Effects of arousal on biased competition in attention and short-term memory

Abstract

A recent theory proposes that arousal amplifies the competition between stimulus representations, strengthening already strong representations and weakening already weak representations in perception and memory. Here, we report a stringent test of this arousal-biased competition theory in the context of visual attention and short-term memory. We examined whether pre-trial arousal enhances the bottom-up attentional bias toward physically salient versus less salient stimuli in a multi-letter identification task. Arousal was manipulated by presenting an arousing versus neutral picture (Experiment 1) or sound (Experiment 2) at the start of each trial. Bayesian statistics revealed strong evidence for the null hypothesis in both experiments: arousal did not modulate the effects of physical salience on letter identification. The experiments were repeated with EEG measurements and subjective stimulus ratings, which confirmed that the stimuli successfully manipulated physiological and subjective arousal. These results pose a challenge for the arousalbiased competition theory. Acknowledgements:The authors thank Delia Della Porta, Saskia Heijnen, Yora Kros and Emal Sarwar for their contributions to the data collection. The research was supported by an ERC Starting grant (No. 283314 NOREPI) awarded to S. Nieuwenhuis.RUNNING HEAD: Effects of arousal on attention 3 Arousal, the global state of activation of our central and autonomic nervous system, is one of the driving forces in human cognition and behavior. Stable individual differences in global arousal level can shape temperamental traits and contribute to psychopathology. In addition, global arousal level shows large intra-individual fluctuations, not just those expressed in the sleep-wake rhythm, but also on a much faster time scale: moment-to-moment, spontaneous as well as taskrelated, fluctuations that have large effects on cognition, behavior, and the underlying brain circuitry (

The effect of emotional arousal on visual attentional performance: a systematic review

“…Based on the results of Lee et al ( 2012 ) and Sutherland and Mather ( 2018 ) arousal only has a facilitating effect for targets with high but not low physical salience. In contrast, Ásgeirsson and Nieuwenhuis ( 2017 , 2019 ) found no behavioral effects of the arousal manipulation across five experiments, although arousing pictures caused significant LLP modulation (400–600 ms and 800–1200 ms) per the EEG results.…”

“…I found five studies where the task-irrelevant emotional stimuli preceded the presentation of the task , in all cases visual search paradigms were used. Four studies used visual stimuli (IAPS pictures) to elicit emotional arousal (Ásgeirsson & Nieuwenhuis, 2017 , 2019 ; Lee et al, 2012 ; Zsido et al, 2019b ). Auditory stimuli were used in one study (Sutherland & Mather, 2018 ) and one experiment (Ásgeirsson & Nieuwenhuis, 2019 ).…”

“…Four studies used visual stimuli (IAPS pictures) to elicit emotional arousal (Ásgeirsson & Nieuwenhuis, 2017 , 2019 ; Lee et al, 2012 ; Zsido et al, 2019b ). Auditory stimuli were used in one study (Sutherland & Mather, 2018 ) and one experiment (Ásgeirsson & Nieuwenhuis, 2019 ). Three studies (Lee et al, 2012 ; Sutherland & Mather, 2018 ; Zsido et al, 2019b ) found that high compared to low arousing prime stimuli increased visual search performance, i.e.…”

Eye movements reveal age differences in how arousal modulates saliency priority but not attention processing speed

“…Furthermore, dwell time is also longer for high arousal pictures with the length of dwell time being related to changes in pupil dilations (Astudillo et al, 2018). Interestingly, two studies have also revealed no behavioral effects of increased arousal despite showing significant changes in the late positive potential component of event-related potentials that indicate an electrophysiological arousal response (Ásgeirsson & Nieuwenhuis, 2017(Ásgeirsson & Nieuwenhuis, , 2019. These conflicting findings in the literature in addition to our divergent results from two unique search paradigms emphasize the importance of understanding why arousal does or does not modulate attention processing in specific task conditions and understanding the mechanisms underlying interactions between networks of arousal and each cognitive process.…”

Competition between emotional faces in visuo-spatial working memory

“…However, it has also been proposed that instead of stimulus valence, arousal properties of the stimulus influence WM performance. In their arousal-biased competition (ABC) model, Mather & Sutherland (2011) propose that arousal amplifies the effects of competition between stimuli such that the processing of high priority stimuli is improved and the processing of low priority stimuli is weakened (but see Ásgeirsson & Nieuwenhuis, 2019). They also propose that Mather and colleagues' findings that VSWM for negative pictures is poorer than for neutral pictures (Mather et al, 2006;Mitchell et al, 2006) are consistent with the ABC theory.…”