Greg Hajcak
Biographic Data
| ID | 5714223 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Greg Hajcak |
| GIVEN NAMES | Greg |
| FAMILY NAME | Hajcak |
| SIGNATURE | HAJCAK G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stony Brook University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5159-7180 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Trajectories of the Late Positive Potential Across Childhood and Adolescence
The late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential reflecting affective processing, may exhibit developmental shifts in magnitude and scalp location. In the present longitudinal study, 501 youth (47.3% female; 89.4% White; 12.0% Hispanic) completed the emotion interrupt task to elicit the LPP to neutral, positive, and negative images at approximately 9, 12, 15, and 18 years old (data collected 2010–2022). Multilevel growth models indic…
Increases in depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents and young adults during the Covid-19 pandemic
Background The coronavirus [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] pandemic has introduced extraordinary life changes and stress, particularly in adolescents and young adults. Initial reports suggest that depression and anxiety are elevated during COVID-19, but no prior study has explored changes at the within -person level. The current study explored changes in depression and anxiety symptoms from before the pandemic to soon after it first peaked …
Depressive Symptoms Prospectively Predict Peer Victimization
Event-Related Potentials and Emotion Dysregulation
Emotion dysregulation is a common feature of many psychological disorders. To date, however, most research evaluating emotion regulation has been limited to self-report assessments. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are well suited to disentangle discrete aspects of emotional processing that are critical to understanding both healthy and aberrant emotional functioning. This chapter focuses on a particular ERP component, the late positive potential …
Electrocortical Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Psychotic Disorders
Emotion dysfunction has long been considered a cardinal feature across psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and affective psychosis. However, few studies have used objective markers of emotional function to compare psychotic disorders to one another, and fewer studies have examined such markers within a longitudinal framework. Here, we examine one objective marker of emotional responsivity, the late positive potential (LPP), which is a ce…
Rumination is associated with diminished performance monitoring
Rumination is a construct that cuts across a variety of disorders, including anxiety and depression. It has been associated with deficits in cognitive control thought to confer risk for psychopathology. One aspect of cognitive control that is especially relevant to the content of ruminative thoughts is error processing. We examined the relation of rumination and 2 electrophysiological indices of error processing, error-related negativity (ERN), a…
Error-related brain activity is related to aversive potentiation of the startle response in children, but only the ERN is associated with anxiety disorders
Identifying biomarkers that characterize developmental trajectories leading to anxiety disorders will likely improve early intervention strategies as well as increase our understanding of the etiopathogenesis of these disorders. The error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related potential that occurs during error commission, is increased in anxious adults and children-and has been shown to predict the onset of anxiety disorders across childhood…
It’s all in the anticipation
The importance of top-down factors such as goals and expectations is well-established in both visual perception and anxiety. However, researchers have attributed the perceptual prioritization of threatening stimuli in anxiety to bottom-up, automatic processing of these stimuli while neglecting the role of prestimulus, top-down factors. Furthermore, different kinds of anxiety (dispositional versus induced) impact cognitive functions differently, s…
The negativity bias in affective picture processing depends on top-down and bottom-up motivational significance
It is widely believed that negative information is psychologically more meaningful than positive information, a phenomenon known generally as the negativity bias. However, findings concerning the possibility of a negativity bias in emotional picture processing have been mixed, with recent studies indicating the lack of such a bias in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) when pleasant and unpleasant images are equated for motivational relevance. …
In an uncertain world, errors are more aversive
Unpredictability increases amygdala activity and vigilance toward threat. The error-related negativity (ERN) is an electrophysiological response to errors and is posited to reflect sensitivity to potential threat. The present study examined whether the ERN was modulated by predictable or unpredictable task-irrelevant auditory stimuli. Twenty-three participants completed a speeded response task designed to elicit the ERN, and were simultaneously e…
The orienting of spatial attention to backward masked fearful faces is associated with variation in the serotonin transporter gene
Threat signals facilitate spatial attention, even when awareness of these signals has been restricted through the use of backward masking. However, unrestricted/unmasked threat cues tend to delay the disengagement of attention, whereas restricted/masked threat facilitates orienting, suggesting different underlying mechanisms. Within the general population, the serotonin transporter gene polymorphism (5HTTLPR) is associated with one's allocation o…
Event-Related Potentials, Emotion, and Emotion Regulation
Progress in the study of emotion and emotion regulation has increasingly been informed by neuroscientific methods. This article focuses on two components of the event-related potential (ERP)--the P300 and the late positive potential (LPP)--and how they can be used to understand the interaction between the more automatic and controlled processing of emotional stimuli. Research is reviewed exploring: the dynamics of emotional response as indexed at…
