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When Life is Uncertain: The Electrocortical Processing of Uncertain Affective Stimuli, Punished Errors, and Reward Prediction Errors
Abstract
Uncertainty modulates response to salient events. However, much of this work has focused on response to physically aversive events or to appetitive rewards, leaving how uncertainty might modulate other types of aversive (i.e., aversive affective stimuli, punished errors) and positive (i.e., unexpected omission of an aversive stimulus) events underexplored, despite the relevance to everyday life and internalizing disorders. Here, I synthesize the results from three separate studies conducted to examine the effects of uncertainty on salient event processing using event-related potentials (ERPs). In the first study, I examined how uncertain control over aversive and neutral pictures modulates motivated attention to the pictures, as indexed by the late positive potential (LPP), showing larger LPPs to controllable aversive pictures following an experience of uncontrollability/uncertainty. In the second study, I examined how uncertain punished errors modulate error monitoring, as indexed by the error-related negativity (ERN), with results revealing that the ERN was reduced when aversive outcomes following error commission were uncertain. In the third and final study, I examined how uncertainty modulates reward responsivity, as measured using the reward positivity (RewP), when reward is conceptualized as aversive outcome omission and outcome expectancy is manipulated. Results revealed larger RewPs to feedback indicating aversive outcome omission (versus delivery) and to unexpected (versus expected) feedback rather than the interactive effects predicted by reinforcement learning theory. Together, these studies provide evidence for how uncertainty modulates affective picture processing, punished errors, and reward prediction errors, laying the groundwork for future examination of these topics in clinical populations.
Subject
Event-related potentialsLate positive potential (LPP)
Error-related negativity (ERN)
Reward positivity (RewP)
Uncertainty
Citation
Bauer, Elizabeth A. (2023). When Life is Uncertain: The Electrocortical Processing of Uncertain Affective Stimuli, Punished Errors, and Reward Prediction Errors. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /198923.