TY - JOUR
T1 - How is social dominance related to our short-term memory? An EEG/ERP investigation of encoding and retrieval during a working memory task
AU - Mohamadpour, Hadi
AU - Farkhondeh Tale Navi, Farhad
AU - Heysieattalab, Soomaayeh
AU - Irak, Metehan
AU - Vahabie, Abdol Hossein
AU - Nikzad, Behzad
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors
PY - 2024/9/15
Y1 - 2024/9/15
N2 - Social hierarchies exist in all societies and impact cognitive functions, brain mechanisms, social interactions, and behaviors. High status individuals often exhibit enhanced working memory (WM) performance compared to lower status individuals. This study examined whether individual differences in social dominance, as a predictor of future status, relate to WM abilities. Five hundred and twenty-five students completed the Personality Research Form dominance subscale questionnaire. From this sample, students with the highest and lowest scores were invited to participate in the study. Sixty-four participants volunteered to take part and were subsequently categorized into high- and low-dominance groups based on their dominance subscale questionnaire (PRF_d) scores. They performed a Sternberg WM task with set sizes of 1, 4, or 7 letters while their EEG was recorded. Event-related potential (ERP) and power spectral analysis revealed significantly reduced P3b amplitude and higher event-related synchronization (ERS) of theta and beta during encoding and retrieval phases in the high-than low-dominance group. Despite these neural processing differences, behavioral performance was equivalent between groups, potentially reflecting comparable cognitive load demands of the task across dominance levels. Further, there were similar P3b patterns for each set-size within groups. These findings provide initial evidence that individual differences in social dominance trait correlate with WM functioning, as indexed by neural processing efficiency during WM performance.
AB - Social hierarchies exist in all societies and impact cognitive functions, brain mechanisms, social interactions, and behaviors. High status individuals often exhibit enhanced working memory (WM) performance compared to lower status individuals. This study examined whether individual differences in social dominance, as a predictor of future status, relate to WM abilities. Five hundred and twenty-five students completed the Personality Research Form dominance subscale questionnaire. From this sample, students with the highest and lowest scores were invited to participate in the study. Sixty-four participants volunteered to take part and were subsequently categorized into high- and low-dominance groups based on their dominance subscale questionnaire (PRF_d) scores. They performed a Sternberg WM task with set sizes of 1, 4, or 7 letters while their EEG was recorded. Event-related potential (ERP) and power spectral analysis revealed significantly reduced P3b amplitude and higher event-related synchronization (ERS) of theta and beta during encoding and retrieval phases in the high-than low-dominance group. Despite these neural processing differences, behavioral performance was equivalent between groups, potentially reflecting comparable cognitive load demands of the task across dominance levels. Further, there were similar P3b patterns for each set-size within groups. These findings provide initial evidence that individual differences in social dominance trait correlate with WM functioning, as indexed by neural processing efficiency during WM performance.
KW - Cognitive load
KW - Event related potentials (ERP)
KW - Event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP)
KW - P300
KW - Social dominance
KW - Working memory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85202992810&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e37389
DO - 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e37389
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85202992810
SN - 2405-8440
VL - 10
JO - Heliyon
JF - Heliyon
IS - 17
M1 - e37389
ER -