• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.242-250
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• 2016

This study was conducted to investigate whether Stroop-related cognitive task will be affected according to the preceding affective valence factored by matchedness in response time(RT) and whether facial recognition will be indexed by specific event-related potentials(ERPs) signature in normal person as in patients suffering from affective disorder. ERPs primed by subliminal(30ms) facial stimuli were recorded when presented with four pairs of affect(positive or negative) and cognitive task(matched or mismatched) to get ERP effects(N2 and P300) in terms of its amplitude and peak latency variations. Behavioral response analysis based on RTs confirmed that subliminal affective stimuli primed the target processing in all affective condition except for the neutral stimulus. Additional results for the ERPs performed in the negative affect with mismatched condition reached significance of emotional-face specificity named N2 showing more amplitude and delayed peak latency compared to the positive counterpart. Furthermore the condition shows more positive amplitude and earlier peak latency of P300 effect denoting cognitive closure than the corresponding positive affect condition. These results are suggested to reflect that negative affect stimulus in subliminal level is automatically inhibited such that this effect had influence on accelerating detection of the affect and facilitating response allowing adequate reallocation of attentional resources. The functional and cognitive significance with these findings was implied in terms of subliminal effect and affect-related recognition modulating the cognitive tasks.