• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.43-64
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• 2017

The purpose of the current study is to investigate how task-irrelevant affective priming affects higher cognitive function. In the study, we selected prime stimuli from International Affective Picture System(IAPS) and examined if they influence participants' performance of syllogistic reasoning task when they are task-irrelevant. In Experiment 1, arousal of IAPS stimuli was controlled while valence of the stimuli was manipulated. In Experiment 2, valence of IAPS stimuli was controlled while arousal of stimuli was manipulated. In both experiments, task-irrelevant affective primes were followed by syllogistic reasoning tasks consisting of three sentences and measured accuracies of task performance. The results showed that valence of affective prime affected logical validity of reasoning and belief-bias whereas arousal of affective primes did not yield any difference. That is, positive valence facilitated logical and analytic processing by reducing belief-bias while arousal did not affect reasoning task performance. These results suggest that dimensions of valence and arousal independently influence higher cognitive function.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.541-550
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• 2010

The present study examined whether the physical similarity of test stimuli affects P300 amplitude and detection accuracy for the P300-based concealed information test (P300 CIT). As the participant pretended suffering from memory impairment by an accident, own name was used as a concealed information to be probed by the P300 CIT in which the participant discriminated between a target and other (probe, irrelevant) stimuli. One group of participants was tested in the easy task condition with low physical similarity among stimuli, the other group was tested in the difficult task condition with high physical similarity among stimuli. Using the base-to-peak P300 amplitude, the interaction effect of task difficulty and stimulus type was significant at $\alpha$=.1 level (p=.052). In the easy task condition the difference of P300 amplitude between the probe and the irrelevant stimuli was significant, while in the difficult task condition the difference was not significant. Using peak-to-peak P300 amplitude, on the other hand, the interaction effect of task difficulty and stimulus type was not significant with significant differences of P300 amplitude between the probe and the irrelevant stimuli in both task difficulty conditions. The difference of detection accuracy between task conditions was not significant with both measures of P300 amplitude although the difference was much smaller when peak-to-peak P300 amplitude was used. The results suggest that the efficiency of P300 CIT would not decrease even when the perceptual similarity among test stimuli is high.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.113-126
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• 2024

Individuals with social anxiety disorders tend to hold attentional bias toward threatening stimuli in social contexts regardless of task relevance. Although attentional bias is relatively consistent, findings on memory performance are mixed. This study examined attentional and memory biases toward threat stimuli in individuals with high levels of social anxiety. Participants included 19 individuals with high social anxiety (HSA) and another 20 individuals with low social anxiety (LSA). They performed a continuous attention task to measure attentional bias to threat. Afterward, they performed an unexpected memory task using distracting stimuli from the previous attention task to measure memory bias to task-irrelevant threatening stimuli. The results indicated that the HSA and LSA groups exhibited an initial attentional bias toward emotional faces. However, only the HSA group displayed prolonged attentional bias and demonstrated memory bias toward angry faces. Conversely, the LSA group exhibited attentional bias toward happy faces after 4 s. The findings imply that the absence of bias toward positive stimuli and the presence of bias toward negative stimuli may contribute to the maintenance and severity of social anxiety pathology.