Beyond good and evil
The present study examined electrocortical evidence for a negativity bias, focusing on the impact of specific picture content on a range of event-related potentials (ERPs). To this end, ERPs were recorded while 67 participants viewed a variety of pictures from the International Affective Picture System. Examination of broad categories (i.e., pleasant, neutral, unpleasant) found no evidence for a negativity bias in two early components, the N1 and…
To eat or not to eat? Availability of food modulates the electrocortical response to food pictures in restrained eaters
Tell me about it
Emotional pictures elicit enhanced parietal positivities beginning around 300 ms following stimulus presentation. The magnitude of these responses, however, depends on both intrinsic (stimulus-driven) and extrinsic (context-driven) factors. In the present study, event-related potentials were recorded while participants viewed unpleasant and neutral pictures that were described either more neutrally or more negatively prior to presentation; tempor…
Interpretation bias in social anxiety as detected by event-related brain potentials
Little is known about psychophysiological correlates of interpretation bias in social anxiety. To address this issue, the authors measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in high and low socially anxious individuals during a task wherein ambiguous scenarios were resolved with either a positive or negative ending. Specifically, the authors examined modulations of the P600, an ERP that peaks approximately 600 ms following stimulus onset and i…
The persistence of attention to emotion
Emotional stimuli have been shown to elicit increased perceptual processing and attentional allocation. The late positive potential (LPP) is a sustained P300-like component of the event-related potential that is enhanced after the presentation of pleasant and unpleasant pictures as compared with neutral pictures. In this study, the LPP was measured using dense array electroencephalograph both before and after pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant ima…
Attending to affect
Arousing (unpleasant and pleasant) pictures elicit increased neurophysiological measures of perceptual processing. In particular, the electrocortical late positive potential (LPP) is enhanced for arousing, compared with neutral, pictures. To determine whether the magnitude of the LPP is sensitive to the way stimuli are appraised, 16 participants viewed both pleasant and unpleasant pictures and categorized them along an affective or nonaffective d…
The Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory
This article reports on the development of a revised version of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (OCI; E. B. Foa, M. J. Kozak, P. Salkovskis, M. E. Coles, & N. Amir, 1998), a psychometrically sound, theoretically driven, self-report measure. The revised OCI (OCI-R) improves on the parent version in 3 ways: It eliminates the redundant frequency scale, simplifies the scoring of the subscales, and reduces overlap across subscales. The reliability …
The Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory
This article reports on the development of a revised version of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (OCI; E. B. Foa, M. J. Kozak, P. Salkovskis, M. E. Coles, & N. Amir, 1998), a psychometrically sound, theoretically driven, self-report measure. The revised OCI (OCI-R) improves on the parent version in 3 ways: It eliminates the redundant frequency scale, simplifies the scoring of the subscales, and reduces overlap across subscales. The reliability …
Attending to affect
Arousing (unpleasant and pleasant) pictures elicit increased neurophysiological measures of perceptual processing. In particular, the electrocortical late positive potential (LPP) is enhanced for arousing, compared with neutral, pictures. To determine whether the magnitude of the LPP is sensitive to the way stimuli are appraised, 16 participants viewed both pleasant and unpleasant pictures and categorized them along an affective or nonaffective d…
Interpretation bias in social anxiety as detected by event-related brain potentials
Little is known about psychophysiological correlates of interpretation bias in social anxiety. To address this issue, the authors measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in high and low socially anxious individuals during a task wherein ambiguous scenarios were resolved with either a positive or negative ending. Specifically, the authors examined modulations of the P600, an ERP that peaks approximately 600 ms following stimulus onset and i…
The persistence of attention to emotion
Emotional stimuli have been shown to elicit increased perceptual processing and attentional allocation. The late positive potential (LPP) is a sustained P300-like component of the event-related potential that is enhanced after the presentation of pleasant and unpleasant pictures as compared with neutral pictures. In this study, the LPP was measured using dense array electroencephalograph both before and after pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant ima…
Tell me about it
Emotional pictures elicit enhanced parietal positivities beginning around 300 ms following stimulus presentation. The magnitude of these responses, however, depends on both intrinsic (stimulus-driven) and extrinsic (context-driven) factors. In the present study, event-related potentials were recorded while participants viewed unpleasant and neutral pictures that were described either more neutrally or more negatively prior to presentation; tempor…
Event-Related Potentials, Emotion, and Emotion Regulation
Progress in the study of emotion and emotion regulation has increasingly been informed by neuroscientific methods. This article focuses on two components of the event-related potential (ERP)--the P300 and the late positive potential (LPP)--and how they can be used to understand the interaction between the more automatic and controlled processing of emotional stimuli. Research is reviewed exploring: the dynamics of emotional response as indexed at…
Beyond good and evil
