The Impact of Perceived Discrimination on Mobile Phone Addiction Among Chinese Higher Vocational College Students: A Chain Mediating Role of Negative Emotions and Learning Burnout.

Purpose: Perceived discrimination among higher vocational college students is a prevalent issue in China and is linked to various mental and behavioral problems, including mobile phone addiction. Yet, the mechanisms underlying the relationship between perceived discrimination and mobile phone addiction remain ambiguous. Methods: To address this issue, we recruited 1253 higher vocational college students to elucidate the relationship between perceived discrimination and mobile phone addiction. Participants completed a series of self-report questionnaires assessing perceived discrimination, mobile phone addiction, negative emotions, and learning burnout. Results: Our findings suggest that perceived discrimination positively influences mobile phone addiction. The negative emotions and learning burnout play mediating effects between perceived discrimination and mobile phone addiction, respectively. Notably, we observe a chain mediating role of negative emotions and learning burnout play between perceived discrimination and mobile phone addiction. Conclusion: The results of our study demonstrate that higher vocational college students who perceived stronger discrimination are inclined to exhibit heightened emotional, cognitive, and learning challenges, such as increased negative emotions and learning burnout, which contribute to more serious excessive mobile phone use. These findings elucidate the mechanisms underlying the relationship between perceived discrimination and mobile phone addiction, enriching our understanding of the underlying emotional, cognitive, and learning dynamics in higher vocational college students.

Reward Modulates Unconsciously Triggered Adaptive Control Processes.

Adaptive control (e.g., conflict adaptation) refers to dynamic adjustments of cognitive control processes in goal-directed behavior, which can be influenced by incentive rewards. Recently, accumulating evidence has shown that adaptive control processes can operate in the absence of conscious awareness, raising the question as to whether reward can affect unconsciously triggered adaptive control processes. Two experiments were conducted to address the question. In Experiment 1, participants performed a masked flanker-like priming task manipulated with high- and low-value performance-contingent rewards presented at the block level. In this experiment conflict awareness was manipulated by masking the conflict-inducing stimulus, and high- or low-value rewards were presented at the beginning of each block, and participants earned the reward contingent upon their responses in each trial. We observed a great conflict adaptation for high-value rewards in both conscious and unconscious conflict tasks, indicating reward-induced enhancements of consciously and unconsciously triggered adaptive control processes. Crucially, this effect still existed when controlling the stimulus-response repetitions in a rewarded masked Stroop-like priming task in Experiment 2. The results endorse the proposition that reward modulates unconsciously triggered adaptive control to conflict, suggesting that individuals may enable rewarding stimuli to dynamically regulate concurrent control processes based on previous conflict experience, regardless of whether the previous conflict was experienced consciously.

The Influence of Industry Leaders' Behavior on the Decisions of Common Enterprise Leaders in Enterprise Clustering: An Event-Related Potential Study.

PURPOSE: This study aims to explore the influence of industry leaders' behavior on common enterprise leaders' decisions in enterprise clustering by recognizing top executives' cognitive processes of brains. METHODS: Twenty-one real top executives from twelve textile enterprises were recruited in the lab experiment, and decisions about whether entering an industrial zone under two conditions of following an industry leader or a common enterprise were designed as the experiment task. Throughout the formal experimental task, participants' electroencephalograms were recorded. RESULTS: The behavioral results preliminarily proved the effect of industry leaders' behaviors on the real top executives' decisions in common enterprises: participants had a higher acceptance rate with a shorter reaction time in the condition of following an industry leader rather than that in the condition of following a common enterprise. Event-related potential results indicated that choices of following an industry leader led to a more positive perception of emotional valence (reflected by a smaller P2 amplitude) and better evaluation categorization and greater decision confidence (reflected by a larger late positive potential amplitude) than choices of following a common enterprise. CONCLUSION: Top executives from common enterprises tend to evaluate industry leaders' behaviors better than other common enterprises' behaviors, and they tend to make a similar business decision to keep their enterprises consistent with these industry leaders.

Dissociable neural oscillatory mechanisms underlying unconscious priming of externally and intentionally initiated inhibition.

Externally and intentionally initiated inhibitory processes, which are fundamental for human action control, can be unconsciously launched. However, the neural oscillatory mechanisms underlying unconscious priming of externally and intentionally generated inhibition remain unclear. This study aimed to explore this issue by extracting oscillatory power dynamics from electroencephalographic data with participants performing an unconscious version of the Go/No-Go/Choose task involving subliminally presented primes. The participants presented prolonged response times upon being instructed or intentionally deciding to commit a "Go" response following a No-Go prime compared with those following a Go prime. This indicates that unconscious inhibitory processes can be externally and intentionally initiated. Time-frequency analysis indicated increased theta band oscillatory power on the forced Go response following a No-Go prime compared with that following a Go prime. Contrastingly, there was pronounced alpha/low-beta band oscillatory power on the free-choice Go response following a No-Go prime compared with that following a Go prime. Moreover, there was a positive correlation of theta and alpha/low-beta band oscillations with human behavior performance related to the two distinct unconscious inhibitory processes. Our findings delineate dissociable neural oscillatory mechanisms underlying the unconscious priming of externally and intentionally initiated inhibition. Moreover, they might provide complementary neural oscillatory evidence supporting the discrepancy between instructed and voluntary human action control.

Personal relative deprivation impairs ability to filter out threat-related distractors from visual working memory.

The literature has indicated that personal relative deprivation (PRD) results in anxiety disorders. Given that some cognitive models propose that attention bias toward a threat causes and maintains anxiety, relatively deprived individuals may have difficulty gating threat from working memory. To test this hypothesis, this study investigated the influence of PRD on the filtering ability of happy, angry, and neutral facial distractors from visual working memory using electroencephalography (EEG). Participants were randomly assigned to a PRD (n = 24) or a non-PRD group (n = 24). Filtering ability was reflected by comparing the contralateral delay activity (CDA) amplitude for one-target, one-target-one-distractor, and two-targets conditions. The CDA was measured as the difference in mean amplitudes between activity in the hemispheres contralateral and ipsilateral to the to-be-remembered information. Results indicated that individuals in the PRD group showed a reduced ability to filter out neutral and angry facial distractors, as reflected by similar CDA amplitudes for one-target-one-distractor and two-targets conditions for both angry and neutral distractors in the PRD group. However, PRD did not impair the ability to filter out happy facial distractors, as reflected by similar CDA amplitudes for one-target-one-distractor and one-target conditions for happy distractors in the PRD group. As neutral faces might then be taken as potentially threatening information by relatively deprived individuals, these results support the hypothesis that relatively deprived individuals might have difficulty filtering out threat-related information.

Electroencephalographic Theta-Band Oscillatory Dynamics Represent Attentional Bias to Subjective Preferences in Value-Based Decisions.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown that people always pay more attention to highly preferred items of choice, which is well defined by behavioral measurements and eye-tracking. However, less is known about the neural dynamics underlying the role that visual attention plays in value-based decisions, especially in those characterized by the "relative value" (ie, value difference) between two items displayed simultaneously in a binary choice. PURPOSE: This study examined the neural temporal and neural oscillatory features underlying selective attention to subjective preferences in value-based decision making. METHODS: In this study, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) measurements while participants performed a binary choice task in which they were instructed to respond to their preferred snack in high value difference (HVD) or low value difference (LVD) conditions. RESULTS: Behaviorally, participants showed faster responses and lower error rates in the HVD condition than in the LVD condition. In parallel, participants exerted a reduced prefrontal N2 component and attenuated frontal theta-band synchronization in the HVD condition as opposed to the LVD condition. Crucially, participants showed greater N2pc component and theta-band synchronization over the human posterior cortex in the HVD condition than in the LVD condition. Moreover, there was a direct correlation between frontal and posterior theta-band synchronization. CONCLUSION: The results show that theta-band oscillatory dynamics may represent attentional bias to subjective preferences, and this effect can be modulated by the level attentional bias to subjective preferences, and this effect can be modulated by the level of value difference. Our research provides insights into a new avenue via which the processing of selective attention and value representation in the value-based decisions can be implicated in an integrative neural oscillatory mechanism.

Bottom-up perceptual salience and top-down retro-cues concurrently determine state in visual working memory.

Recent studies have demonstrated that in visual working memory (VWM), only items in an active state can guide attention. Further evidence has revealed that items with higher perceptual salience or items prioritised by a valid retro-cue in VWM tend to be in an active state. However, it is unclear which factor (perceptual salience or retro-cues) is more important for influencing the item state in VWM or whether the factors can act concurrently. Experiment 1 examined the role of perceptual salience by asking participants to hold two features with relatively different perceptual salience (colour vs. shape) in VWM while completing a visual search task. Guidance effects were found when either colour or both colour and shape in VWM matched one of the search distractors but not when shape matched. This demonstrated that the more salient feature in VWM can actively guide attention, while the less salient feature cannot. However, when shape in VWM was cued to be more relevant (prioritised) in Experiment 2, we found guidance effects in both colour-match and shape-match conditions. That is, both more salient but non-cued colour and less salient but cued shape could be active in VWM, such that attentional selection was affected by the matching colour or shape in the visual search task. This suggests that bottom-up perceptual salience and top-down retro-cues can jointly determine the active state in VWM.

The Neural Basis of Herding Decisions in Enterprise Clustering: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Herding behavior refers to the social phenomenon in which people are intensely influenced by the decisions and behaviors of others in the same group. Although several recent studies have explored the neural basis of herding decisions in people's daily lives (e.g., consumption decisions), the neural processing of herding decisions underlying enterprise behavior is still unclear. To address this issue, this study extracted event-related potentials (ERPs) from electroencephalographic data when participants (i.e., top executives in real enterprises) performed a choice task in which they judged whether to let their enterprises settle in an industrial zone when the occupancy rate of the industrial zone was either low or high. The behavioral results showed that participants had a higher acceptance rate in the high occupancy rate condition than in the low one, suggesting the existence of herding tendency in top executives' business decisions. The ERP results indicated that anticonformity choices induced a larger N2 amplitude than herding choices, demonstrating that participants might experience larger perceived risk and more decision conflict when they processed anticonformity choices. In contrast, we observed that herding choices induced a larger LPP amplitude than anticonformity choices, hinting that participants might experience better evaluation categorization and higher decision confidence when they processed herding choices. Based on these results, this study provides new insights into the neural basis of herding decisions made by top executives in business.

Multiple representations in visual working memory simultaneously guide attention: The type of memory-matching representation matters.

Whether multiple visual working memory (VWM) representations can simultaneously become active templates to guide attention is controversial. The single-item-template hypothesis argues that only one VWM representation can be active at a time, whereas the multiple-item-template hypothesis argues that multiple VWM templates can simultaneously guide attention. The present study examined the two hypotheses in three (out of four) experiments, using three different types of memory objects: Experiment 1: shapes; Experiment 2: colors; and Experiment 3: colored shapes. Participants were required to hold one (memory-1) or two objects (memory-2) in VWM while performing a tilted line search task. Zero (match-0), one (match-1), or two (match-2) memory stimuli reappeared as distractors in the search array. Guidance effects were found for each type of memory stimuli. More importantly, the guidance effect for memory-2/match-2 trials was significantly larger than that for memory-2/match-1 and memory-1/match-1 trials when holding two colors or two colored shapes in VWM, which is in line with the multiple-item-template hypothesis. However, the pattern of simultaneous guidance effect is not perfectly found for two memory shapes, which may indicate that a reliable simultaneous guidance effect from two representations in VWM can be observed only when the memory-matching stimuli is more effective in guiding attention. Experiment 4 directly compared the guidance effect induced by feature-based matches (partial matching) with the guidance effect induced object-based matches (complete matching) in memory-set-size 2. Reliable guidance effects in match-1 and match-2 trials for object-based matches but not for feature-based matches confirmed the crucial role of the type of memory-matching stimuli in guiding attention.

Electrocortical evidence for the time course processes of attentional bias toward infant faces.

Previous behavioral studies have demonstrated that adults show initial orientation toward neutral infant faces compared to neutral adult faces. However, it is unclear whether the initial orientation toward infant faces is sustained and whether attentional bias toward infant faces exists under different emotional valences. In the present study, event-related potentials were recorded while nulliparous women performed a dot-probe task to identify the time course processes involved in attentional bias toward infant faces. Three face pair types were used in the task; each face pair type contained one infant facial expression (happy, neutral, or sad) and one adult facial expression with the same emotional valence. An early N2pc was observed for each face pair type, which suggests that there was initial orientation toward infant faces irrespective of emotional valence. The absence of sustained posterior contralateral negativity in all face pair types indicated that attentional orientation was not sustained at the later stage of attentional selection. In addition, an inverted late N2pc was observed for the happy face pairs and may reflect a "happy superiority effect" in attentional selection processing.

Social exclusion weakens storage capacity and attentional filtering ability in visual working memory.

Social exclusion has been found to impair visual working memory (WM), while the underlying neural processes are currently unclear. Using two experiments, we tested whether the poor WM performance caused by exclusion was due to reduced storage capacity, impaired attentional filtering ability or both. The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion. Seventy-four female participants performed WM tasks while event-related potentials were recorded. In Experiment 1, participants were made to remember the orientations of red rectangles while ignoring salient green rectangles. Results showed that exclusion impaired the ability to filter out irrelevant items from WM, as reflected by the similar contralateral delay activity (CDA) amplitudes for one-target-one-distractor condition and two-targets condition, as well as the similar CDA amplitudes for two-targets-two-distractors condition and four-targets condition in excluded individuals. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to remember 1-5 colored squares. Results showed that exclusion reduced storage capacity, as the CDA amplitudes reached asymptote at loads of two items for exclusion group and at loads of three items for inclusion group. Together, these two experiments provided complementary evidence that WM deficits caused by social exclusion were due to reduced storage capacity and impaired attentional filtering ability.

