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  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Am I really seeing what’s around me? An ERP study on social anxiety under speech induction, uncertainty and social feedback
    (2022-2-9)
    Tipura, Eda
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    ; ;
    Renaud, Olivier
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    Pegna, Alan J.
    Cognitive models of social anxiety propose that socially anxious individuals engage in excessive self-focusing attention when entering a social situation. In the present study, speech anxiety was induced to socially anxious and control participants. Event-related potentials were recorded while participants performed a perceptual judgement task using distinct or ambiguous stimuli, before and after social feedback. Disputed feedback led to more revisions and decreased levels of confidence, especially among socially anxious individuals. Prior feedback, greater occipital P1 amplitudes in both groups for ambiguous probes indicated heightened sensory facilitation to ambiguous information, and greater anterior N1 amplitudes for ambiguous stimuli in highly anxious participants suggested anticipation of negative feedback in this group. Post-feedback, P1, N1 and LPP amplitudes were reduced overall among socially anxious individuals indicating a reduction in sensory facilitation of visual information. These results suggest excessive self-focusing among socially anxious in- dividuals, possibly linked to anticipation of an anxiety-provoking social situation.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    An electroencephalographic approach to the processing of ambiguous stimuli under social influence:: the role of perception, attention, emotion and metacognition
    (2019) ; ;
    Pegna, Alan J.
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    Maurer, Roland
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    Krummenacher, Joseph
    Les êtres humains, en tant qu'êtres sociaux, sont susceptibles d'influence sociale dans leurs jugements, leurs croyances et leurs comportements. Au cours des 70 dernières années, une grande quantité de données issues de la psychologie sociale expérimentale a démontré que les connaissances sociales affectent la façon dont les humains perçoivent et interprètent leur environnement, ce qui entraîne des biais cognitifs, perceptuels, attentionnels et motivationnels. Déjà dans les années 50, Solomon Ash (1951), dans une série d’expériences de jugement perceptuel, démontrait que les humains pouvaient modifier leurs réponses lorsque celles-ci différaient de la majorité. De plus, il a été démontré que le degré d’incertitude provoqué par des stimuli environnementaux augmentait la vulnérabilité de l’homme à l’opinion sociale. Plus récemment, les neurosciences ont commencé à explorer les réponses cérébrales inconscientes et contrôlées aux stimuli sociaux, principalement les expressions de visages. À ce jour, toutefois, le déroulement temporel des processus d’attention et de perception dans des situations d’incertitude et de conflits sociaux reste flou, en particulier en ce qui concerne la perception de stimuli ambigus, autres que les visages, dans un contexte social. L'objectif des trois études de cette thèse était donc de déterminer si la perception précoce et les processus cognitifs d'ordre supérieur étaient altérés lorsque des sujets tout-venants ainsi que des sujets présentant une anxiété sociale, étaient face à des stimuli ambigus et que leurs réponses étaient soit approuvées, soit contestées. Pour cela, un nouveau paradigme expérimental a été créé, nous permettant de mesurer les potentiels évoqués (ERP) en réponse à des stimuli visuels, avant et après le retour social (expression heureuse/accord ou de dégoût/désaccord). Les participants ont été invités à juger la couleur d'un carré (la sonde) qui était soit clairement bleu ou vert (sondes distinctes), soit de couleur bleue-verte très ambiguë (sondes ambiguës). On leur a également demandé d'indiquer leur degré de confiance à l'égard de leurs jugements, après avoir reçu le feed-back social approuvant ou contestant leurs réponses. Le même stimulus est ensuite présenté à nouveau et les participants sont invités à reconsidérer leur décision et leur niveau de confiance subjective. Les résultats comportementaux chez les sujets sains, ont montré que les niveaux de confiance diminuaient alors que le nombre de révisions augmentait, à la fois en raison de la difficulté de la tâche et du feedback social. Cette tendance était renforcée chez les personnes socialement anxieuses. Les données de potentiels évoqués ont révélé des différences commençant déjà à 100ms après la présentation des stimuli ambigus. Ces résultats démontrent une modification précoce des processus visuels par une facilitation sensorielle accrue de l'information lorsque les sujets se trouvent en situation d’incertitude et sous pression sociale. Cette même configuration était réduite chez les sujets anxieux sociaux, ce qui suggère une réduction des processus attentionnels précoces aux stimuli ambigus externes en raison d'une focalisation excessive sur soi et d'une anticipation de la situation sociale. De plus, les composantes ERP tardives, commençant à environ 300 ms, étaient diminuées pour les stimuli distincts par rapport aux ambiguës, conformément à une plus grande détection de précision du signal de précision et à des expériences métacognitives. Dans l’ensemble, les résultats indiquent que la perception inconsciente des stimuli dans l’environnement