Electrophysiological evidence for greater attention to threat when cognitive control resources are depleted

Holmes, Amanda; Mogg, Karin; de Fockert, Jan; Nielsen, Maria Kragh; Bradley, Brendan P. · 2013 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13415-013-0212-4

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Summary

This study investigates how the depletion of cognitive control resources affects the allocation of attention to threat-related stimuli. Motivated by theoretical models suggesting that attentional bias toward threat results from a competition between bottom-up emotion processing systems and top-down executive control, the authors hypothesized that high working memory (WM) load would impair the suppression of task-irrelevant threat cues, thereby increasing attentional capture by angry faces. The research aimed to provide electrophysiological evidence for this mechanism, distinguishing it from previous behavioral studies that yielded mixed results regarding cognitive load and emotion processing. The experiment employed a visual probe task combined with a concurrent WM manipulation. Twenty-two healthy participants viewed pairs of faces (one angry, one neutral) presented for 500 ms, followed by a probe arrow requiring a speeded response. To manipulate cognitive load, participants simultaneously maintained a sequence of digits in WM: a fixed sequence ("01234") for low load, or a random sequence for high load. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to measure neural indices of attentional bias, specifically the early N2pc (180–252 ms), late N2pc (252–320 ms), and sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN, 320–500 ms). Reaction times (RTs) to the probes served as the behavioral measure of attentional bias. The results demonstrated that high WM load significantly enhanced lateralized neural responses to angry faces compared to neutral faces. Specifically, high load conditions produced greater contralateral negativity during the early N2pc, indicating enhanced initial orienting of attention to threat. This effect persisted through the late N2pc and SPCN components, reflecting enhanced maintenance of threat representations in visual short-term memory. In contrast, low WM load did not produce significant contralateral bias scores. While behavioral RT data showed a general attentional bias toward threat (faster responses to probes replacing angry faces), this behavioral effect was not significantly modulated by WM load. However, the ERP measures of attentional bias were positively correlated with each other and with the behavioral RT bias, confirming that the neural indices reflected the same underlying attentional processes. These findings provide direct electrophysiological evidence that executive control resources are critical for inhibiting attention to task-irrelevant threat. When cognitive control is depleted by high WM load, the ability to suppress threat-related distractors is compromised, leading to greater neural engagement with angry stimuli. This supports the view that even rapid, seemingly reflexive attentional shifts toward threat are modulated by top-down executive mechanisms. The study highlights the utility of ERP components like the N2pc and SPCN in detecting subtle attentional biases that may not manifest in behavioral reaction times, offering a more sensitive tool for investigating the interplay between emotion and cognition.

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