Dataset Information

Emotional Contexts Exert a Distracting Effect on Attention and Inhibitory Control in Female and Male Adolescents.

ABSTRACT: Adolescents exhibit difficulties in behavioral regulation that become more evident when emotional contexts are involved, since these may hinder the development of socially-adaptive behaviors. The objectives of the present study were: to examine the influence of emotional contexts on adolescents' ability to inhibit a prepotent response, evaluated by ERPs, and to determine whether sex differences in response inhibition are observed in adolescents in those contexts. Participants performed a prepotent response inhibition task (Go-NoGo) under 3 background context conditions: neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant. While no differences in accuracy were observed, the presence of emotional contexts did prolong reaction times compared to the neutral context. Also, the unpleasant context caused an enhancement of N2 amplitudes compared to the neutral and pleasant contexts. Also, N2 and P3 latencies were longer in emotional contexts than in the neutral condition during both correct responses and correct inhibitions. No sex differences were found in amplitude, but females showed longer N2 and P3 latencies than males. These results confirm the idea that, in adolescents, unpleasant pictures receive preferential attention over neutral images and so generate greater difficulty in response inhibition. Finally, results demonstrate that sex differences in inhibition control in adolescence were observed only in relation to time-processing.

SUBMITTER: Ramos-Loyo J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5437040 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Emotional Contexts Exert a Distracting Effect on Attention and Inhibitory Control in Female and Male Adolescents.

Ramos-Loyo Julieta J Llamas-Alonso Luis A LA González-Garrido Andrés A AA Hernández-Villalobos Juan J

Scientific reports 20170518 1

Adolescents exhibit difficulties in behavioral regulation that become more evident when emotional contexts are involved, since these may hinder the development of socially-adaptive behaviors. The objectives of the present study were: to examine the influence of emotional contexts on adolescents' ability to inhibit a prepotent response, evaluated by ERPs, and to determine whether sex differences in response inhibition are observed in adolescents in those contexts. Participants performed a prepote ...[more]

PMID: 28522804

Similar Datasets

Project description:BACKGROUND:There are suggestions that patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show impairment in executive attention control and emotion regulation. This study investigated emotion regulation as a function of the recruitment of executive attention in patients with ADHD. METHODS:Thirty-five healthy children/adolescents (mean age = 13.91) and twenty-six children/adolescents with ADHD (mean age = 14.53) participated in this fMRI study. They completed the affective Stroop paradigm viewing positive, neutral and negative images under varying cognitive loads. A 3-way ANOVA (diagnosis-by-condition-by-emotion) was conducted on the BOLD response data. Following this, 2 3-way ANOVAs (diagnosis-by-condition-by-emotion) were applied to context-dependent psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analyses generated from a dorsomedial frontal cortex and an amygdala seed (identified from the BOLD response ANOVA main effects of condition and emotion respectively). RESULTS:A diagnosis-by-condition interaction within dorsomedial frontal cortex revealed reduced recruitment of dorsomedial frontal cortex as a function of increased task demands in the children/adolescents with ADHD relative to healthy children/adolescents. The level of reduction in recruitment of dorsomedial frontal cortex was significantly correlated with symptom severity (total and hyperactivity) measured by Conner's Parent Report Scale in the children/adolescents with ADHD. In addition, analysis of gPPI data from a dorsomedial frontal cortex seed revealed significant diagnosis-by-condition interactions within lateral frontal cortex; connectivity between dorsomedial frontal cortex and lateral frontal cortex was reduced in the patients with ADHD relative to comparison youth during congruent and incongruent task trials relative to view trials. There were no interactions of group, or main effect of group, within the amygdala in the BOLD response ANOVA (though children/adolescents with ADHD showed increased responses to positive images within temporal cortical regions during task trials; identified by the diagnosis-by-condition-by-emotion interaction). However, analysis of gPPI data from an amygdala seed revealed decreased connectivity between amygdala and lentiform nucleus in the presence of emotional stimuli in children/adolescents with ADHD (diagnosis-by-emotion interaction). CONCLUSION:The current study demonstrated disrupted recruitment of regions implicated in executive function and impaired connectivity within those regions in children/adolescents with ADHD. There were also indications of heightened representation of emotional stimuli in patients with ADHD. However, as the findings were specific for positive stimuli, the suggestion of a general failure in emotion regulation in ADHD was not supported.

Project description:Cognitive aging may be accompanied by increased prioritization of social and emotional goals that enhance positive experiences and emotional states. The socioemotional selectivity theory suggests this may be achieved by giving preference to positive information and avoiding or suppressing negative information. Although there is some evidence of a positivity bias in controlled attention tasks, it remains unclear whether a positivity bias extends to the processing of affective stimuli presented outside focused attention. In two experiments, we investigated age-related differences in the effects of to-be-ignored non-face affective images on target processing. In Experiment 1, 27 older (64-90 years) and 25 young adults (19-29 years) made speeded valence judgments about centrally presented positive or negative target images taken from the International Affective Picture System. To-be-ignored distractor images were presented above and below the target image and were either positive, negative, or neutral in valence. The distractors were considered task relevant because they shared emotional characteristics with the target stimuli. Both older and young adults responded slower to targets when distractor valence was incongruent with target valence relative to when distractors were neutral. Older adults responded faster to positive than to negative targets but did not show increased interference effects from positive distractors. In Experiment 2, affective distractors were task irrelevant as the target was a three-digit array and did not share emotional characteristics with the distractors. Twenty-six older (63-84 years) and 30 young adults (18-30 years) gave speeded responses on a digit disparity task while ignoring the affective distractors positioned in the periphery. Task performance in either age group was not influenced by the task-irrelevant affective images. In keeping with the socioemotional selectivity theory, these findings suggest that older adults preferentially process task-relevant positive non-face images but only when presented within the main focus of attention.

Dataset Information

Emotional Contexts Exert a Distracting Effect on Attention and Inhibitory Control in Female and Male Adolescents.

Publications

Emotional Contexts Exert a Distracting Effect on Attention and Inhibitory Control in Female and Male Adolescents.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets