Abstract
The present experiments were designed to examine the influences of picture duration, task relevance, and affective content on neural measures of sustained engagement, as indexed by the late positive potential (LPP). Much prior work has shown that the event-related potential in and around the P3—here referred to as the early LPP—is modulated by affective content, nonaffective task relevance, and stimulus duration. However, later portions of the LPP (>1,000 ms) may represent either a return to baseline or a continued physiological process related to motivational engagement. In the present experiments, we tested whether modulation of the later LPP depends on varying motivational engagement using stimulus duration, affective content, and task relevance. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that stimulus duration modulates the sustained LPP (i.e., 1,000–2,000 ms) in response to affective, but not task-relevant, stimuli from a modified counting oddball task. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that the sustained increase in the LPP is sensitive to both emotional content and task relevance when the task requires sustained engagement with target stimuli (e.g., determining the duration of stimulus presentation). The impacts of emotional content and task relevance had additive effects on the later portion of the LPP. In sum, both emotional content and task relevance can result in a protracted increase in the later LPP. These data suggest that affective content automatically sustains engagement, whereas task relevance only prolongs engagement when it is necessary for task completion.
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Notes
The particular IAPS stimuli used were as follows: neutral target = 2102, neutral = 2383, pleasant = 4608, and unpleasant = 6250.
A 2 (Valence: pleasant vs. unpleasant) × 2 (Duration: short vs. long) × 2 (Time Window: early vs. late) repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed no main effect of valence, F(1, 38) = 0.01, p = .925, η p 2 < .01, and the overall interaction of valence, duration, and time window was nonsignificant, F(1, 38) = 2.10, p = .156, η p 2 = .05. Because unpleasant versus pleasant valence did not have a main effect or interaction, affective stimuli were combined in subsequent analyses.
The early time window in the short display condition includes the offset event-related potential evoked by picture display ending. Differences between the short and long picture durations in the early time window were likely due to the potential evoked by picture offset.
Stimuli were again drawn from the IAPS (Lang et al., 2008): neutral targets = 2357, 2381, 2393, 2480, 2870; unpleasant targets = 3016, 3051, 3101, 3102, 3120; pleasant targets = 4608, 4623, 4626, 4660, 4689; and neutral standards = 2191, 2383, 2385, 2396, 2840.
As in Experiment 1, a 2 (Valence: pleasant vs. unpleasant block) × 2 (Task Relevance: target vs. standard) × 2 (Time Window: early vs. late) revealed no main effect of valence, F(1, 15) = 2.14, p = .163, η p 2 = .13, and the overall interaction of valence, target/standard, and time window was also nonsignificant, F(1, 15) = 0.61, p = .447, η p 2 = .04. Because unpleasant versus pleasant valence did not have a main effect or interaction, affective stimuli were combined in the further analyses.
The mean correct identification of short-duration targets was 85.7%, whereas the mean correct identification of long-duration targets was 85.4%.
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Gable, P.A., Adams, D.L. & Proudfit, G.H. Transient tasks and enduring emotions: the impacts of affective content, task relevance, and picture duration on the sustained late positive potential. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 15, 45–54 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-014-0313-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-014-0313-8