The present study examined electrocortical evidence for a negativity bias, focusing on the impact of specific picture content on a range of event-related potentials (ERPs). To this end, ERPs were recorded while 67 participants viewed a variety of pictures from the International Affective Picture System. Examination of broad categories (i.e., pleasant, neutral, unpleasant) found no evidence for a negativity bias in two early components, the N1 and…
To eat or not to eat? Availability of food modulates the electrocortical response to food pictures in restrained eaters
The orienting of spatial attention to backward masked fearful faces is associated with variation in the serotonin transporter gene
Threat signals facilitate spatial attention, even when awareness of these signals has been restricted through the use of backward masking. However, unrestricted/unmasked threat cues tend to delay the disengagement of attention, whereas restricted/masked threat facilitates orienting, suggesting different underlying mechanisms. Within the general population, the serotonin transporter gene polymorphism (5HTTLPR) is associated with one's allocation o…
The negativity bias in affective picture processing depends on top-down and bottom-up motivational significance
It is widely believed that negative information is psychologically more meaningful than positive information, a phenomenon known generally as the negativity bias. However, findings concerning the possibility of a negativity bias in emotional picture processing have been mixed, with recent studies indicating the lack of such a bias in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) when pleasant and unpleasant images are equated for motivational relevance. …
In an uncertain world, errors are more aversive
Unpredictability increases amygdala activity and vigilance toward threat. The error-related negativity (ERN) is an electrophysiological response to errors and is posited to reflect sensitivity to potential threat. The present study examined whether the ERN was modulated by predictable or unpredictable task-irrelevant auditory stimuli. Twenty-three participants completed a speeded response task designed to elicit the ERN, and were simultaneously e…
It’s all in the anticipation
The importance of top-down factors such as goals and expectations is well-established in both visual perception and anxiety. However, researchers have attributed the perceptual prioritization of threatening stimuli in anxiety to bottom-up, automatic processing of these stimuli while neglecting the role of prestimulus, top-down factors. Furthermore, different kinds of anxiety (dispositional versus induced) impact cognitive functions differently, s…
Error-related brain activity is related to aversive potentiation of the startle response in children, but only the ERN is associated with anxiety disorders
Identifying biomarkers that characterize developmental trajectories leading to anxiety disorders will likely improve early intervention strategies as well as increase our understanding of the etiopathogenesis of these disorders. The error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related potential that occurs during error commission, is increased in anxious adults and children-and has been shown to predict the onset of anxiety disorders across childhood…
Rumination is associated with diminished performance monitoring
Rumination is a construct that cuts across a variety of disorders, including anxiety and depression. It has been associated with deficits in cognitive control thought to confer risk for psychopathology. One aspect of cognitive control that is especially relevant to the content of ruminative thoughts is error processing. We examined the relation of rumination and 2 electrophysiological indices of error processing, error-related negativity (ERN), a…
Electrocortical Responses to Emotional Stimuli in Psychotic Disorders
Emotion dysfunction has long been considered a cardinal feature across psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and affective psychosis. However, few studies have used objective markers of emotional function to compare psychotic disorders to one another, and fewer studies have examined such markers within a longitudinal framework. Here, we examine one objective marker of emotional responsivity, the late positive potential (LPP), which is a ce…
Event-Related Potentials and Emotion Dysregulation
Emotion dysregulation is a common feature of many psychological disorders. To date, however, most research evaluating emotion regulation has been limited to self-report assessments. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are well suited to disentangle discrete aspects of emotional processing that are critical to understanding both healthy and aberrant emotional functioning. This chapter focuses on a particular ERP component, the late positive potential …
Depressive Symptoms Prospectively Predict Peer Victimization
Increases in depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents and young adults during the Covid-19 pandemic
Background The coronavirus [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] pandemic has introduced extraordinary life changes and stress, particularly in adolescents and young adults. Initial reports suggest that depression and anxiety are elevated during COVID-19, but no prior study has explored changes at the within -person level. The current study explored changes in depression and anxiety symptoms from before the pandemic to soon after it first peaked …
Trajectories of the Late Positive Potential Across Childhood and Adolescence
The late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential reflecting affective processing, may exhibit developmental shifts in magnitude and scalp location. In the present longitudinal study, 501 youth (47.3% female; 89.4% White; 12.0% Hispanic) completed the emotion interrupt task to elicit the LPP to neutral, positive, and negative images at approximately 9, 12, 15, and 18 years old (data collected 2010–2022). Multilevel growth models indic…
Psychology (19 works) · Developmental psychology (15 works) · Neuroscience (13 works) · Cognition (12 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies (10 works) · Anxiety (8 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (7 works) · Clinical Psychology (7 works) · Event-related potential (7 works)