Previous studies have focused on the characteristics of ordinary facial expressions in patients with depression, and have not investigated the processing characteristics of ecological micro-expressions (MEs, i.e., MEs that presented in different background expressions) in these patients. Based on this, adopting the ecological MEs recognition paradigm, this study aimed to comparatively evaluate facial ME recognition in depressed and healthy individuals. The findings of the study are as follows. (1) Background expression: the accuracy (ACC) in the neutral background condition tended to be higher than that in the fear background condition, and the reaction time (RT) in the neutral background condition was significantly longer than that in other backgrounds. The type of ME and its interaction with the type of background expression could affect participants’ ecological MEs recognition ACC and speed. Depression type: there was no significant difference between the ecological MEs recognition ACC of patients with depression and healthy individuals, but the patients’ RT was significantly longer than that of healthy individuals. (2) Patients with depression judged happy MEs that were presented against different backgrounds as neutral and judged neutral MEs that were presented against sad backgrounds as sad. The present study suggested the following: (1) ecological MEs recognition was influenced by background expressions. The ACC of happy MEs was the highest, of neutral ME moderate, and of sadness and fear the lowest. The response to the happy MEs was significantly shorter than that of identifying other MEs. It is necessary to conduct research on ecological MEs recognition. (2) the speed of patients with depression in identifying ecological MEs was slower than of healthy individuals; indicating that the patients’ cognitive function was impaired. (3) the patients with depression showed negative bias in the ecological MEs recognition task, reflecting the lack of happy ME recognition ability, and the generalized identification of sad MEs in those patients.

This study aimed to assess the characteristics of the regulation of the emotion of surprise. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of college students when using cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression to regulate their surprise level were recorded. Different contexts were presented to participants, followed by the image of surprised facial expression; subsequently, using a 9-point scale, participants were asked to rate the intensity of their emotional experience. The behavioral results suggest that individuals’ surprise level could be reduced by using both expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal, in basic and complex conditions. The ERP results showed that (1) the N170 amplitudes were larger in complex than basic contexts, and those elicited by using expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal showed no significant differences, suggesting that emotion regulation did not occur at this stage; (2) the LPC amplitudes elicited by using cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression were smaller than those elicited by free viewing in both context conditions, suggesting that the late stage of individuals’ processing of surprised faces was influenced by emotion regulation. This study found that conscious emotional regulation occurred in the late stages when individuals processed surprise, and the regulation effects of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression were equivalent.

Introduction: Research has demonstrated that cognitive flexibility is associated with academic achievement, with poorer cognitive flexibility being linked to poorer academic performance. Strategy conversion is an example of cognitive flexibility, which requires individuals to quickly and flexibly switch between strategies depending on the task at hand. Studies have investigated the impact of emotional motivation on cognitive flexibility, with varying results. Furthermore, research has indicated that a high task load increases psychological burden and reduces cognitive flexibility, but few studies have analyzed the impact of task load on the relationship between emotional motivation and cognitive flexibility. This study sought to investigate the effect of emotional motivation on cognitive flexibility based on strategy switching, and the moderating effect of task load.Methods: Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 used forced conversion paradigm with a moderate task load that required participants to estimate tasks using a given strategy. Experiment 2 employed matched conversion paradigm with a high task load, informing participants of the strategies to be used but without any clues, necessitating the selection and execution of appropriate strategies based on the question features. Experiment 3 adopted free conversion paradigm with a relatively low task load, allowing participants to freely choose and execute strategies without any correctness or error criteria.Results: The intensity and direction of emotional motivation have a complicated and fluctuating impact on the flexibility to utilize strategies. When the task workload is high, the intensity of emotional motivation has a significant impact on strategy utilization flexibility, with low approach motivation being more conducive to flexibility. Conversely, when the task workload is low, the direction of emotional motivation has a greater effect, with high avoidance motivation being more advantageous.Discussion: This study demonstrated that high workload could bring about a low intensity advantage, while low workload could induce an avoidance direction advantage, suggesting that task load could moderate the impact of emotional motivation on arithmetic strategy utilization flexibility, and avoidance motivation is not always detrimental to cognitive flexibility.

Awareness of implicit knowledge is a changing process. Previous studies have examined brain activation patterns corresponding to the start and end stages of implicit learning, but failed to reveal the gradual changing course of awareness in implicit learning. The present study explored brain activation changes corresponding to different awareness states elicited by two different stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA, 850 ms and 1350 ms) over the whole course of implicit sequence learning (i.e., divided into three phases), by using a process dissociation procedure (PDP) paradigm and the technique of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In the results, it was found that the 850 ms SOA elicited primarily an awareness state of unconsciousness, under which the frontal lobe was significantly activated during the early phase of implicit sequence learning, with its activation levels correlated positively to consciousness levels. In contrast, the 1350 ms SOA triggered predominantly an awareness state of consciousness, under which the activation levels of the inferior parietal lobule correlated positively to consciousness levels during the middle phase, and positively to consciousness levels as well as negatively to unconsciousness levels during the late phase of implicit sequence learning. Overall, the frontal lobe and inferior parietal lobule were found to play critical roles in mediating awareness states over the course of implicit sequence learning.

The JACBART (Japanese and Caucasian Brief Affect Recognition Test) microexpression recognition test only examines facial expressions under the neutral expression background and the ecological validity is not high. The EMERT (Ecological MicroExpressions Recognition Test) microexpression recognition test examined six microexpressions under seven backgrounds but does not detect the intensity of expressions. In the current study, a weak ecological microexpression recognition test was established to examine the recognition features of six weak microexpressions in all seven high intensity basic expressions. The results found: (1) the test had good retest reliability, criterion validity and ecological validity; and (2) the reliability and validity tests revealed a lot of characteristics of weak microexpression recognition. There were training effects in some weak microexpression recognition. Weak microexpression recognition was generally positively related to the microexpression recognition of JACBART but were generally negatively related to approximate common expressions. The backgrounds main effects in all weak microexpressions were significant and pairwise comparisons show there were a wide range of differences between weak microexpressions under different backgrounds. The standard deviations, of the accuracy of weak microexpressions in different backgrounds, were used to define the fluctuations of the weak microexpression recognition and we found that weak microexpression recognition had many fluctuations. (3) Personality openness and its subdimensions (O1, O2, O3, and O5) were generally positively related to some weak microexpression recognition, except O1, which was significantly negatively related to surprise under neutrality. O1 was positively related to the standard deviation of the weak anger microexpression recognition accuracies and O6 was negatively related to the standard deviation of the weak happiness microexpression recognition accuracies in the first measurement.