负性情绪加工与体验以相反方式影响冲突适应

Negative Emotional Processing and Feeling Influence Conflict Adaptation with Opposite Ways

情绪和认知控制的相互影响塑造着我们的行为.冲突适应反映了认知控制的两个关键加工(监测冲突和控制冲突),因此调查情绪对冲突适应的影响有助于说明情绪与认知控制相互作用的基本机制.不过,已有研究在负性情绪如何影响冲突适应的问题得到了矛盾的结果:有研究发现负性情绪抑制了冲突适应;有研究发现负性情绪易化了冲突适应.值得注意的是,在冲突适应受到抑制的研究中,负性情绪是通过在认知任务中插入图片临时诱发的,而在冲突适应受到易化的研究中,负性情绪是在实验前诱发并在实验中持续存在的.据此推测,抑制冲突适应的负性情绪带有更多情绪加工的成分,而易化冲突适应的负性情绪带有更多的情绪体验成分.本研究采用插入情绪图片来诱发负性情绪,但将情绪诱发分为早期组块(此时被试对情绪材料没有形成习惯化反应,情绪加工占主导地位)和晚期组块(此时被试对情绪材料已经形成习惯化反应,情绪体验占主导地位)进行分析.与本课题组的预期相符,早期组块中冲突适应受到抑制,晚期组块中冲突适应受到易化.因此,本研究解决了已有研究间的分歧,说明冲突适应之所以受到抑制是因为受到负性情绪加工的影响,而冲突适应之所以受到易化是因为受到负性情绪体验的影响.本课题组进一步提出,负性情绪加工可能是通过占用认知资源抑制冲突适应的,而负性情绪体验可能是通过提升警觉水平而易化冲突适应的.本研究也凸显了任务配置在冲突适应中的重要性,加深了对冲突适应产生机制的理解.

The interaction between emotion and cognitive control shapes our behavior. Since conflict adaptation reveals two critical processes of cognitive control： monitoring conflict and controlling conflict, investigation of the influence of emotion on conflict adaptation is helpful to addressing the basic mechanism of the interaction between emotion and cognitive control. However, for how negative emotion influences conflict adaptation, previous related studies reported contradictory results： some studies claimed negative emotion suppressed conflict adaptation, others found negative emotion facilitated conflict adaptation. Notably, when conflict adaptation was suppressed, negative emotion was transiently evoked by inserting emotional figures among cognitive tasks. When it was facilitated, negative emotion was evoked before experiment and sustained during the experiment. Accordingly, we hypothesized the negative emotion suppressing conflict adaptation should involve more emotional processing, but that facilitating conflict adaptation should involve more emotional feeling. In this study, we evoked emotion through inserting emotional figures. Further, the experimental blocks were divided into early blocks where subjects may not be habited to figures and emotional processing may be dominant, and late blocks where subjects may have formed habited response to figures and emotional feeling may be dominant. Consistent with our predication, conflict adaptation was suppressed in early blocks while facilitated in late blocks. Therefore, the present study resolves the divergence among previous studies, suggesting the suppression of conflict adaptation is due to negative emotional processing, and the facilitation of conflict adaptation is attributable to emotional feeling. Furthermore, we proposed that negative emotion may suppress conflict adaptation by occupying cognitive resource, and facilitate conflict adaptation by increasing alerting level. Finally, the present study threw light on the importance of task configuration in conflict adaptation.