Colourful collaboration with Switzerland!

Do you really see red when you are angry?

When we see a colour, or only think of a colour, many of us are likely to also associate an emotion with this colour. Studies in the Western context, often marketing studies, inform us on seemingly established links between colour and emotion. These studies likely influence public opinion, e.g. what to wear and how to colour environments. Apart from lacking systematic data, we do not know whether such links would be universal or culturally charged. One might also find differences between women and men as well as across ages.

The University of Bergen has now joined the University of Lausanne, Switzerland for a worldwide study of colours and emotions. This study is the first large-scale study, and you would participate in this cross-cultural enterprise. Almost 3000 people from about 20 countries have already participated. The study takes about 5-10 minutes. It is available in Norwegian and 30 other languages.

If you hopefully consider joining us, take the colour-poll either in Norwegian (please click this link: http://www2.unil.ch/onlinepsylab/colour_norwegian/main.php), or choose your mother tongue by changing it in the menu on the right top corner of this same page.

Lynn Marquardt, research assistant

Performance Monitoring in Medication-Naïve Children with Tourette Syndrome

Background: Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorder and its impact on cognitive development needs further study. Evidence from neuropsychological, neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies suggests that the decline in tic severity and the ability to suppress tics relate to the development of self-regulatory functions in late childhood and adolescence. Hence, tasks measuring performance monitoring might provide insight into the regulation of tics in children with TS.

Method: Twenty-five children with TS, including 14 with comorbid Attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 39 children with ADHD and 35 typically developing children aged 8–12 years were tested with a modified Eriksen-Flanker task during a 34-channel electroencephalography (EEG) recording. Task performance, as well as stimulus-locked and response-locked event-related potentials (ERP) were analyzed and compared across groups.

Results: Participants did not differ in their behavioral performance. Children with TS showed higher amplitudes of an early P3 component of the stimulus-locked ERPs in ensemble averages and in separate trial outcomes, suggesting heightened orienting and/or attention during stimulus evaluation. In response-locked averages, children with TS had a slightly higher positive complex before the motor response, likely also reflecting a late P3. Groups did not differ in post-response components, particularly in the error-related negativity (ERN) and error-related positivity (Pe).

Conclusions: These findings suggest that children with TS may employ additional attentional resources as a compensatory mechanism to maintain equal behavioral performance.

Link to article: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00050/full

Reference:

Eichele, H., Eichele, T., Bjelland, I., Høvik, M. F., Sørensen, L., van Wageningen, H., … & Plessen, K. J. (2016). Performance monitoring in medication-naïve children with Tourette Syndrome. Frontiers in Neuroscience,10, 50.

Lynn Marquardt, research assistant