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. 2018 Aug 15;8(1):12228.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30701-5.

Electrophysiological correlates of the interplay between low-level visual features and emotional content during word reading

Sebastian Schindler  1   2   3 , Antonio Schettino  4   5 , Gilles Pourtois  4
Affiliations

Electrophysiological correlates of the interplay between low-level visual features and emotional content during word reading

Sebastian Schindler et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Processing affectively charged visual stimuli typically results in increased amplitude of specific event-related potential (ERP) components. Low-level features similarly modulate electrophysiological responses, with amplitude changes proportional to variations in stimulus size and contrast. However, it remains unclear whether emotion-related amplifications during visual word processing are necessarily intertwined with changes in specific low-level features or, instead, may act independently. In this pre-registered electrophysiological study, we varied font size and contrast of neutral and negative words while participants were monitoring their semantic content. We examined ERP responses associated with early sensory and attentional processes as well as later stages of stimulus processing. Results showed amplitude modulations by low-level visual features early on following stimulus onset - i.e., P1 and N1 components -, while the LPP was independently modulated by these visual features. Independent effects of size and emotion were observed only at the level of the EPN. Here, larger EPN amplitudes for negative were observed only for small high contrast and large low contrast words. These results suggest that early increase in sensory processing at the EPN level for negative words is not automatic, but bound to specific combinations of low-level features, occurring presumably via attentional control processes.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
ERP waveforms, topographies, and amplitude values of each ERP component. The panels are divided according to component: (A) P1; (B) N1; (C) EPN; (D) LPP. Left panels show the grand average ERP waveforms, separately for each condition (see legends for the respective colors) and averaged across all conditions (black line, shaded area representing 95% confidence intervals). The signal was extracted from electrodes with signal robustly different from noise (highlighted in white in the topography; see Section 4.5 for details). Of note, the EPN was not extracted by averaging all conditions, but by computing the difference between negative and neutral conditions (irrespective of font size and contrast; see Section 4.5 for the rationale behind this choice). Right panels show the amplitude values of the respective component for each participant (gray dots) and experimental condition. Mean amplitude values are marked by horizontal black lines and 95% Bayesian highest density interval (HDI) are displayed as white boxes. Numbers represent, for each visual feature combination, the Bayes factors (BF10) in favor of the alternative model – hypothesizing differences between emotion conditions (prior on effect sizes with location δ = 0 and scaling factor r = 0.707) – versus the null model (difference between emotion conditions δ = 0). For details, see Section 4.6 and Table 3. Abbreviations: large low: large size, low contrast; large high: large size, high contrast; small low: small size, low contrast; small high: small size, high contrast; neg: negative; neut: neutral; localizer: average of all conditions; neg minus neut: difference between negative and neutral conditions (averaged across font size and contrast).
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