Processing emotional stimuli: Comparison of saccadic and manual choice-reaction times

Bannerman, Rachel L.; Milders, Maarten; Sahraie, Arash

doi:10.1080/02699930802243303

Cited by 31 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Discrimination of emotional and neutral stimuli using saccadic and manual responses was investigated previously also by others who showed that eye movements, in contrast to manual responses, require little information to distinguish emotional faces [43]. This interpretation is also in line with our findings.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data

Berdica

Gerdes

Pittig

et al. 2014

Journal of Ophthalmology

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Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to a bias against returning the attention to a previously attended location. As a foraging facilitator it is thought to facilitate systematic visual search. With respect to neutral stimuli, this is generally thought to be adaptive, but when threatening stimuli appear in our environment, such a bias may be maladaptive. This experiment investigated the influence of phobia-related stimuli on the IOR effect using a discrimination task. A sample of 50 students (25 high, 25 low in spider fear) completed an IOR task including schematic representations of spiders or butterflies as targets. Eye movements were recorded and to assess discrimination among targets, participants indicated with button presses if targets were spiders or butterflies. Reaction time data did not reveal a significant IOR effect but a significant interaction of group and target; spider fearful participants were faster to respond to spider targets than to butterflies. Furthermore, eye-tracking data showed a robust IOR effect independent of stimulus category. These results offer a more comprehensive assessment of the motor and oculomotor factors involved in the IOR effect.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data

Berdica

Gerdes

Pittig

et al. 2014

Journal of Ophthalmology

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“…These behavioral effects of emotion on attention have also been shown in studies that have used eye gaze as a measure of overt visual attention: People tend to fixate first and to look longer at emotional pictures that are presented side by side with neutral pictures (Calvo & Lang, 2004;Nummenmaa, Hyönä, & Calvo, 2006). In addition, people fixate longer on irrelevant emotional distractor pictures than on neutral ones (Bannerman, Milders, & Sahraie, 2009;Calvo & Lang, 2004;Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, & De Houwer, 2004;Nummenmaa et al, 2006;Sarter, Givens, & Bruno, 2001). Thus, it seems that attention is initially focused on emotional information and that it is harder for participants to disengage attention from that information.…”

mentioning

confidence: 86%

The emotion-induced memory trade-off: More than an effect of overt attention?

Steinmetz

Kensinger

2012

Mem Cogn

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Although it has been suggested that many effects of emotion on memory are attributable to attention, in the present study we addressed the hypothesis that such effects may relate to a number of different factors during encoding or postencoding. One way to look at the effects of emotion on memory is by examining the emotion-induced memory trade-off, whereby enhanced memory for emotional items often comes at the cost of memory for surrounding background information. We present evidence that this trade-off cannot be explained solely by overt attention (measured via eyetracking) directed to the emotional items during encoding. Participants did not devote more overt attention to emotional than to neutral items when those items were selectively remembered (at the expense of their backgrounds). Only when participants were asked to answer true/false questions about the items and the backgrounds-a manipulation designed to affect both overt attention and poststimulus elaboration-was there a reduction in selective emotional item memory due to an increase in background memory. These results indicate that the allocation of overt visual attention during encoding is not sufficient to predict the occurrence of selective item memory for emotional items.Keywords Memory . Attention . Emotion . Eye-tracking Emotional information is usually remembered better than neutral information (see Reisberg & Heuer, 2004), but the mechanisms behind this enhancement are still unclear. The increased memory for emotional information may be due to a number of different factors. For example, emotional stimuli may be more likely to attract and sustain attention (Anderson, 2005;Calvo & Lang, 2004), and emotional stimuli may also be more likely to evoke cognitive processing, elaboration, and rehearsal (Hamann, 2001;Libkuman, Stabler, & Otani, 2004).Many studies have provided evidence for the emotional prioritization of attention. People are quicker to notice emotional information within a visual array (Öhman, Flykt, & Esteves, 2001), are more likely to notice emotional words that are presented very quickly (Anderson & Phelps, 2001), and are more susceptible to interference from emotional than from neutral distractors (McKenna & Sharma, 1995;Schimmack & Derryberry, 2005). These behavioral effects of emotion on attention have also been shown in studies that have used eye gaze as a measure of overt visual attention: People tend to fixate first and to look longer at emotional pictures that are presented side by side with neutral pictures (Calvo & Lang, 2004;Nummenmaa, Hyönä, & Calvo, 2006). In addition, people fixate longer on irrelevant emotional distractor pictures than on neutral ones (Bannerman, Milders, & Sahraie, 2009;Calvo & Lang, 2004;Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, & De Houwer, 2004;Nummenmaa et al., 2006;Sarter, Givens, & Bruno, 2001). Thus, it seems that attention is initially focused on emotional information and that it is harder for participants to disengage attention from that information.The attention mediation hypothesis of the emoti...

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“…Most studies have looked at the direction of orienting, analyzing how frequently threatening images capture initial fixations. Although the speed of orienting has been commonly reported in basic research on EMs and attention (saccade latency: Bannerman, Milders, de Gelder, & Sahraie, 2009; saccade latency and velocity: Nummenmaa et al, 2006) this parameter of orienting has rarely been reported in studies of anxiety. In one of the few studies reporting both variables,Mogg et al (2000) found that the direction and speed of orienting were moderately correlated, suggesting that these parameters may reflect the same underlying influence of emotion on saccade programming.…”

Section: Advancing Theoretical Accounts Of Attentional Bias With Eye mentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye tracking of attention in the affective disorders: A meta-analytic review and synthesis

Armstrong

Olatunji

2012

Clinical Psychology Review

821

716

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A large body of research has demonstrated that affective disorders are characterized by attentional biases for emotional stimuli. However, this research relies heavily on manual reaction time (RT) measures that cannot fully delineate the time course and components of attentional bias. Eye tracking technology, which allows relatively direct and continuous measurement of overt visual attention, may provide an important supplement to RT measures. This article reviews eye tracking research on anxiety and depression, evaluating the experimental paradigms and eye movement indicators used to study attentional biases. Also included is a meta-analysis of extant eye tracking research (33 experiments; N = 1579) on both anxiety and depression. Relative to controls, anxious individuals showed increased vigilance for threat during free viewing and visual search, and showed difficulty disengaging from threat in visual search tasks, but not during free viewing. In contrast, depressed individuals were not characterized by vigilance for threat during free viewing, but were characterized by reduced orienting to positive stimuli, as well as reduced maintenance of gaze on positive stimuli and increased maintenance of gaze on dysphoric stimuli. Implications of these findings for theoretical accounts of attentional bias in anxiety and depression are discussed, and avenues for future research using eye-tracking technology are outlined.

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Processing emotional stimuli: Comparison of saccadic and manual choice-reaction times

Cited by 31 publications

References 38 publications

Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data

Inhibition of Return in Fear of Spiders: Discrepant Eye Movement and Reaction Time Data

The emotion-induced memory trade-off: More than an effect of overt attention?

Eye tracking of attention in the affective disorders: A meta-analytic review and synthesis

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