How does higher level cognition affect emotion? Neurophysiological and behavioral investigations

情感和认知以重要的方式相互作用。我之前的很多研究都证明了情绪会影响推理。我们对另一个方向的关系知之甚少：更高层次的认知过程如何影响情绪。这就是我将在这个研究项目中考察的内容，特别是考察抽象思维如何塑造情感反应。根据认知的双过程模型，类型2，即更高水平的认知过程，允许抽象化和去情境化的思维；它们是灵活的，目标导向的，它们依赖于工作记忆。我的项目的总体目标是通过实验直接操纵第二类加工的优势，以检验它对情绪反应的因果影响。我们将尝试使用不同的技术来增加或减少类型2加工的程度：强迫快速反应，用语义或抽象推理启动，用抽象或具体类比启动。我们还将使用重复的经颅磁刺激(RTMS)来改变某些大脑结构的活动，这些结构是工作记忆和抽象思维的关键。跨文化研究将使我们能够检查学习和文化对情绪反应的影响。我们将在推理任务(演绎推理)和注意任务(视觉搜索；情绪Stroop)中比较情绪刺激和中性刺激。我们将测量情绪反应的不同维度：认知、自我报告和心理生理。交感唤醒将使用心率变异性和皮肤电导来索引。我们将使用事件相关电位来测量早期的视觉加工(P1)和后来的更复杂的认知反应(P300，N400)。我们将检验的主要假设是，当类型2过程被启动/可用/发展时，这放大了某些情绪反应的幅度：情绪对推理的影响，情绪刺激的视觉加工(P1)，在检测威胁刺激方面的优势(在视觉搜索任务中)，甚至对情绪刺激的生理反应。这项拟议的研究将在研究更高水平的认知过程如何影响情绪方面具有新颖性。以前的研究已经表明，特定的语义内容(启动精确的思想或概念)可以影响情绪。这项拟议的工作在研究抽象思维过程本身是否会影响情感方面是新颖的。这项研究的结果可能会细微地改变普遍存在的观点，即情绪是自动的和反射的；它可以说明智力，复杂的认知过程，实际上是如何对人类情绪的构建做出贡献的。

Emotion and cognition interact in important ways. Much of my previous research has documented that emotions affect reasoning. We know very little about the relation in the other direction: how higher-level cognitive processes contribute to emotion. This is what I will examine in this program of research, examining in particular how abstract thinking may shape emotional responses. According to dual-process models of cognition, Type 2, higher-level cognitive processes, allow for abstract and decontextualized thinking; they are flexible and goal-directed and they rely on working memory. The general aim of my program is to directly, experimentally, manipulate the preponderance of Type 2 processing to examine it's causal impact on emotional responses. We will try to increase or decrease the extent of Type 2 processing using different techniques: forced rapid responses, priming with semantic or abstract reasoning, and priming with abstract or concrete analogies. We will also use repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) to alter the activity of certain brain structure that are key in working memory and abstract thinking. Cross-cultural studies will allow us to examine the impact of learning and culture on emotional responses. We will compare emotional and neutral stimuli in reasoning tasks (deductive reasoning) and attentional tasks (visual search; emotional Stroop). We will measure different dimensions of the emotional response: cognitive, self-report, and psychophysiological. Sympathetic arousal will be indexed using heart rate variability and skin conductance. We will use event-related potentials to measure early visual processing (P1) and later, more cognitively complex responses (P300, N400). The main hypothesis we will examine is that when Type 2 processes are primed/available/developed, this magnifies the amplitude of certain emotional responses: the effect of emotion on reasoning, the visual processing of emotional stimuli (P1), the advantage in detecting threatening stimuli (in the visual search task), even physiological responses to emotional stimuli. The proposed research will be novel in examining how higher-level cognitive processes affect emotions. Previous work has shown that specific semantic contents (priming precise thoughts or concepts) can affect emotion. The proposed work is novel in examining whether the process of abstract thinking itself affects emotion. Results of this research could nuance the widespread view that emotions are automatic and reflexive; it could illustrate how intelligence, complex cognitive processes, actually contribute to the construction of human emotion.