Identification Facilitation for Emotionally Arousing Verbs During the Attentional Blink.

Abstract

The present study aimed to examine affective modulation of the "attentional blink" effect during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). Pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant written verbs were used as a 2nd target (T2) in an 8.6-Hz RSVP paradigm. Pronounced effects of 1st target (T1)-T2 stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were found, showing reduced report accuracy for 232- and 464-ms SOAs. Affectively arousing (pleasant and unpleasant) T2s were associated with enhanced accuracy compared with neutral T2s specifically during short (232 ms) SOAs. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant T2s rated low in terms of emotional arousal did not show this enhancement. These results suggest that affectively arousing information is selected preferentially from a temporal stream, facilitating processes such as working memory consolidation and action.

Brief Report: Attenuated Emotional Suppression of the Attentional Blink in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Another Non-Social Abnormality?

“…Keil & Ihssen, 2004). Figures 1a and 1b set out the proportions of correctly identified T2s as a function of the experimental manipulations and participant group.…”

“…When T2 is emotionally charged, however, the AB phenomenon is attenuated (Keil & Ihssen, 2004), and this attenuation is thought to be mediated by a neural system involving the amygdala (Anderson & Phelps, 2001). …”

Encouraging the perceptual underdog: Positive affective priming of nonpreferred local–global processes.

“…As noted within the circumplex view of emotion (e.g., Posner, Russell, & Peterson, 2005;Russell, 2003), although emotional states such as those of being elated or upset can be characterised as possessing opposite valences, they can also be characterised as possessing comparable arousal levels. As stated earlier, despite some evidence against the hypothesis that arousal mediates the effects of positive and negative affect in cognition (Isen et al, 1987;Olivers & Nieuwenhuis, 2006), the results of a number of studies have provided support for this hypothesis (Anderson, 2005;Keil & Ihssen, 2004;Robinson et al, 2004;Schimmack, 2005). In the present paradigm, the results of Experiment 2 show that the effect of valence on perceptual flexibility could have been mediated by arousal at most only partially, not wholly, because positive and negative primes were matched on arousal, but nevertheless differed in their promotion of cognitive flexibility.…”

Arousal-enhanced location memory for pictures

“…These findings about the role of attention in binding suggest that emotionally arousing stimuli might be more effectively bound with their features in initial perception, insofar as they elicit more intense focused attention (for a review see Mather, 2007). Previous studies have shown enhanced initial perceptual processing for emotional stimuli, as they are more likely than nonemotional stimuli to be correctly identified when shown very briefly (Zeelenberg, Wagenmakers, & Rotteveel, 2006) and less likely to be missed when presented in a rapid serial visual presentation with other stimuli (Anderson, 2005;Keil & Ihssen, 2004). Brain imaging studies reveal that when shown a series of pictures, people show more activation in visual processing regions for emotionally intense pictures than for emotionally neutral pictures (Bradley et al, 2003;Phan et al, 2002;Mather et al, 2006).…”