Background/Objectives: Increased accessibility of suicidal cognitions reflects the cognitive processes underlying the acquisition of suicidal thoughts. Previous research shows that expectation violation reduces the accessibility of life cognitions rather than increasing that of suicidal cognitions, but this may be due to a slowing effect masking an increase in suicidal cognitions. Methods: Beyond the reaction time task, the present study used simultaneous EEG-fNIRS to reveal how expectation violation differentially affects the accessibility of suicidal and life cognitions. In a trial-by-trial cognitive task, participants read sentences that were either semantically consistent (expectation confirmation) or anomalous (expectation violation), followed by a semantic judgment on suicide-related, neutral, and life-related words. Response times for each word type served as a measure of cognitive accessibility for that category. Results: Compared to expectation confirmation, expectation violation reduced the cognitive accessibility of life rather than increasing that of suicide in the reaction time task. However, in neural responses, it led to reduced N1 amplitude, increased P2 amplitude for suicide-related information, and greater hemodynamic response in the left frontopolar region. Conclusions: Expectation violation triggered distinct neural responses to suicidal information, reflecting an attentional bias that may explain how suicidal thoughts emerge within normative cognition.
Bo et al. (Sat,) studied this question.