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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on May 17, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2007 2(3):174-188; doi:10.1093/scan/nsm016
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Electrophysiological time course and brain areas of spontaneous and intentional trait inferences

Marijke Van Duynslaeger1, Frank Van Overwalle1 and Edwin Verstraeten2

1Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, and 2Swansea University, UK

This study measured event-related potentials during spontaneous and intentional trait inferences. Participants read sentences describing the behavior of a target person from which a strong moral trait could be inferred. The last word of each sentence determined the consistency with the trait induced during an introductory paragraph. In comparison with behaviors that were consistent with the implied trait, a P300 waveform was obtained when the behaviors were evaluative inconsistent with that trait. This dependency on behavioral consistency indicates that trait inferences were made previously while reading the preceding behaviors, irrespective of the participants’ spontaneous or intentional goals. Overall, the P300 shows considerable parallels between spontaneous and intentional inferences, indicating that the type and timing of the inconsistency process is very similar. In contrast, source localization (LORETA) of the event-related potentials suggest that spontaneous inferences show greater activation in the temporo-parietal junction compared to intentional inferences following an inconsistency. Memory measures taken after the presentation of the stimulus material involved sentence completion and trait-cued recall, and supported the occurrence of trait inferences associated with the actor. They also showed significant correlations with the neural components (i.e. P300 and its current density at the temporo-parietal junction) predominantly following spontaneous instructions, indicating that these components are valid neural indices of spontaneous inferences.

Keywords: spontaneous trait inferences; ERP; LORETA; temporo-parietal junction; medial prefrontal cortex

Correspondence should be addressed to Frank Van Overwalle, Department of Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B - 1050 Brussel, Belgium. E-mail: Frank.VanOverwalle{at}vub.ac.be.

Received April 11, 2007. Accepted April 11, 2007.


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F. Van Overwalle, S. Van den Eede, K. Baetens, and M. Vandekerckhove
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