed their participants to form impressions about actors engaged in a series of behaviors depicted in short sentences. These behaviors either implied the same trait (traitconsistent sentences) or violated the implied trait (trait-inconsistent sentences).…”

“…We measured the ERP at midline scalp locations (i.e., between the two hemispheres) at the frontal, central, and parietal lobes. On the basis of earlier EEG work especially by Bartholow et al (2001Bartholow et al ( , 2003, we expect that the P300 appears within a 300Á600 ms window mainly at the parietal scalp site, and most likely after negative trait discrepancies (Bartholow et al, 2003).…”

“…As far as we are aware, EEG measures have not been used previously for detecting STI, although they have been applied under intentional trait instructions by Bartholow and his colleagues (Bartholow, Dickter & Sestir, 2006;Bartholow, Fabiani, Gratton & Bettencourt, 2001;Bartholow, Pearson, Gratton, & Fabiani, 2003). In these studies, ERP were recorded while participants read behavioral statements that either confirmed or violated previously established target-based expectancies (i.e., person impression) in order to track the neural activity associated with inconsistency resolution and to examine how this activity relates to later recall (Bartholow et al, 2003(Bartholow et al, , 2006.…”