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The postgraduate community is far more complex and diverse both in its requirements and expectations of postgraduate courses than its undergraduate colleagues. This diversity of background and experience is addressed in this book, reflecting the differing needs and aspirations of postgraduate students. Each postgraduate student experiences their education with a set of challenges unique to them. The aim of Postgraduate Study in the UK: Surviving and Succeeding is to reflect some of these challenges through the lived experiences of others. The book highlights some of the difficulties that can occur when studying (such as having to interrupt due to bereavement) and offers advice on how to manage these situations. The authors use their own experiences but the advice is more general e.g. whatever your reason for interrupting, the process is explained and advice provided. Students feel they are not alone in their experiences, situations are therefore normalized and practical advice is provided on how to manage. The book is an honest account of real people s experiences, it is like asking a friend for advice knowing the response will be clear, useful and positive.

Facial attractiveness is an important source of social affective information. Here, we studied the time course and task dependence of evaluating attractive faces from a viewer's perspective. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants classified color portraits of unfamiliar persons according to gender and facial attractiveness. During attractiveness classification, enhanced ERP amplitudes for attractive and nonattractive faces relative to faces of intermediate attractiveness were found for an early component around 150 msec and for the late positive complex (LPC). Whereas LPC enhancement conforms to previous studies employing various types of affective stimuli, the finding of an early effect extends earlier research on rapid emotion processing to the dimension of facial attractiveness. Dipole source localization of this early ERP effect revealed a scalp distribution suggesting activation of posterior extrastriate areas. Importantly, attractiveness-related modulations of brain responses were only marginal during the gender decision task, arguing against the automaticity of attractiveness appraisal.

Background A crucial question for understanding sentence comprehension is the openness of syntactic and semantic processes for other sources of information. Using event-related potentials in a dual task paradigm, we had previously found that sentence processing takes into consideration task relevant sentence-external semantic but not syntactic information. In that study, internal and external information both varied within the same linguistic domain—either semantic or syntactic. Here we investigated whether across-domain sentence-external information would impact within-sentence processing. Methodology In one condition, adjectives within visually presented sentences of the structure [Det]-[Noun]-[Adjective]-[Verb] were semantically correct or incorrect. Simultaneously with the noun, auditory adjectives were presented that morphosyntactically matched or mismatched the visual adjectives with respect to gender. Findings As expected, semantic violations within the sentence elicited N400 and P600 components in the ERP. However, these components were not modulated by syntactic matching of the sentence-external auditory adjective. In a second condition, syntactic within-sentence correctness-variations were combined with semantic matching variations between the auditory and the visual adjective. Here, syntactic within-sentence violations elicited a LAN and a P600 that did not interact with semantic matching of the auditory adjective. However, semantic mismatching of the latter elicited a frontocentral positivity, presumably related to an increase in discourse level complexity. Conclusion The current findings underscore the open versus algorithmic nature of semantic and syntactic processing, respectively, during sentence comprehension.

Recently, positive affect has been reported to reduce cognitive conflicts and adaptations related to conflict control. van Steenbergen et al. ( 2009 ) proposed that the aversive quality of conflicts drives short-term adaptations following a conflict. They reasoned that monetary gain and its positive emotional consequences might counteract the aversive quality of conflict and hence reduce subsequent adaptations. In two experiments, we combined Simon-type conflicts with monetary gains and losses in between trials and analyzed event-related brain potentials. In Experiment 1, gains and losses occurred randomly between trials as a lottery, whereas in Experiment 2 gains and losses were contingent upon performance, either rewarding the 25% fastest responses or penalizing the 25% slowest responses. In Experiment 1, conflict adaptation was completely unaffected by gains or losses; contrary to predictions, in Experiment 2, conflict adaptation in reward blocks was more pronounced after a gain. In Experiment 2 we also investigated the error-related negativity (ERN) – a brain signal proposed to be related to performance monitoring. The ERN and behavioral post-error slowing were enlarged in the context of reward; therefore, reward increases error adaptation, possibly by enhancing the subjective value of errors. In conclusion, affective modulations of conflict adaptations seem to be much more limited than previously asserted and adaptive mechanisms triggered by errors and conflicts dissociate.

Although research addresses the effects of a meal’s context on food preference, the psychological consequences of meal situations are largely unexplored. We compared the cognitive and emotional effects of a restaurant meal eaten in the company of others to a solitary meal consumed in a plain office using pre- and post-tests analysis and controlling for the kind and amount of food consumed. Three tasks were conducted, measuring: (1) semantic memory (2) cognitive control and error monitoring, and (3) processing of emotional facial expressions. Covert processes in these tasks were assessed with event-related brain potentials. A mood rating questionnaire indicated a relaxation effect of the restaurant as compared to the plain meal situation. The restaurant meal increased sensitivity to threatening facial expressions and diminished cognitive control and error monitoring. No effects were observed for semantic memory. These findings provide the first experimental evidence that a restaurant meal with a social component may be more relaxing than a meal eaten alone in a plain setting and may reduce cognitive control.

