Attentional bias during emotional processing: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence from an Emotional Flanker Task

Abstract

Threatening stimuli seem to capture attention more swiftly than neutral stimuli. This attention bias has been observed under different experimental conditions and with different types of stimuli. It remains unclear whether this adaptive behaviour reflects the function of automatic or controlled attention mechanisms. Additionally, the spatiotemporal dynamics of its neural correlates are largely unknown. The present study investigates these issues using an Emotional Flanker Task synchronized with EEG recordings. A group of 32 healthy participants saw response-relevant images (emotional scenes from IAPS or line drawings of objects) flanked by response-irrelevant distracters (i.e., emotional scenes flanked by line drawings or vice versa). We assessed behavioural and ERP responses drawn from four task conditions (Threat-Central, Neutral-Central, Threat-Peripheral, and Neutral-Peripheral) and subjected these responses to repeated-measures ANOVA models. When presented as response-relevant targets, threatening images attracted faster and more accurate responses. They did not affect response accuracy to targets when presented as response-irrelevant flankers. However, response times were significantly slower when threatening images flanked objects than when neutral images were shown as flankers. This result replicated the well-known Emotional Flanker Effect. Behavioural responses to response-relevant threatening targets were accompanied by significant modulations of ERP activity across all time-windows and regions of interest and displayed some meaningful correlations. The Emotional Flanker Effect was accompanied by a modulation over parietal and central-parietal regions within a time-window between 550-690ms. Such a modulation suggests that the attentional disruption to targets caused by response-irrelevant threatening flankers appears to reflect less neural resources available, which are seemingly drawn away by distracting threatening flankers. The observed spatiotemporal dynamics seem to concur with understanding of the important adaptive role attributed to threat-related attention bias.

Task-irrelevant threatening information is harder to ignore than other valences.

“…Successfully completing the task relies heavily on WM capacity due to the constant need for updating the information in the WM each time the participant finds the current target (Unsworth & Robison, 2017). Previous studies have shown that the inhibition of emotional stimuli is highly dependent on the availability of WM resources (Schmeichel, 2007; Zanto et al, 2011), but also limits the availability of WM resources to complete the primary task (Schmeichel, 2007; Trujillo et al, 2021; Unsworth & Robison, 2017). It has also been proposed that the facilitating effect of threatening images could be explained by an improved executive control efficiency (Birk et al, 2011); that is, a more efficient allocation of available resources.…”

“…This seems to be in accordance with the pattern that the attentional biases toward threat framework suggests; specifically, that an attentional capture by the threat is followed by a delayed disengagement, ultimately resulting in a hypervigilance-avoidance behavior. Although the hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis had been initially proposed for phobic populations (Mogg et al, 2004), it has also been shown in nonfearful participants (Berdica et al, 2018; Burra et al, 2019; Trujillo et al, 2021). A recent study (Liesefeld et al, 2017) using salient task-irrelevant distractors (although not emotionally charged ones) proposed a chain of attentional enhancement and suppression mechanisms based on EEG data.…”

Preschoolers Can Match the Facial and Bodily Emotional Expressions: A Behavior and Eye-Tracking Study

“…One possible reason for this is that individuals have an attentional bias toward emotions (for a review, see Hu et al, 2018; Van Rooijen et al, 2017). When emotional stimuli appear, people tend to show an acceleration of attentional orientation, and compared with neutral stimuli, emotional stimuli will attract attention and are processed faster (Hu et al, 2018; Trujillo et al, 2021). In the present study, we used pictures of static bodily expressions as the experimental material.…”

Recognition of Emotional and Neutral Visual Scenes in Carriers of the MAOA, COMT, DRD4, and 5HT2A Gene Polymorphisms

“…In a study using EEG and fMRI simultaneously while the subjects were viewing visual scenes of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral content, it was found that a ective scenes, depending on their valence, evoked speci c neural representations (Bo et al, 2021). e in uence of the scene's emotionality on the neuronal response was also shown using evoked potentials (Tebbe et al, 2021;Trujillo et al, 2021). ere was also evidence of valence-modulated susceptibility to the image distortions when observing the scenes (Stevenson et al, 2020).…”