Emotional cues enhance the attentional effects on spatial and temporal resolution

Bocanegra, Bruno R.; Zeelenberg, René

doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0156-z

Cited by 39 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…For instance, it has been proposed that widening of attention and enhancing visual perception is adaptive in an evolutionary sense: Seeing a fearful face signals that an expresser may perceive threat in the environment, leading others to localize and identify any such threat themselves. These findings are in line with studies demonstrating benefits from viewing facial expressions of fear in the spatial and temporal domain as well as with regard to enhanced contrast sensitivity (Bocanegra and Zeelenberg, 2009a; Bocanegra and Zeelenberg, 2009b, 2011a; Bocanegra and Zeelenberg, 2011b; Phelps et al, 2006). In the same vein, the perception of fear increases efficiency in visual search, even for non-threatening objects (Becker, 2009), which was recently replicated in a study where prior exposure to a fearful expression resulted in faster target identification in a subsequent visual search task, compared to exposure to other facial expressions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Fearful faces heighten the cortical representation of contextual threat

Wieser

Keil

2014

NeuroImage

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Perception of facial expressions is typically investigated by presenting isolated face stimuli. In everyday life, however, faces are rarely seen without a surrounding visual context that affects perception and interpretation of the facial expression. Conversely, fearful faces may act as a cue, heightening the sensitivity of the visual system to effectively detect potential threat in the environment. In the present study, we used steady-state visually evoked potentials (ssVEPs) to examine the mutual effects of facial expressions (fearful, neutral, happy) and affective visual context (pleasant, neutral, threat). By assigning two different flicker frequencies (12 vs. 15 Hz) to the face and the visual context scene, cortical activity to the concurrent stimuli was separated, which represents a novel approach to independently tracking the cortical processes associated with the face and the context. Twenty healthy students viewed flickering faces overlaid on flickering visual scenes, while performing a simple change-detection task at fixation, and high-density EEG was recorded. Arousing background scenes generally drove larger ssVEP amplitudes than neutral scenes. Importantly, background and expression interacted: When viewing fearful facial expressions, the ssVEP in response to threat context was amplified compared to other backgrounds. Together, these findings suggest that fearful faces elicit vigilance for potential threat in the visual periphery.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Fearful faces heighten the cortical representation of contextual threat

Wieser

Keil

2014

NeuroImage

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“…Previous research has shown that covert attention by spatial precueing enhances spatial resolution (i.e., our ability to discriminate small details in a visual stimulus) in the absence of external noise (e.g., Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2011;Carrasco, Williams, & Yeshurun, 2002;Golla, Ignashchenkova, Haarmeier, & Their, 2004). This suggests that attentional effects on visual processing can be produced not through external-noise reduction and that attention can enhance perceptual representation of the stimulus at the attended location through finer spatial resolution.…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

Working memory-driven attention improves spatial resolution: Support for perceptual enhancement

Pan

Luo

Cheng

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Previous research has indicated that attention can be biased toward those stimuli matching the contents of working memory and thereby facilitates visual processing at the location of the memory-matching stimuli. However, whether this working memory-driven attentional modulation takes place on early perceptual processes remains unclear. Our present results showed that working memory-driven attention improved identification of a brief Landolt target presented alone in the visual field. Because the suprathreshold target appeared without any external noise added (i.e., no distractors or masks), the results suggest that working memory-driven attention enhances the target signal at early perceptual stages of visual processing. Furthermore, given that performance in the Landolt target identification task indexes spatial resolution, this attentional facilitation indicates that working memory-driven attention can boost early perceptual processing via enhancement of spatial resolution at the attended location.

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“…According to the authors, slower and sustained responses of parvo cells are selective for fine-grained HSF stimuli at high luminance contrast, whereas fast and transient responses of magno cells are selective for coarse LSF stimuli at low contrast. Especially in regard to the reciprocal connectivity between the magnocellular division of amygdala and visual cortices (Amaral, et al, 2003), an early facilitation of magnocellular processing induced by emotional stimuli may accompany an inhibition of parvocellular processing (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2011). …”

Section: Emotion and Concurrent/subsequent Visual Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective engagement and subsequent visual processing: Effects of contrast and spatial frequency.

Song

Keil

2013

Emotion

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The present study examined if viewing affective stimuli alters subsequent visual processing, as indexed by steady-state visual potentials (ssVEPs) and behavioral performance in an orientation discrimination task. Participants viewed task-irrelevant but emotionally arousing pictures (1s) followed by a target stimulus stream consisting of low (2 cpd) or high-spatial frequency (6 cpd) Gabor patches, flickering at a temporal rate of 14 Hz. Luminance contrast of the patches gradually increased for the first half and decreased for the second half of the total duration, resulting in a waxing-waning pattern of stimulus contrast. We found that the waveform envelope of 14 Hz-ssVEPs corresponded to time-varying stimulus contrast. Analyses compared medium- and high-contrast time segments, as a function of emotional content and spatial frequency. Results showed greater ssVEP amplitudes for patches with high compared to medium contrast. Viewing emotionally arousing pictures selectively enhanced the ssVEP amplitudes for low-spatial frequency target patches, and attenuated the ssVEP evoked by high-spatial frequency patches. Response times were slower for patches following unpleasant pictures than pleasant and neutral, and error rates mirrored the interaction of emotional content and spatial frequency observed in the ssVEP data. Together, the present results suggest that distinct neural mechanisms may mediate costs and benefits of emotional engagement for subsequent sensory processing, characterized by an additive effect of the neural contrast and response gain.

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Emotional cues enhance the attentional effects on spatial and temporal resolution

Cited by 39 publications

References 25 publications

Fearful faces heighten the cortical representation of contextual threat

Fearful faces heighten the cortical representation of contextual threat

Working memory-driven attention improves spatial resolution: Support for perceptual enhancement

Affective engagement and subsequent visual processing: Effects of contrast and spatial frequency.

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