Response Inhibition Of Pathological Gaming Under Different Emotion Processing Levels

With the rapid development of the Internet,pathological gaming as a kind of behavior disorder has been widely concerned by the society.Studies have found that pathological gaming might not only damage executive function such as response inhibition,but also lead to abnormal emotional processing.According to theory of the interaction between emotion and cognition,emotional information has an important influence on the process of response inhibition.The processing level of emotional information and emotional valence are two key factors,which moderate the interaction of emotion and cognition.However,there is no research on how abnormal emotional processing and response inhibition interact in pathological gaming.In this study,Go/NoGo paradigm was used to explore the differences in response inhibition behavior and neural mechanism between pathological gaming(PG)and health control group(HC)under different levels of emotion processing.The experiment was designed with a mixture of 2(task: implicit,explicit)× 2(emotional valence: positive,negative)× 2(group: PG,HC)with task and emotional valence as within-subject factors,and group as a between-subjects factor.In this study,40 happy faces and 40 angry faces were selected as experimental materials,and 20 male and 20 female faces were selected for each emotion valence.The processing level of emotional information were implicit and explicit.In this study,the setting of experimental guide is used to separate the level of emotion processing.In implicit task,participants were told to judge the gender of the face presented.As a result,emotional information of face was task-irrelevant stimulus,so that emotional information was under implicit processing level.The explicit task required participants to judge the emotional valence of the face presented.At this time,the emotional information was task-related stimulus,which was processed explicitly.Each participant had to complete implicit task and explicit task,and the order was balanced among participants.The first study explored whether there was any difference between PG and HC in response inhibition under implicit and explicit emotional information from behavioral level.In Study 1,the accuracy and reaction time of Go trial,the accuracy of Nogo trial were used as dependent variables.Generally,the accuracy of Nogo trial was used as a behavioral index to measure response inhibition.Ultimately,the behavioral data of 26 PG and 24 HC were collected for statistical analysis.Results showed that Nogo accuracy of PG in implicit task was significantly lower than that in HC,and the Nogo accuracy of two groups under angry face was significantly lower than that under happy face.As for explicit task,Nogo accuracy of HC under angry face was significantly higher than that under happy face,while there was no significant difference of Nogo accuracy between angry face and happy face in PG;Nogo accuracy of happy face in PG was significantly higher than that in HC,the difference of Nogo accuracy between PG and HC was not significant.In general,the Nogo accuracy of PG in implicit task was significantly lower than that in explicit task,and the Nogo accuracy of PG under angry face was significantly lower than that under happy face.The results of study 1 suggested that response inhibition behavior of PG was moderated by the level of emotion processing and emotional valence.There was a decrease of response inhibition in PG under implicit and negative emotional information.In the second study,we used event-related potential(ERP)technology to explore whether there were differences in neural mechanism of response inhibition between PG and HC under implicit and explicit emotional information.In Study 2,mean amplitudes of N1(70-140ms),P2(140-220ms),N2(280-380ms)and P3(380-600ms)were used as dependent variables,and the mean amplitudes of Nogo-N2 and NoGo-P3 were considered as electrophysiological indexes to measure response inhibition.Finally,data from 25 PG and 24 HC were used for statistical analysis.The results showed that compared with HC,the amplitude of Nogo-N2 in implicit task was significantly smaller in PG,and the amplitude of NoGo-P3 was significantly larger in PG.The difference of Nogo-N2 amplitude between two groups in explicit task was not significant.Only under angry face was the amplitude of NoGo-P3 in PG significantly larger than that in HC.The results of study 2 demonstrated that negative emotion might interfere with the completion of response inhibition and the response inhibition of PG might be weaken under implicit emotional information,which was mainly manifested on the weakening of conflict monitoring(diminished Nogo-N2 amplitude),and the inefficient response evaluation and inhibition control(enhanced NoGo-P3 amplitude).The above results showed that the response inhibition of PG was modulated by the processing level of emotional information at behavioral and neurological level.Specifically,the response inhibition ability of PG was impaired under implicit emotional information,such as more failure of behavior inhibition,impaired conflict control,and more cognitive resources and will efforts were needed to complete response inhibition.