social est modifiée lorsque les sujets sont confrontés à l’incertitude et à la pression sociale. Ces processus perceptuels sont atténués dans la population socialement anxieuse, alors que les processus métacognitifs commencent plus tard, lorsque les attributs physiques des stimuli renvoient vers un sentiment de certitude., Humans, as social beings, are susceptible to social influence in their judgements, beliefs and behaviours. Over the last 70 years, a great wealth of data from experimental social psychology has demonstrated that social knowledge affects the way humans perceive and interpret their environment, giving rise to cognitive, perceptual, attentional and motivational biases. Already in the 1950’s, Solomon Ash (1951), in a series of perceptual judgement experiments, demonstrated that humans could alter their responses when these differed from a majority. Moreover, the degree of uncertainty triggered by stimuli in the environment has been shown to increase human’s vulnerability to social opinion. More recently, neuroscience began to explore automatic unconscious and controlled conscious brain responses to social stimuli, mainly face expressions. To date, however, the temporal unfolding of attentional and perceptual processes under uncertainty and social conflict remains unclear, particularly regarding the perception of ambiguous stimuli other than faces in a social context. Thus, the aim of the three studies in this thesis, was to investigate whether early perception and higher order cognitive processes were altered when healthy and socially anxious subjects were presented with ambiguous stimuli and when their responses were either endorsed or disputed. For this, a novel experimental paradigm was created allowing us to measure event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to visual stimuli, before and after social feedback indicated by a face displaying a happy (agreement) or disgusted expression (disagreement). Participants were asked to judge the colour of a square (the probe) that was either clearly blue or green (distinct probes) or were highly ambiguous bluish-green colour (ambiguous probes). They were also asked to indicate their level of confidence in those judgments, after which they received social feedback either endorsing or disputing the participants’ responses. Participants were then presented the stimulus again and asked to reconsider their decision and subjective confidence level. Behavioural results showed that confidence levels decreased whereas the number of revisions increased, both with task difficulty and with conflicting social feedback across healthy subjects. Moreover, this pattern was enhanced across socially anxious individuals. Event-related-potential data revealed differences beginning at already 100 ms after ambiguous stimuli presentations compared to distinct stimuli, as well as enhanced early amplitudes following disputed feedback. These findings are compatible with heightened sensory facilitation of visual information, demonstrating that uncertainty and social pressure modify early perceptual brain processes. The same pattern was reduced across socially anxious individuals suggesting a reduction in early attentional processes to external ambiguous stimuli due to excessive self-focusing and anticipation of the social situation. Additionally, later ERP components, starting at around 300 ms, were decreased for distinct stimuli compared to ambiguous probes in line with higher subjects’ signal detection accuracy and metacognitive experiences. Overall, findings indicate that unconscious perception to stimuli in social environments are modified when subjects are faced with uncertainty and social pressure and that these perceptual processes are diminished in the socially anxious population, whereas, self-awareness metacognitive processes begin at a later stage when subjects are certain about the physical attributes of the stimuli.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Seeing is believing: Early perceptual brain processes are modified by social feedback
    (2018-8-23) ;
    Tipura, Eda
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    Posada, Andres
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    ;
    Pegna, Alan J.
    Over 6 decades ago, experimental evidence from social psychology revealed that individuals could alter their responses in perceptual judgement tasks if they differed from the prevailing view emitted by a group of peers. Responses were thus modulated to agree with the opinion of the social group. An open question remains whether such changes actually reflect modified perception, or whether they are simply the result of a feigned agreement, indicating submissive acceptance. In this study, we addressed this topic by performing a perceptual task involving the assessment of ambiguous and distinct stimuli. Participants were asked to judge the colours of squares, before, and after receiving feedback for their response. In order to pinpoint the moment in time that social feedback affected neural processing, ERP components to ambiguous stimuli were compared before and after participants received supposed social feedback that agreed with, or disputed their response. The comparison revealed the presence of differences beginning already 100ms after stimulus presentation (on the P1 and N1 components) despite otherwise identical stimuli. The modulation of these early components, normally thought to be dependent on low-level visual features, demonstrate that social pressure tangibly modifies early perceptual brain processes.