Crowding with Negatively Conditioned Flankers and Targets

Close - but not distant - conditioned flanker emotion affects crowding

“…One method to examine emotional effects while controlling for possible sensorial confounds consist in the evaluative conditioning (EC) paradigm (e.g. Kliegl, Watrin, & Huckauf, 2015 ; Pittino, Eberhardt, Kurz, & Huckauf, 2019 ; Pittino, Kliegl, & Huckauf, 2017 ). In EC, the liking of a conditioned stimulus (CS) is changed by repeatedly pairing the originally neutral stimulus (NS) with affective unconditioned stimuli (UCS; De Houwer, Thomas, & Baeyens, 2001 ).…”

“…In EC, the liking of a conditioned stimulus (CS) is changed by repeatedly pairing the originally neutral stimulus (NS) with affective unconditioned stimuli (UCS; De Houwer, Thomas, & Baeyens, 2001 ). Previous studies suggest that evaluatively conditioned stimuli elicit similar effects as primarily emotional stimuli, that is, changes in subjective, physiological, and behavioral responses ( Dawson, Rissling, Schell, &Wilcox, 2007 ; De Houwer et al, 2001 ; Hofmann, De Houwer, Perugini, Baeyens, & Combez, 2010 ; Kliegl, Watrin et al, 2015 ; Notebaert, Crombez, van Damme, De Houwer, & Theeuwes, 2011 ; Pittino et al, 2017 ; Pittino et al, 2019 ).…”

“…In a recent study, Pittino et al (2019) used EC to examine effects of emotion on crowding. Pittino et al (2019) paired Landolt rings with opposing gap positions either with negative or with neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008 ; UCS). Afterward, negative and neutral CS were used as targets and flankers in a visual crowding paradigm.…”

“…Afterward, negative and neutral CS were used as targets and flankers in a visual crowding paradigm. When using these negatively and neutrally conditioned rings as flankers, larger critical spacings for negative compared to neutral flankers were observed ( Pittino et al, 2019 ). That is, conditioned stimulus emotion of flankers altered crowding effects.…”

“…That is, conditioned stimulus emotion of flankers altered crowding effects. For conditioned target emotion, only relatively weak effects were observed: Only for a subset of participants who showed strong evaluative conditioning effects, crowding with negative targets was reduced compared to neutral targets ( Pittino et al, 2019 ).…”