Electroencephalographic theta oscillatory dynamics reveal attentional bias to angry faces.

Although previous studies have reported the temporal neural dynamics (e.g., N2pc component) of threat-detection orientation for face-processing (e.g., the "anger superiority effect"), little is known about the neural oscillatory features of this phenomenon. Here, we extracted the event-related potentials and event-related oscillatory power dynamics from electroencephalographic data when participants performed a visual search task consisting of realistic angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions. We observed a shorter response time and a larger N2pc for angry faces than for happy faces, suggesting the existence of preferential processing for angry faces. Similarly, elevated theta synchronization was observed for angry faces compared to happy faces, while both angry and happy faces elicited heightened theta oscillatory activity on contralateral location of target face compared to ipsilateral location. Moreover, the theta oscillation difference negatively correlated with the amplitude of the N2pc difference. Our findings suggest that the occipital theta oscillation is engaged in the search advantage of angry facial expressions. Further, our results provide evidence that the theta oscillation may reflect the processing dynamics of threat-stimuli orientation in an ever-changing environment.

Social exclusion impairs distractor suppression but not target enhancement in selective attention.

Social exclusion has been thought to weaken one's ability to exert inhibitory control. Existing studies have primarily focused on the relationship between exclusion and behavioral inhibition, and have reported that exclusion impairs behavioral inhibition. However, whether exclusion also affects selective attention, another important aspect of inhibitory control, remains unknown. Therefore, the current study aimed to explore whether social exclusion impairs selective attention, and to specifically examine its effect on two hypothesized mechanisms of selective attention: target enhancement and distractor suppression. The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion. Participants then performed a visual search task while event-related potentials were recorded. In the visual search task, target and salient distractor were either both presented laterally or one was presented on the vertical midline and the other laterally. Results showed that social exclusion differentially affected target and distractor processing. While exclusion impaired distractor suppression, reflected as smaller distractor-positivity (Pd) amplitudes for the exclusion group compared to the inclusion group, it did not affect target enhancement, reflected as similar target-negativity (Nt) amplitudes for both the exclusion and inclusion groups. Together, these results extend our understanding of the relationship between exclusion and inhibitory control, and suggest that social exclusion affects selective attention in a more complex manner than previously thought.

The temporal dynamics of detached versus positive reappraisal: An ERP study.

Detached reappraisal and positive reappraisal are regarded as two distinct types of cognitive reappraisal strategy, and the former is considered more disengaging than the latter. The conceptual framework of emotion regulation choice posits that strategies involving disengagement operate earlier and more efficiently than engagement strategies. Here, we compare for the first time the temporal dynamics of detached and positive reappraisal during the regulation and re-exposure phases thereof by measuring event-related potentials. During the regulation phase, pictures were viewed or regulated using detached or positive reappraisal. During the re-exposure phase, the same pictures were viewed again. Results showed that during regulation, central-parietal late positive potentials (LPPs) were greatly attenuated under both strategy types, with the regulation effect of detached reappraisal occurring earlier than that of positive reappraisal and resulting in a stronger attenuation of LPP amplitudes. Upon re-exposure, detached reappraisal exerted enduring effects on self-reported arousal and the central-parietal LPP, whereas positive reappraisal had an enduring effect only on pleasantness. These findings demonstrate the differential effects of detached and positive reappraisal on valence, arousal, and neural responses, and underline the striking differences in the temporal dynamics of these reappraisal strategies.

Contextual Valence and Sociality Jointly Influence the Early and Later Stages of Neutral Face Processing.

Recent studies have demonstrated that face perception is influenced by emotional contextual information. However, because facial expressions are routinely decoded and understood during social communication, sociality should also be considered-that is, it seems necessary to explore whether emotional contextual effects are influenced by the sociality of contextual information. Furthermore, although one behavioral study has explored the effects of context on selective attention to faces, the exact underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Therefore, the current study investigated how valence and sociality of contextual information influenced the early and later stages of neutral face processing. We first employed an established affective learning procedure, wherein neutral faces were paired with verbal information that differed in valence (negative, neutral) and sociality (social, non-social), to manipulate contextual information. Then, to explore the effects of context on face perception, participants performed a face perception task, while the N170, early posterior negativity (EPN), and late positive potential (LPP) components were measured. Finally, to explore the effects of context on selective attention, participants performed a dot probe task while the N2pc was recorded. The results showed that, in the face perception task, faces paired with negative social information elicited greater EPN and LPP than did faces paired with neutral social information; no differences existed between faces paired with negative and neutral non-social information. In the dot probe task, faces paired with negative social information elicited a more negative N2pc amplitude (indicating attentional bias) than did faces paired with neutral social information; the N2pc did not differ between faces paired with negative and neutral non-social information. Together, these results suggest that contextual information influenced both face perception and selective attention, and these context effects were governed by the interaction between valence and sociality of contextual information.

