| Romantic love is a complex and intense emotional experience that points to specific individuals,and has a specific neurophysiological change based on the dopaminergic system,unlike adult attachment(or companionate love).Although there are some studies on neural mechanisms of romantic love itself,but whether romantic love affects the fundamental cognitive processes such as selective attention is still an unresolved problem.Based on Lavie’s cognitive load theory,current study utilizes event-related potential(ERPs),combined with perceptual load task and working memory load task,to investigate the effects of romantic love on the different stages of selective attention and the mechanisms.The first study revised Hatfield Elaine’s(1986)Passionate Love Scale,which be used to measure the intensity of the individual’s current experience of romantic love and it is widely used in romantic love-related experiments.The revised Chinese Version of Passionate Love Scale(C-PLS)is consisted of 14 items.The scale was unidimensional,with one major factor explaining 64.64% of the variance.It had satisfying structure validity(χ~2/df = 3.576,GFI = 0.928,CFI = 0.936,NFI = 0.950,RMSEA = 0.072),and the Cronbach α coefficients of the whole scale was 0.957,split-half reliability is 0.946.The revised C-PLS was provided a useful instrument for subsequent experimental.In the second study of the perceptual load task,behavioral experiments confirmed that the mean reaction time of the interference effect is no significant difference between in love group and single group under different perceptual load conditions.However,results by analyzing EEG experiments indicated that reduced amplitude of P1 of in love group in the perceptual load task,compared with single group during the stimulus presented period,reflecting reducing process resources for in love group in early attentional process,compare to the single group.In the third study of working memory(WM)load task,the behavioral data indicated that the interaction between groups and WM load are significant.The simple analysis suggested that the interference effect is significant higher in high load than low load in single group,but there on significant difference in load conditions for in love group.Reflecting in love group under high load conditions compared to single group to pay more inhibitive control efforts.EEG results indicated that increased amplitude of P3 for in love group in the WM load task,compared with single group during the Flanker task presented period,reflecting more cognitive resource was consumed by WM load task of in love group for suppression of distraction.According to this,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The peak values of P1 for in love group are smaller than those for single group,which reflects the influence of romantic love on the early stage of selective attention.(2)Form the WM load experiment,the in love group P3 peak values are higher than the single group,further proof of the impact of romantic love on the late stage selective attention.(3)The above results suggest that the individual fall in love will take on a part of the cognitive resources,which causes process resources was limited on early stage of selective attention,resulting in added demands for cognitive efforts to suppression of distraction for in love individuals. |
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