Temporal dynamics of attitude decisions: A test of the iterative reprocessing model using event-related potentials.

Although evaluative judgments are a central component of everyday decision making little is known about the temporal dynamics of the processes used to make them. The present study used the high temporal resolution of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to test Cunningham and Zelazo's (2007) posited differences in the timing of attitude tag retrieval relative to stimulus categorization for 'attitudes' and 'evaluations,' as well as tenets of their Iterative Reprocessing (IR) loop model. Participants made agree/disagree decisions about their attitudes and You/Not You decisions about their autobiographical memories in separate reaction time (RT) tasks while brain activity was recorded from 32 scalp sites. A median-split analysis on RT was used to separate fast and slow decisions. Decisions about autobiographical stimuli produced the typical results in which retrieval and stimulus categorization occurred together just before the response regardless of decision difficulty. By contrast, the relative timing of tag retrieval and categorization differed with difficulty for attitude decisions as predicted by the model. Fast attitude decisions were processed similarly to fast You decisions with retrieval and categorization timing coupled to the response. Slow attitude decisions, however, differed because, while tag retrieval timing was the same as for fast attitude decisions, post-retrieval processing delayed stimulus categorization and a response by 450 msec. ERP activity over dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in the pre-response interval was asymmetrical, with greater activity for attitude and autobiographical decisions over left and right hemispheres, respectively, while amplitude and duration increased with decision difficulty for both. Slow attitude decisions alone elicited a reduced pre-response positivity, a correlate of goal-directed response selection. The results provide empirical support for key aspects of Cunningham and Zelazo's (2007) attitude-evaluation dichotomy and the timing of the posited component processes in their IR model as well as novel information about the roles of stored tags and reflective processes in different attitude decisions.

The role of episodic memory in controlled evaluative judgments about attitudes: an event-related potential study.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are unique in their ability to provide information about the timing of activity in the neural networks that perform complex cognitive processes. Given the dearth of extant data from normal controls on the question of whether attitude representations are stored in episodic or semantic memory, the goal here was to study the nature of the memory representations used during conscious attitude evaluations. Thus, we recorded ERPs while participants performed three tasks: attitude evaluations (i.e., agree/disagree), autobiographical cued recall (i.e., You/Not You) and semantic evaluations (i.e., active/inactive). The key finding was that the parietal episodic memory (EM) effect, a well-established correlate of episodic recollection, was elicited by both attitude evaluations and autobiographical retrievals. By contrast, semantic evaluations of the same attitude items elicited less parietal activity, like that elicited by Not You cues, which only access semantic memory. In accord with hemodynamic results, attitude evaluations and autobiographical retrievals also produced overlapping patterns of slow potential (SP) activity from 500 to 900ms preceding the response over left and right inferior frontal, anterior medial frontal and occipital brain areas. Significantly different patterns of SP activity were elicited in these locations for semantic evaluations and Not You cues. Taken together, the results indicate that attitude representations are stored in episodic memory. Retrieval timing varied as a function of task, with earlier retrievals in both evaluation conditions relative to those in the autobiographical condition. The differential roles and timing of memory retrieval in evaluative judgment and memory retrieval tasks are discussed.

The self in conflict: the role of executive processes during truthful and deceptive responses about attitudes.

This study sought to extend previous results regarding deceptions about specific memories by investigating the role of executive processes in deceptions about evaluative judgments. In addition, given that previous studies of deception have not included valence manipulations, we also wanted to determine whether the goodness/badness aspect of the items would affect the processes used during deception. Thus, we compared behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) activity while participants made truthful and directed lie (i.e., press opposite of the truth) responses about attitude items with which they either strongly agreed or disagreed. Consistent with previous results, deceptive responses required greater cognitive control as indicated by slower RTs, larger medial frontal negativities (MFN) and smaller late positive components than truthful responses. Furthermore, the magnitude of these deception-related effects was dependent on the valence that participants assigned to the items (i.e., agree/disagree). Directed lie responses about attitudes also resulted in greatly reduced pre-response positivities, an indication that participants strategically monitored their responses even in the absence of explicit task demands. Item valence also differentially affected the amplitude of three ERP components in a 650 ms pre-response interval, independently of whether truthful or deceptive responses were made. Analyses using dipole locations based on results from fMRI studies of evaluative judgments and deception indicated a high degree of overlap between the ERP and fMRI results and revealed the possible temporal characteristics of the hemodynamic activations.