Trait Anxiety Affects ERP Studies Of Perceptual Turnover

Some studies have pointed out that although anxiety has positive meaning for our survival and development,continued and high level of anxiety still has negative effect on our life.So in-depth understanding of anxiety can help people adjust their emotional state and reduce the negative effects of anxiety.Bi-stable perception which we can see two different state of perception from a picture and these two kinds of perception state in the form of alternating,we defined perception reversal as the psychological operations of individual's perception switch from one perception to another perception.The famous ambiguous picture included Necker cube,Rubin vase-face and wife-mother-in-law,when we watch these pictures we can sense two different sate of perception though image is no change in the physical stimuli.Ambiguous images can divide up the low level of information processing and the high level of information processing,because of this reason researchers can understand deep physiological mechanism from this aspect.Perception reversal have two assumptions:bottom-up and top-down.Some studies found that there are many ERP amplitudes correlation with ambiguous images,including P1,N2 and Reversal Negativity.As the research continues,scholars involved other factors in perception reversal,the research of involved emotion in perception reversal also gradually increase.Some studies found that anxiety is more easily to notice negative emotional face in binocular rivalry,and social anxiety groups are more easily perceived point-light walker as far removed from themselves direction,but the relationship between perception reversal of ambiguous images and trait anxiety has not been reported.This research intended to adopt ERP to Chinese undergraduate college students as subjects,we used State-Trait Anxiety Inventory(STAI)to screen subjects,then invited high trait anxiety subjects and lower trait anxiety subjects to participate in the experiment of perception reversal of ambiguous images,we selected Necker cube and Rubin vase-face as an experimental pictures for ERP experiment,we expected to explore whether high trait anxiety had difference between lower trait anxiety at the different types of ambiguous images processing from aspect of behavioral level and electrophysiological level.Research conclusion as below:1.The behavior results showed that Necker cube and Rubin vase-face's perception reversal rate of high trait anxiety significantly less than lower trait anxiety reversal rate.2.ERP results suggested:(1)In the Necker cube task at the occipital area when high trait anxiety at the reversal condition induced amplitude of P1 and N2 significantly greater than lower trait anxiety.(2)The peak of Reversal Negativity at high trait anxiety in Rubin vase-face task significantly less than Necker cube task's,high trait anxiety in Rubin vase-face induced stronger reversal effect.(3)The reversal rate of Necker cube for high trait anxiety lower than lower trait anxiety maybe associated with attention control,which conformed to top-down theory assumption of perception reversal.