Syntactic violations in sentences elicit a P600 component in the event-related potential, which is frequently interpreted as signaling reanalysis or repair of the sentence structure. However, P600 components have been reported also for semantic and combined semantic and syntactic violations, giving rise to still other interpretations. In many of these studies, the violation might be of special significance for the task of the participants; however there is a lack of studies directly targeting task effects on the P600. Here we repeated a previously published study but using a probe verification task, focusing on individual words rather than on sentence correctness and directly compared the results with the previous ones. Although a (somewhat smaller) N400 component occurred also in the present study, we did not observe a parietal P600 component. Instead, we found a late anterior negativity. Possibly, the parietal P600 observed in sentence acceptability paradigms relates to the target value of the violations or to late sentence structure-specific processes that are more task-sensitive than the N400 and which are or not initiated in the probe verification task. In any case the present findings show a strong dependency of P600-eliciting processes from attention to the sentences context whereas the N400 eliciting processes appear relatively robust.

There is emerging evidence from imaging studies that parietal and temporal cortices act together to achieve successful recognition of declarative information; nevertheless, the precise role of these regions remains elusive. To evaluate the role of these brain areas in declarative memory retrieval, we applied bilateral tDCS, with anode over the left and cathode over the right parietal or temporal cortices separately, during the recognition phase of a verbal learning paradigm using a balanced old-new decision task. In a parallel group design, we tested three different groups of healthy adults, matched for demographic and neurocognitive status: two groups received bilateral active stimulation of either the parietal or the temporal cortex, while a third group received sham stimulation. Accuracy, discriminability index (d’) and reaction times of recognition memory performance were measurements of interest. The d’ sensitivity index and accuracy percentage improved in both active stimulation groups, as compared with the sham one, while reaction times remained unaffected. Moreover, the analysis of accuracy revealed a different effect of tDCS for old and new item recognition. While the temporal group showed enhanced performance for old item recognition, the parietal group was better at correctly recognising new ones. Our results support an active role of both of these areas in memory retrieval, possibly underpinning different stages of the recognition process.

In garden path (GP) jokes, a first dominant interpretation is detected as incoherent and subsequently substituted by a hidden joke interpretation. Two important factors for the processing of GP jokes are salience of the initial interpretation and accessibility of the hidden interpretation. Both factors are assumed to be affected by contextual embedding. We investigated this contextual impact with a priming manipulation in a two self-paced reading experiments (Ns = 45/44). Words that were semantically related to the initial interpretation, to the hidden interpretation, or nonrelated to both served as priming cues before the joke presentation. Only priming semantic content of the hidden interpretation reduced reading times of the final word of the GP joke compared with both other conditions, indicating facilitated detection and revision of the otherwise incoherent discourse. The results highlighted the impact of subtle contextual cues affecting the reinterpretation stage in GP joke comprehension.

Food and food-related stimuli can be powerful elicitors of affect. Here we investigated how the valence of food pictures and the consummation of meals with different arrangements on the plate modulate physiological and subjective variables. In particular, we presented pictures of food stimuli rated as high or average in terms of valence, before and after participants consumed strictly standardized meals. The meals consisted either of several separate constituents on the plate (complex meal), or of exactly the same constituents mixed together (simple meal). Food pictures of positive or neutral valence had to be discriminated from randomly intermixed pictures of faces showing either happy or neutral expressions. During the complex meal, blood glucose increased more slowly than during the simple meal, indicating a beneficial effect of the former, worthy of further investigation because more rapid changes in glucose level are considered to be related to more intense food craving. For the food stimuli emotion effects were present both very early on and in the late positive complex. Hence, food pictures may elicit a rapid reflex-like affective response followed by a later evaluative stage. Interestingly, the valence-related ERP responses to food pictures seemed to be relative independent from motivational states, that is, satiation because the intervening meals did not modulate them.

Motivationally relevant stimuli benefit from strengthened sensory processing. It is unclear, however, if motivational value of positive and negative valence has similar or dissociable effects on early visual processing. Moreover, whether these perceptual effects are task-specific, stimulus-specific, or more generally feature-based is unknown. In this study, we compared the effects of positive and negative motivational value on early sensory processing using ERPs. We tested the extent to which these effects could generalize to new task contexts and to stimuli sharing common features with the motivationally significant ones. At the behavioral level, stimuli paired with positive incentives were learned faster than stimuli paired with neutral or negative outcomes. The ERP results showed that monetary loss elicited higher neural activity in V1 (at the C1 level) compared with reward, whereas the latter influenced postperceptual processing stages (P300). Importantly, the early loss-related effect generalized to new contexts and to new stimuli with common features, whereas the later reward effects did not spill over to the new context. These results suggest that acquired negative motivational salience can influence early sensory processing by means of plastic changes in feature-based processing in V1.

