Contrasting reactive and proactive control of emotional distraction.

Abstract

Attending to emotional stimuli is often beneficial, because they provide important social and environmental cues. Sometimes, however, current goals require that we ignore them.To what extent can we control emotional distraction? Here we show that the ability to ignore emotional distractions depends on the type of cognitive control that is engaged.Participants completed a simple perceptual task at fixation while irrelevant images appeared peripherally. In two experiments, we manipulated the proportion of trials in which images appeared, in order to encourage use of either reactive control (rare distractors) or proactive control (frequent distractors). Under reactive control, both negative and positive images were more distracting than neutral images, even though they were irrelevant and appeared in unattended locations. However, under proactive control, distraction by both emotional and neutral images was eliminated. Contrasting Reactive and Proactive Control of Emotional DistractionEmotional stimuli are important. They signal potential threats and rewards and so guide adaptive behaviour. Perceptual and attentional systems prioritize them, as demonstrated through behavioural, electrophysiological and neuroimaging research (for reviews see Carretié, 2014;Okon-Singer, Lichtenstein-Vidne, & Cohen, 2013;Pourtois, Schettino, & Vuilleumier, 2013;Yiend, 2010). But sometimes we need to ignore an emotional stimulus so we can get on with the task at hand. We might need to block out a scowling face to maintain our goal of giving a good talk, or ignore an attractive classmate to concentrate on a lecture. Emotional distractions plague us all, and in disorders such as depression, anxiety, and addiction, they can be overwhelming (Cisler & Koster, 2010;De Raedt & Koster, 2010;Field & Cox, 2008). Non-emotional distractors are known to disrupt performance (Forster & Lavie, 2008a,2008b, but they can also be controlled if we know to expect them (Braver, 2012;Müller, Geyer, Zehetleitner & Krummenacher, 2009) Can we ever control emotional distractions as effectively as those that are more mundane? Cognitive Control of Non-emotional DistractionIn non-emotional contexts, entirely irrelevant stimuli can disrupt performance (Forster & Lavie, 2008a, 2008b. For example, Forster and Lavie (2008a) describe an irrelevant flanker paradigm in which participants complete a letter discrimination task near fixation, while irrelevant images (cartoon characters) appear peripherally. Even when the images are completely task-irrelevant and appear in non-target locations, they can disrupt performance (Forster & Lavie, 2008a as long as the participant's task is perceptually simple (i.e., low load; Forster & Lavie, 2008b). Even under low load, distraction is not obligatory, though; distractors are also less disruptive when they appear more frequently. In 4 Forster and Lavie's (2008a) experiment, images were significantly less distracting when they appeared on 50% compared to 10% of trials. Even more striking distractor frequency effects can be se...

Faces are special, but facial expressions aren’t: Insights from an oculomotor capture paradigm

“…However, the current findings add to a growing body of evidence with faces (Fox et al, 2000;Fox, Russo, Bowles, & Dutton, 2001;Horstmann et al, 2012;Horstmann & Becker, 2008;Nummenmaa & Calvo, 2015), words (Calvo & Eysenck, 2008;Georgiou et al, 2005), fearrelated stimuli Soares, Esteves, & Flykt, 2009;Vromen, Lipp, & Remington, 2015), or complex scenes (Grimshaw, Kranz, Carmel, Moody, & Devue, 2017;Lichtenstein-Vidne, Henik, & Safadi, 2012;Maddock, Harper, Carmel, & Grimshaw, 2017;Okon-Singer, Tzelgov, & Henik, 2007), showing that the emotional value of a stimulus does not affect early selection processes in a purely bottom-up fashion. These studies all suggest that the processing of emotional information is not automatic but depends on the availability of attentional resources, and is partly guided by top-down components such as expectation, motivation, or goal-relevance.…”

Effects of Emotional Valence on Hemispheric Asymmetries in Response Inhibition

“…Our question concerns the effects of lateralisation of the emotional stimuli on response inhibition processes. Importantly, emotional information can be extracted from peripherally-presented complex scenes, even with very brief stimulus presentations [52,53]. We therefore determined whether emotion affected either behavioural or electrophysiological measures of the response inhibition.…”

Motivation enhances control of positive and negative emotional distractions

“…To determine the sample size needed to detect an effect of reward on emotional distraction, we used the effect size (d s = .84) from Grimshaw et al (2017), using distractor-frequency (25% vs. 75%) as a proxy for the potential effect of reward on emotional distraction (RTintact -RT-scrambled, collapsed across positive and negative). At 90% power (α=.05), this yielded 26 participants per group.…”

“…Biologically-relevant, high arousal, positive images can attract attention just as powerfully as negative images (Grimshaw, Kranz, Carmel, Moody, & Devue, 2017;Gupta, Hur, & Lavie, 2016;Most, Smith, Cooter, Levy, & Zald, 2007), and in some contexts they can be even more difficult to ignore. For example, using a letter-search task with centrallypresented task-irrelevant emotional images, Gupta and colleagues (2016) found that increasing the task's perceptual load eliminates distraction from negative but not positive images.…”

“…Participants searched for a target-letter within an array that appeared above and below a centrallypresented irrelevant image (intact on 25% of trials, scrambled on the rest). Low frequency of intact-distractors elicits relatively poor control of distraction (Bugg & Crump, 2012;Grimshaw et al, 2017). Half the participants received monetary-reward for fast and accurate performance.…”