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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Emotion Science
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1421688

The use of the differential outcomes procedure for the recognition of facial expressions of complex emotions and its electrophysiological correlates

Provisionally accepted
Ángel García Pérez Ángel García Pérez 1,2Isabel Carmona Isabel Carmona 1,3Angeles F. Estévez Angeles F. Estévez 1,2*
  • 1 University of Almeria, Almería, Spain
  • 2 Neuropsychological Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center, University of Almería, Almeria, Spain
  • 3 Health Research Center, University of Almería, Almería, Andalusia, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The differential outcomes procedure (DOP) is an easily applicable method for enhancing discriminative learning and recognition memory. Its effectiveness in improving the recognition of facial expressions of emotion has been recently explored, with mixed success. This study aims to explore whether the expectancies generated via the DOP are reflected as differences in event-related potentials (ERPs) between participants in differential (DOP) or non-differential conditions (NOP) in a facial expression of complex emotion label task. Participants (n = 27 total, 14 DOP) in the DOP group received a specific reward for each specific emotion, while those in the NOP group received a random reinforcer when they correctly identified the emotion. We did not find differences in participants’ accuracy or reaction time depending on group (DOP or NOP). These findings suggest that the DOP may not provide significant benefits for tasks involving labeling complex emotional expressions. However, differences in ERP components were observed between both groups. Specifically, the NOP group showed an increased Late Positive Component during encoding, fronto-central P300 during memory maintenance of facial stimuli, and frontal, fronto-central, and central P300 during retrieval. These ERPs, taken together, suggest that the task was more attentionally demanding for the NOP group. Additionally, some markers identified in previous ERP studies on the DOP were absent, indicating that the outcome expectancies may not have been fully generated. Finally, there were also interactions between the valence of the facial stimuli, participant group, and some of the potentials, such as N100 or N200 during encoding. These findings suggest that participants in the DOP group may have allocated more attentional resources to processing expressions of positive-valence emotions during earlier stages, possibly due to reward expectancy effects.

    Keywords: Electroencephalography, Event-related potentials, differential outcomes, differential outcomes procedure, facial emotion recognition, Complex emotions

    Received: 05 Aug 2024; Accepted: 25 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 García Pérez, Carmona and Estévez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Angeles F. Estévez, University of Almeria, Almería, Spain

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