海洛因戒断者的阈下情绪启动研究

The Study of Subliminal Affective Priming Effects in Heroin Abstainers

研究表明海洛因戒断者的情绪加工异常,但其阈下情绪加工是否异常尚无定论。本研究采用阈下情绪启动范式,考察其阈下情绪加工能力。结果:戒断组的反应时显著高于控制组;两组中,相比不一致、控制状态,一致状态反应时均显著最短;在戒断组中,不一致状态的反应时显著大于控制状态,负性图片的反应时显著大于正性图片,而在控制组中差异不显著。结论:戒断者存在阈下情绪启动效应,阈下情绪加工存在正性偏向,且能力弱于正常人。

Literatures have shown that heroin abstainers have abnormal emotional processing, for example, they are more sensitive to negative than to positive emotion information. Besides, the recent studies suggest that the emotion processing not only relies on attention, but also occurs unconsciously. This unconscious emotion processing is called subliminal affective processing. Subliminal affect can make a more essential exploration of their emotional disorders, and is of great significance for their relapse prevention. Furthermore, the subliminal affective stimulus reflects purer biological natures of the individuals, thus can induce more instinctive responses. Therefore, the study of subliminal affect can be seen as reflecting the original relationship between emotions and cognition in heroin abstainers. However, we know little about their subliminal affect. Hence, we want to explore whether they have a subliminal affective priming effect or not, and meanwhile, to demonstrate whether they have a bias in the subliminal affect processing. Moreover, to research the difference between them and the abnormal individuals. To achieve the above-mentioned purposes, we recruited 31 male heroin abstainers as the abstainer group and 30 male participants who were never addicted in any drug as the control group. The male heroin abstainers were recruited from a compulsory isolation detoxification, the control group participants were volunteers. The study used a subliminal affective priming paradigm. To he specific, firstly, a sandwich masking procedure was used to present the priming stimuli, that is, the masking stimuli were presented before and after the stimuli were activated, thereby reducing the memory marks and blocking the conscious evaluation of the stimuli by the subject to obtain a purer unconscious component. Secondly, a subliminal priming stimulus was presented for 50ms, and the Stimulus Onset Asynchrony （SOA） from the priming stimulus presentation to the target stimuli presentation was 90ms. The experiment was programmed by E-Prime 2.0 software, and all stimulus materials were presented on a computer screen via E-Prime 2.0 software, which was also used to collect data such as reaction time and accurate rate. Results showed that the heroin abstainers had longer reaction time than the control group. Moreover, compared with incongruent trials and control trials, the congruent trials had the shortest reaction time in both heroin abstainers group and control group. Particularly, the heroin abstainer group had longer reaction time in incongruent trials than in control trials. However, such significant difference was not found in control group. Furthermore, the heroin abstainer group had longer reaction time to negative images than to positive images, while this difference was not present in control group. Though the heroin abstainer participants were in a recovery period, these results might attribute to the damages of the amygdale and the emotional processing disorder existed in heroin abstainers. Furthermore, differences in executive function between two groups could account for the heroin abstainers＇ weaker ability to resolve emotional conflicts than the control group. Hence, we can draw below conclusion. First, subliminal affective processing capabilities have been impaired. Second, we find that heroin abstainers have a bias to positive images during the images processing. Last, though the heroin abstainers have difference in subliminal affcctivc processing, they still have the subliminal affective priming effect. To sum up, these findings can make a further understanding in heroin abstainers＇ emotion, thereby providing a theoretical basis for heroin withdrawal.