Event-related potential N270 as an index of social information conflict in explicit processing.

As N270 has been widely shown to be sensitive to nonsocial information conflict, the present study investigated whether social information conflict can elicit increased N270 in either explicit or implicit processing conditions. Gender stereotype-related picture-word pairs and picture-word pairs in specific colors were used as social and nonsocial information, respectively. Participants performed an explicit task based on the S1-S2 paradigm in Study 1, and both social and nonsocial information conditions elicited larger N270 than the no-conflict condition. In Study 2, participants performed a word judgment task that was modified from the S1-S2 paradigm of Study 1. However, neither social information nor nonsocial information elicited larger N270 within the conflict condition. Social trials generally elicited a more negative ERP waveform than nonsocial trials overall. These findings suggest that N270 may reflect the processing of social information conflict only in explicit conditions and also that the cognitive basis of N270 is thus a general but explicit processing of working memory representation conflict.