The N400 component of the event-related potential is considered an index of semantic processing and therefore may be an ideal biomarker of semantic system disorders or individual differences. To this purpose, it is necessary to assess its test–retest reliability. Only one previous study has addressed this question, reporting good test–retest reliability ( r  = 0.85). However, that study had used a word-pair priming paradigm, which differs in many respects from the more typical and ecologically valid sentence-reading. The present study surveys test–retest reliability of the N400 in a sentence-reading paradigm. The best value obtained was  r  = 0.63, implying a relatively poor test–retest reliability. Crucial factors for this result may be the long interval between context and critical word as well as more complex contexts in sentence-reading paradigms. These factors might make the N400 effects in sentences more vulnerable to linguistic and non-linguistic factors increasing the variance across sessions.

Facial expressions of emotion have an undeniable processing advantage over neutral faces, discernible both at behavioral level and in emotion-related modulations of several event-related potentials (ERPs). Recently it was proposed that also inherently neutral stimuli might gain salience through associative learning mechanisms. The present study investigated whether acquired motivational salience leads to processing advantages similar to biologically determined origins of inherent emotional salience by applying an associative learning paradigm to human face processing. Participants (N=24) were trained to categorize neutral faces to salience categories by receiving different monetary outcomes. ERPs were recorded in a subsequent test phase consisting of gender decisions on previously associated faces, as well as on familiarized and novel faces expressing happy, angry or no emotion. Previously reward-associated faces boosted the P1 component, indicating that acquired reward-associations modulate early sensory processing in extrastriate visual cortex. However, ERP modulations to emotional - primarily angry - expressions expanded to subsequent processing stages, as reflected in well-established emotion-related ERPs. The present study offers new evidence that motivational salience associated to inherently neutral stimuli can sharpen sensory encoding but does not obligatorily lead to preferential processing at later stages.

Despite the importance of face recognition in everyday life and frequent complaints about its failure, there is no comprehensive test battery for this ability. As a first step in constructing such a battery, we present 18 tasks aimed at measuring face perception, face learning, face recognition, and the recognition of facially expressed emotions. A sample of 153 healthy young adults completed all tasks. In general, reaction time measures showed high estimates of internal consistency; tasks focused on performance accuracy yielded reliabilities that were somewhat lower, yet high enough to support their use in a battery of face cognition measures. Some of the tasks allowed computation of established experimental effects in a within-subjects design, such as the part-whole effect. Most of these experimental effects were confirmed in our large sample, and valuable effect size estimates were obtained. However, in many cases these difference measures showed poor estimates of internal consistency.

The emotional content of stimuli influences cognitive performance. In two experiments, we investigated the time course and mechanisms of emotional influences on visual word processing in various tasks by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The stimuli were verbs of positive, negative, and neutral valence. In Experiment 1, where lexical decisions had to be performed on single verbs, both positive and negative verbs were processed more quickly than neutral verbs and elicited a distinct ERP component, starting around 370 msec. In Experiment 2, the verbs were embedded in a semantic context provided by single nouns. Likewise, structural, lexical, and semantic decisions for positive verbs were accelerated, and an ERP effect with a scalp distribution comparable to that in Experiment 1 now started about 200 msec earlier. These effects may signal an automatic allocation of attentional resources to emotionally arousing words, since they were not modulated by different task demands.

Whereas most previous studies on emotion in language have focussed on single words, we investigated the influence of the emotional valence of a word on the syntactic and semantic processes unfolding during sentence comprehension, by means of event-related brain potentials (ERP). Experiment 1 assessed how positive, negative, and neutral adjectives that could be either syntactically correct or incorrect (violation of number agreement) modulate syntax-sensitive ERP components. The amplitude of the left anterior negativity (LAN) to morphosyntactic violations increased in negative and decreased in positive words in comparison to neutral words. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented but positive, negative, and neutral adjectives could be either semantically correct or anomalous given the sentence context. The N400 to semantic anomalies was not significantly affected by the valence of the violating word. However, positive words in a sentence seemed to influence semantic correctness decisions, also triggering an apparent N400 reduction irrespective of the correctness value of the word. Later linguistic processes, as reflected in the P600 component, were unaffected in either experiment. Overall, our results indicate that emotional valence in a word impacts the syntactic and semantic processing of sentences, with differential effects as a function of valence and domain.

The study presented here investigated the effects of emotional valence on the memory for words by assessing both memory performance and pupillary responses during a recognition memory task. Participants had to make speeded judgments on whether a word presented in the test phase of the experiment had already been presented ('old') or not ('new'). An emotion-induced recognition bias was observed: Words with emotional content not only produced a higher amount of hits, but also elicited more false alarms than neutral words. Further, we found a distinct pupil old/new effect characterized as an elevated pupillary response to hits as opposed to correct rejections. Interestingly, this pupil old/new effect was clearly diminished for emotional words. We therefore argue that the pupil old/new effect is not only able to mirror memory retrieval processes, but also reflects modulation by an emotion-induced recognition bias.