Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Experimental Brain Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-019-05597-w RESEARCH ARTICLE On ignoring words—exploring the neural signature of inhibition of afective words using ERPs Laura‑Ef Seib‑Pfeifer 1  · Judith Koppehele‑Gossel 1  · Henning Gibbons 1 Received: 11 February 2019 / Accepted: 4 July 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract In the present study event-related potentials were used to shed further light on the neural signatures of active inhibition of the (afective) content of written words. Intentional inhibition was implemented by simply asking participants (N = 32) to ignore single words that served as primes in an afective priming (AP) task. In AP, evaluations about a priori neutral targets typically tend to shift towards the valence of preceding primes, denoting an AP efect (APE). To create a plausible cover- context emphasizing the usefulness of word inhibition, participants were asked to avoid this shift, that is, to make unbiased target evaluations. Ignoring the prime words was suggested as the most efcient strategy to achieve this aim. Efective inhibition of the words’ (afective) content, as suggested by a signifcant APE present for words processed without any further instruction, but not for ignored ones, afected multiple stages of processing. On the neuronal level, word inhibition was characterized by reduced early perceptual (left-lateralized word-specifc N170), later attentional (parietal P300), and afective-semantic processing (reduced posterior semantic asymmetry). Furthermore, an additional recruitment of top-down inhibitory control processes, which was mirrored in increased amplitudes of medial-frontal negativity, showed to be critically involved in intentional word inhibition. Keywords Word inhibition · ERPs · Perceptual, attentional and semantic processing · Posterior semantic asymmetry (PSA) · Executive control Introduction To (intentionally) direct capacity-limited attentional resources to a situation or an object of interest can alter the perceptual selection of information depending on current goals and task demands. The ability to do so allows to pri- oritize and respond to only those aspects of the environment that are selected as relevant from a multitude of distractors competing for the control of behaviour. Facilitated access of relevant information coinciding with a simultaneous downregulation of processing of irrelevant or unwanted con- tent protects the controlled information processing system against overload and enables adaptive behaviour (Ruz et al. 2005a). Considerable debate has centered on the fate of deliber- ately unattended information, that is, information regarded not worth to be processed because it is irrelevant or even disturbing (Driver 2001; Lavie and Tsal 1994; Ruz et al. 2005a). Given the everyday importance of written material, the extent of (semantic) processing of unattended words has emerged as a question of enduring interest and controversy (Kissler et al. 2009; McCarthy and Nobre 1993; Ruz et al. 2005a, b; Schindler and Kissler 2016). 1 Although lexical and semantic processing can occur in a rather automatic fashion (Navarrete et al. 2015; Ruz et al. 2005b; Walker et al. 2017), overall word processing turns out to be considerably afected by the allocation of selective processing resources (Driver 2001; Rees et al. 1999; Ruz et al. 2005a, b). This spans from basal perceptual (McCarthy and Nobre 1993), over atten- tional (Holcomb 1988; Kissler et al. 2009), to higher-level Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-019-05597-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Laura-Ef Seib-Pfeifer l.seib-pfeifer@uni-bonn.de 1 Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111 Bonn, Germany 1 Note that given systematic diferences in processing across the modalities, we will mainly focus on fndings on written words, leav- ing aside other stimulus categories (e.g., pictures; see Bayer and Schacht 2014).