Social exclusion modulates priorities of attention allocation in cognitive control.

Many studies have investigated how exclusion affects cognitive control and have reported inconsistent results. However, these studies usually treated cognitive control as a unitary concept, whereas it actually involved two main sub-processes: conflict detection and response implementation. Furthermore, existing studies have focused primarily on exclusion's effects on conscious cognitive control, while recent studies have shown the existence of unconscious cognitive control. Therefore, the present study investigated whether and how exclusion affects the sub-processes underlying conscious and unconscious cognitive control differently. The Cyberball game was used to manipulate social exclusion and participants subsequently performed a masked Go/No-Go task during which event-related potentials were measured. For conscious cognitive control, excluded participants showed a larger N2 but smaller P3 effects than included participants, suggesting that excluded people invest more attention in conscious conflict detection, but less in conscious inhibition of impulsive responses. However, for unconscious cognitive control, excluded participants showed a smaller N2 but larger P3 effects than included participants, suggesting that excluded people invest less attention in unconscious conflict detection, but more in unconscious inhibition of impulsive responses. Together, these results suggest that exclusion causes people to rebalance attention allocation priorities for cognitive control according to a more flexible and adaptive strategy.

Neural signature of reward-modulated unconscious inhibitory control.

Consciously initiated cognitive control is generally determined by motivational incentives (e.g., monetary reward). Recent studies have revealed that human cognitive control processes can nevertheless operate without awareness. However, whether monetary reward can impinge on unconscious cognitive control remains unclear. To clarify this issue, a task consisting of several runs was designed to combine a modified version of the reward-priming paradigm with an unconscious version of the Go/No-Go task. At the beginning of each run, participants were exposed to a high- or low-value coin, followed by the modified Go/No-Go task. Participants could earn the coin only if they responded correctly to each trial of the run. Event-related potential (ERP) results indicated that high-value rewards (vs. low-value rewards) induced a greater centro-parietal P3 component associated with conscious and unconscious inhibitory control. Moreover, the P3 amplitude correlated positively with the magnitude of reaction time slowing reflecting the intensity of activation of unconscious inhibitory control in the brain. These findings suggest that high-value reward may facilitate human higher-order inhibitory processes that are independent of conscious awareness, which provides insights into the brain processes that underpin motivational modulation of cognitive control.

Visual working memory representations guide the detection of emotional faces: An ERP study.

We investigated the correlates of the influences exerted by visual working memory (VWM) on attentional selection of emotional faces using electrophysiological method. Participants performed a search task to detect happy or angry faces among groups of neutral faces while simultaneously keeping in VWM a colour cue presented initially. A visual working memory test was required at last to ensure that the cue had been maintained in VWM. Happy faces elicited a larger amplitude N2pc ERP component when VWM features matched the target face (valid condition) and a smaller amplitude when VWM features matched a distractor face (invalid condition), compared with the neutral condition (wherein VWM features did not match any face in the search array). Additionally, angry faces elicited a greater N2pc amplitude in valid trials than in neutral and invalid trials. Although VWM could guide the attentional deployment of angry and happy faces, the guidance was subject to an anger superiority effect.

The divergent effects of fear and disgust on unconscious inhibitory control.

Previous studies have shown that negative emotional distracters impair conscious inhibitory control. Recent research has shown that inhibitory control can be triggered unconsciously; therefore, in Experiment 1, we aimed to investigate whether negative emotional distracters affect unconscious inhibitory control. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, we examined whether fearful and disgusting distracters have differential effects on unconscious inhibitory control. Participants were instructed to perform a masked Go/No-Go task superimposed on a negative or neutral image cue (Experiment 1) or on a fearful, disgusting or neutral image cue (Experiment 2). Results showed that negative emotional distracters impaired unconscious inhibitory control; furthermore, disgusting distracters impeded unconscious inhibitory control when compared to fearful ones. This study is the first to provide evidence that fear and disgust may affect unconscious inhibitory control differently. These results expand the understanding of the relationship between emotions and inhibitory control.