Midline Frontal Theta and Trait Negative Emotionality Amongst Military Recruits
Negative emotionality represents a wide-ranging construct encompassing a predisposition to various emotional control challenges, such as issues with exaggerated loss responses and stress disorders. This study employs a simulated gambling task to explore the link between proneness to negative emotionality and the feedback-related negativity (FRN), which is believed to be closely tied to the error-related negativity (ERN). ERN indicates performance monitoring based on internal representations. While studies have been conducted using general populations, research on this link has yet to be done on military service members (MSMs). A time-frequency analysis was used to isolate FRN, and a two-way MANOVA was utilized to compare loss versus gains feedback with externalizing behavior measured using the Multidimensional personality questionnaire (MPQ). Results found loss on the gambling task to be significantly correlated with the MPQ trait of negative emotionality (NEM). The results are in line with previous findings and further strengthen the connection between NEM and FRN loss, while also opening up new avenues for screening military recruits.