High negative valence does not protect emotional event-related potentials from spatial inattention and perceptual load

Abstract

Previous research suggests that intense, emotional pictures at fixation elicit an early posterior negativity (EPN) and a late positive potential (LPP) despite manipulations of spatial inattention and perceptual load. However, if high emotional intensity protects against such manipulations, then these manipulations should reduce emotional effects on EPN and LPP more strongly for medium than for intense emotional pictures. To test this prediction, pictures that were high negative, medium negative, or neutral were shown at fixation, and a small letter string was superimposed on the picture center. When participants attended the pictures, there were clear emotional effects on EPN and LPP. When participants attended the letter string, the emotional effects on LPP decreased; this decrease was smaller for medium than for high negative pictures. Thus, opposite of predictions, spatial inattention reduced the emotional effects more strongly for high than for medium negative pictures. As a manipulation of perceptual load, participants performed the letter task with one, three, or six relevant letters. Irrespective of load, EPN and LPP were similar for high and medium negative pictures. Our findings suggest that high negative valence does not protect EPN and LPP more strongly from effects of spatial inattention and perceptual load than does medium negative valence.

Attention modulations on the perception of social hierarchy at distinct temporal stages: An electrophysiological investigation

“…The null behavioral results might be attributed to the simple task employed in the current study, given that extremely high reaction accuracy (497%) implicates ceiling effects. However, the attention account on the N170/N200 and LPP components is consistent with previous behavioral studies reporting attentional bias to high-status targets with more sensitive paradigms (e.g., gaze-cueing paradigm) (Dalmaso et al, 2012;Shepherd et al, 2006), as well as numerous ERP studies reporting attention modulations on the N170 and LPP components by other socially and evolutionarily salient stimuli (Holmes et al, 2003;Krombholz et al, 2007;Luo et al, 2010;Olofsson et al, 2008;Wiens et al, 2012).…”

Emotional event-related potentials are larger to figures than scenes but are similarly reduced by inattention

“…Regarding the EPN, a residual EPN to unattended emotional versus neutral pictures was reported by Sand and Wiens [12] and Wiens et al [13] for IAPS pictures. A similar effect was found by Holmes, Kiss and Eimer [7] for fearful faces a .…”

“…The LPP starts around 300 ms after stimulus presentation and can continue several seconds and reflects a relative positivity over central parietal electrodes to emotional versus neutral stimuli. Whereas the EPN reflects a call for attentional resources, the LPP reflects the allocation of attentional resources to salient events [2-4,13,15]. …”

“…A similar effect was found by Holmes, Kiss and Eimer [7] for fearful faces a . Regarding the LPP, Sand and Wiens [12] and Wiens et al [13,14] found residual, emotional effects on LPP to IAPS pictures and Norberg, Peira and Wiens [11] found an LPP to unattended pictures of spiders in spider fearful participants. Similarly, Mocaiber et al [10] found an LPP to unattended pictures of mutilated bodies if the participants thought the pictures depicted real scenes.…”

“…Second, most studies that reported residual EPN and LPP apparently used pictures with simple figure-ground composition [7,10-13] rather than pictures with complex scene composition. For example, a figure picture would show a person sitting on a bench, whereas a scene picture would show a group of people interacting in a marketplace.…”