Abstract
We are often required to interpret discordant emotional signals. Whereas equivalent cognitive paradigms cause noticeable conflict via their behavioral and psychophysiological effects, the same may not necessarily be true for discordant emotions. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) and heart rates (HRs) were measured during a classic Stroop task and one in which the emotions conveyed by lexicosemantic content and prosody were congruent or incongruent. The participants’ task was to identify the emotion conveyed by lexicosemantic content or prosody. No relationship was observed between HR and congruence. SCR was higher during incongruent than during congruent conditions of the experimental task (as well as in the classic Stroop task), but no difference in SCR was observed in a comparison between congruence effects during lexicosemantic emotion identification and those during prosodic emotion identification. It is concluded that incongruence between lexicosemantic and prosodic emotion does cause notable cognitive conflict. Functional neuroanatomic implications are discussed.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barrett, G. (2000). Clinical application of event-related potentials in dementing illness: Issues and problems. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 37, 49–53.
Borod, J. C. (1993). Cerebral mechanisms underlying facial, prosodic, and lexical emotional expression: A review of neuropsychological studies and methodological issues. Neuropsychology, 7, 445–463.
Botvinick, M. M., Cohen, J. D., & Carter, C. S. (2004). Conflict monitoring and anterior cingulate cortex: An update. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 539–546.
Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (2000). Affective reactions to acoustic stimuli. Psychophysiology, 37, 204–215.
Brosgole, L., & Weisman, J. (1995). Mood recognition across the ages. International Journal of Neuroscience, 82, 169–189.
Bush, G., Luu, P., & Posner, M. I. (2000). Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 215–222.
Bush, G., Whalen, P. J., Rosen, B. R., Jenike, M. A., McInerney, S. C., & Rauch, S. L. (1998). The counting Stroop: An interference task specialized for functional neuroimaging-validation study with functional MRI. Human Brain Mapping, 6, 270–282.
Campos, A., Marcos, J. L., & González, M. A. (1999). Relationship between properties of words and elicitation of skin conductance response. Psychological Reports, 85, 1025–1030.
Carton, J. S., Kessler, E. A., & Pape, C. L. (1999). Nonverbal decoding skills and relationship well-being in adults. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 23, 91–100.
Compton, R. J., Banich, M. T., Mohanty, A., Milham, M. P., Herrington, J., Miller, G. A., et al. (2003). Paying attention to emotion: An fMRI investigation of cognitive and emotional Stroop tasks. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, 81–96.
Critchley, H. D. (2002). Electrodermal responses: What happens in the brain? Neuroscientist, 8, 132–142.
Critchley, H. D., Mathias, C. J., Josephs, O., O’Doherty, J., Zanini, S., Dewar, B. K., et al. (2003). Human cingulate cortex and autonomic control: Converging neuroimaging and clinical evidence. Brain, 126, 2139–2152.
Dollins, A. B., Cestaro, V. L., & Pettit, D. J. (1998). Efficacy of repeated psychophysiological detection of deception testing. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 43, 1016–1023.
Gaillard, A. W. (1988). Problems and paradigms in ERP research. Biological Psychology, 26, 91–109.
Gendolla, G. H. E., & Krüsken, J. (2001). The joint impact of mood state and task difficulty on cardiovascular and electrodermal reactivity in active coping. Psychophysiology, 38, 548–556.
Gomez, P., Stahel, W. A., & Danuser, B. (2004). Respiratory responses during affective picture viewing. Biological Psychology, 67, 359–373.
Grimshaw, G. M. (1998). Integration and interference in the cerebral hemispheres: Relations with hemispheric specialization. Brain & Cognition, 36, 108–127.
Holland, P. C., & Gallagher, M. (2004). Amygdala-frontal interactions and reward expectancy. Current Opinions in Neurobiology, 14, 148–155.
Hubert, W., & de Jong-Meyer, R. (1991). Psychophysiological response patterns to positive and negative film stimuli. Biological Psychology, 31, 73–93.
Hugdahl, K. (1995). Psychophysiology: The mind-body perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
James, W. (1884). What is an emotion? Mind, 9, 188–205.
Kitayama, S., & Ishii, K. (2002). Word and voice: Spontaneous attention to emotional utterances in two languages. Cognition & Emotion, 16, 29–59.
Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., & Cuthbert, B. N. (1998). Emotion, motivation, and anxiety: Brain mechanisms and psychophysiology. Biological Psychiatry, 44, 1248–1263.
Lang, P. J., Greenwald, M. K., Bradley, M. M., & Hamm, A. O. (1993). Looking at pictures: Affective, facial, visceral, and behavioral reactions. Psychophysiology, 30, 261–273.
MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 163–203.
MacLeod, C. M., & Dunbar, K. (1988). Training and Stroop-like interference: Evidence for a continuum of automaticity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 14, 126–135.
Matthews, P. M., Adcock, J., Chen, Y., Fu, S., Devlin, J. T., Rushworth, M. F., et al. (2003). Towards understanding language organisation in the brain using fMRI. Human Brain Mapping, 18, 239–247.
Matthews, S. C., Paulus, M. P., Simmons, A. N., Nelesen, R. A., & Dimsdale, J. E. (2004). Functional subdivisions within anterior cingulate cortex and their relationship to autonomic nervous system function. NeuroImage, 22, 1151–1156.
McConnell, C. R. (2004). Interpersonal skills: What they are, how to improve them, and how to apply them. Health Care Management, 23, 177–187.
Meadows, M.-E., & Kaplan, R. F. (1994). Dissociation of autonomic and subjective responses to emotional slides in right hemisphere damaged patients. Neuropsychologia, 32, 847–856.
Melara, R. D., Rao, A., & Tong, Y. (2002). The duality of selection: Excitatory and inhibitory processes in auditory selective attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 28, 279–306.
Mitchell, R. L. C., Elliott, R., Barry, M., Cruttenden, A., & Woodruff, P. W. R. (2003). The neural response to emotional prosody, as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neuropsychologia, 41, 1410–1421.
Schirmer, A., & Kotz, S. A. (2003). ERP evidence for a sex-specific Stroop effect in emotional speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1135–1148.
Schirmer, A., Zysset, S., Kotz, S. A., & von Cramon, D. Y. (2004). Gender differences in the activation of inferior frontal cortex during emotional speech perception. NeuroImage, 21, 1114–1123.
Selye, H. (1956). The stress of life. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Shanks, D. R., & Johnstone, T. (1999). Evaluating the relationship between explicit and implicit knowledge in a sequential reaction time task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 25, 1435–1451.
Silva, F. T., & Leite, J. R. (2000). Physiological modifications and increase in state anxiety in volunteers submitted to the Stroop Color- Word Interference Test: A preliminary study. Physiology & Behavior, 70, 113–118.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643–662.
Trauner, D. A., Ballantyne, A., Chase, C., & Tallal, P. (1993). Comprehension and expression of affect in language-impaired children. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 22, 445–452.
Tulen, J. H. M., Moleman, P., van Steenis, H. G., & Boomsma, F. (1989). Characterization of stress reactions to the Stroop Color Word Test. Pharmacology Biochemistry & Behavior, 32, 9–15.
Wilder, J. (1967). Stimulus and response: The law of initial value. Bristol, U.K.: Wright.
Wittling, W., Block, A., Genzel, S., & Schweiger, E. (1998). Hemisphere asymmetry in parasympathetic control of the heart. Neuropsychologia, 36, 461–468.
Wittling, W., Block, A., Schweiger, E., & Genzel, S. (1998). Hemisphere asymmetry in sympathetic control of the human myocardium. Brain & Cognition, 38, 17–35.
Witvliet, C. V. O., & Vrana, S. R. (1995). Psychophysiological responses as indices of affective dimensions. Psychophysiology, 32, 436–443.
Wurm, L. H., & Vakoch, D. A. (1996). Dimensions of speech perception: Semantic associations in the affective lexicon. Cognition & Emotion, 10, 409–423.
Wurm, L. H., Vakoch, D. A., Strasser, M. R., Calin-Jageman, R., & Ross, S. E. (2001). Speech perception and vocal expression of emotion. Cognition & Emotion, 15, 831–852.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This study was conducted while the author was a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Keele University, Staffordshire, England.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mitchell, R.L.C. Does incongruence of lexicosemantic and prosodic information cause discernible cognitive conflict?. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 6, 298–305 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.6.4.298
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.6.4.298