%0 Journal Article
%T The Time Course of the Influence of Valence and Arousal on the Implicit Processing of Affective Pictures
%A Chunliang Feng
%A Lili Wang
%A Chao Liu
%A Xiangru Zhu
%A Ruina Dai
%A Xiaoqin Mai
%A Yue-Jia Luo
%J PLOS ONE
%D 2012
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0029668
%X In the current study, we investigated the time course of the implicit processing of affective pictures with an orthogonal design of valence (negative vs. positive) by arousal (low vs. high). Previous studies with explicit tasks suggested that valence mainly modulates early event-related potential (ERP) components, whereas arousal mainly modulates late components. However, in this study with an implicit task, we observed significant interactions between valence and arousal at both early and late stages over both parietal and frontal sites, which were reflected by three different ERP components: P2a (100¨C200 ms), N2 (200¨C300 ms), and P3 (300¨C400 ms). Furthermore, there was also a significant main effect of arousal on P2b (200¨C300 ms) over parieto-occipital sites. Our results suggest that valence and arousal effects on implicit affective processing are more complicated than previous ERP studies with explicit tasks have revealed.
%U http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029668