Characterizing the anomalous cognition-emotion interactions in externalizing.

Externalizing traits are characterized by exaggerated emotional (e.g., frustration, anger) and behavioral (e.g., drug seeking, reactive aggression) reactions to motivationally significant stimuli. Explanations for this exaggerated reactivity emphasize attention, executive function, and affective processes, but the associations among these processes are rarely investigated. To examine these interactions, we measure fear potentiated startle (FPS; Experiment 1) and neural activation (Experiment 2) in an instructed fear paradigm that manipulates attentional focus, demands on executive functioning, and emotion. In both studies, exaggerated emotional reactivity associated with externalizing was specific to conditions that focused attention on threat information and placed minimal demands on executive functioning. Results suggest that a crucial cognition-emotion interaction affecting externalizing is the over-prioritization and over-allocation of attention to motivationally significant information, which in turn, may impair executive functions and affective regulation.