An Event-related Cerebral Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Of Hostile Attribution’s Provocation-priming Task And Its Brain Association

The explanation or attribution of others’behavior intention is a basic reaction or tendency of individuals in interpersonal communication and an important social psychology.Interpreting others’behavior intention as intentionally hurting themselves is hostile attribution,which will lead to behavioral and psychological problems such as aggression and anxiety.Therefore,it is necessary to study the attribution of hostility.The brain plays an important role in inference and attribution of individual intention,so revealing the brain basis of hostile attribution is of great theoretical significance for revealing the principle and mechanism of hostile attribution.In addition,the brain-based study of hostility attribution can also lay a foundation for establishing brain indicators of hostility attribution and developing brain intervention methods of hostility attribution,which is of practical value for the prevention and intervention of hostility attribution.In order to study the brain basis of hostility attribution,it is necessary to have an experimental task that can effectively manipulate the level of hostility attribution.However,there is still a lack of experimental tasks that can effectively manipulate hostility attribution,and the brain basis of hostility attribution is not clear.Therefore,this study attempts to establish an experimental task that can effectively manipulate hostile attribution,and explore the brain activation characteristics of hostile attribution under the task state based on this task.Specifically,this study focuses on the following two issues:(1)What are the experimental operations(tasks)that can effectively manipulate high and low levels of hostility attribution(Study 1);(2)Which brain regions will be activated by hostile attribution in task state(Study2).In study 1,the mixed design of 3(provocation level:high,medium and low)*2(attribution guidance:hostile guidance,neutral guidance)was used to investigate the manipulation effect of provocation and attribution guidance on hostile attribution.Irritation level is controlled by electric shock level,which is an intra-group variable;Attribution guidance is realized by reading guide sentences,which is an inter-group variable.There are 94 effective participants in study 1(50 in hostile guidance group and44 in neutral guidance group),including 34 men and 60 women,aged from 18 to 25years old(M=20.46,SD=1.61).The operation examination of irritation level shows that there are significant differences in irritation experience caused by high,medium and low electric shock stimulation.The variance analysis with hostility as dependent variable showed that the main effects of provocation level and attribution guidance were significant(p<.01),and the interaction between provocation level and attribution guidance was significant(F(1,92)=4.89,p<0.05,η_p2=.14).The analysis of variance with hostility and anger as dependent variables also obtained similar results.Further,back testing found that there are significant differences in hostility attribution under the conditions of having and having no intention to guide,and under the three conditions of high,medium and low provocation level.In addition,the use of high and low provocation is enough to manipulate the high and low levels of hostility attribution with significant differences.Therefore,in order to simplify the experimental operation,study 2 used high and low stimuli to manipulate high and low levels of hostility attribution.There are 16effective participants in study 2(there is no duplication with the participants in study 1),including 8 males and 8 females,aged 19-24 years(M=20.06,SD=1.19).The results of paired sample t-test on the behavior results of study 2 showed that the level of hostility attribution under high provocation(M=2.62,SD=.23)was significantly higher than that under low provocation(M=1.44,SD=.29,t=8.63,p<.001).The results of f MRI showed that the activation levels of middle frontal gyrus,middle temporal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex were significantly higher when the participants were evaluated for hostility attribution under high provocation than those under low provocation.Combining the two studies,we can draw the following conclusions:(1)Both provocation and attribution guidance can manipulate different levels of hostile attribution,but high and low provocation is enough to manipulate high and low levels of hostile attribution with obvious differences,which is more suitable for nuclear magnetic resonance research;(2)The right middle temporal gyrus,the right middle frontal gyrus and the left anterior cingulate cortex will be activated when individuals make hostile attribution,which may be important brain areas for hostile attribution processing.