Abstract: In the process of human evolution, negative stimuli are often closely related to events that threaten human life. Human beings have special sensitivity to negative stimuli for the purpose of protecting life and adapting to survival. Negative stimuli have a certain priority in cognitive processing and are often of widespread concern to researchers. With the rise of positive psychology, positive stimuli are getting more and more attention. Positive stimuli are of great significance to the development of individuals and their adaptation to social life. They can usually promote cognitive processing in individuals. Therefore, in recent years, positive stimuli and cognition and other related topics have been widely researched by researchers. However, how people from different cultures react to positive stimulus similarly and differently has not been adequately studied. To fill this gap in the field, we examined cross-cultural differences in the neural physiological responses to different reward feedbacks by using the event-related potentials (ERPs) measurement in the present study. In this study, a total of 28 Chinese and 24 White Caucasian participants were recruited. The Door Task was used to examine the positive and negative feedback in different cultural groups. Continuous EEG was recorded after participants received different feedbacks. Feedback-related negativity(FRN) is a negative component occurring at approximately 200-300ms post stimulus presentation. FRN is related to positive and negative feedbacks and may reflects the expectation and evaluation of results. As a later ERP positive component, P3 is related to the valence and intensity of the reward and usually reflects a more exquisite assessment of the outcome, especially when encoding the motivational meaning of the outcome. As the typical biomarkers of reward processing, cross-cultural differences in the early ERP components (e.g., FRN) and later ERP components (e.g., P3) were examined. Results showed that negative feedback elicited more negative average amplitudes of FRN than in positive feedback condition in Chinese cultural group. There were no significant differences in the area amplitudes of FRN in Caucasians groups. The average amplitudes of P3 were larger in positive feedback condition than in negative feedback condition. In positive feedback condition, the amplitudes of P3 were lager in Chinese than in Caucasians. In negative feedback condition, there were no significant differences in the area amplitudes of P3 between two groups. For both cultural groups, the average amplitudes of P3 were lager in positive feedback condition than in negative feedback condition. In the present study, cross-cultural differences in reward feedback processing were mainly reflected in P3 component, while there was no difference in FRN between Caucasians and Chinese. The differences of individual reward processing in different cultural backgrounds are mainly reflected in positive feedback conditions. Activation of FRN component, as an indicator of avoidant response to stimulus, is related to BIS system, while P3 component is related to individual's motivation to approach, reflecting the activation of BAS system. Therefore, cross-cultural differences in reward feedback processing among individuals of different cultures are likely to be reflected in differences in BAS system rather than BIS system. Findings indicated that Chinese might have higher sensitivity to positive feedback stimuli. The significantly different electrical response characteristics show that the processing for positive and negative feedback stimuli are closely related to the culture context.

Key words: cross-cultural differences, positive stimuli processing, reward feedback, ERPs

摘要： 本研究从文化--社会神经科学的角度出发，采用事件相关电位的方法来探究不同文化背景下的个体对具有进化和社会文化代表性的正性刺激—奖赏刺激的脑电反应特征是否具有差异。本研究采用the Door Task实验范式考察了26名中国人和24名高加索白人对不同反馈反应的脑电特征跨文化差异。结果显示，负性反馈条件下诱发的FRN平均波幅比正性反馈条件诱发的平均脑电波幅更负，这种正负反馈的波幅差异只在中国被试中有体现。在P3成分上，在正性反馈条件下，中国被试诱发的脑电波幅大于西方被试，负性反馈条件下，两组无显著差异。研究结果表明，相对于西方被试，中国被试对奖赏反馈刺激可能具有较高的敏感性。这说明中西方文化下的个体对正负性反馈刺激的加工的脑电反应特征存在显著的差异。

关键词: 跨文化差异, 正性刺激加工, 奖赏反馈, ERPs