Distracted by pleasure: Effects of positive versus negative valence on emotional capture under load.

Abstract

We report 3 experiments examining the effects of positive versus negative valence and perceptual load in determining attention capture by irrelevant emotional distractors. Participants performed a letter search task searching for 1 of 2 target letters (X or N) in conditions of either low perceptual load (circular nontarget letters) or high perceptual load (angular nontarget letters that are similar to the target letters). On 25% of the trials an irrelevant emotional distractor was presented at the display center and participants were instructed to ignore it. The distractor stimulus was either positive or negative and was selected from 3 different classes: IAPS pictures of erotica or mutilated bodies (Experiment 1), happy or angry faces (Experiment 2), and faces associated with gain or loss in a prior value-learning phase involving a betting game (Experiment 3). The results showed a consistent pattern of interaction of load and valence across the 3 experiments. Irrelevant emotional distractors produced interference effects on search reaction time (RT) in conditions of low load, with no difference between negative and positive valence. High perceptual load, however, consistently reduced interference from the negative-valence distractors, but had no effect on the positive-valence distractors. As these results were consistently found across 3 different categories of emotional distractors, they suggest the general conclusion that attentional capture by irrelevant emotional distractors depends on both their valence and the level of perceptual load in the task and highlight the special status of distractors associated with pleasure.

Caution follows fear: Evidence from hierarchical drift diffusion modelling.

“…Beyond the results of experiments that have manipulated spatial frequency information it is not clear how the ASAP account might explain the effects of emotional stimuli on RT and accuracy in experiments that have neither controlled for nor manipulated the presence of spatial frequency information. For facial expressions specifically, experiments have reported a diverse set of findings including: 1) reductions in target detection accuracy following expressions presented in rapid sequence of images (de Jong, Koster, van Wees, & Martens, 2010;Maratos, 2011;Peers & Lawrence, 2009;Sigurjónsdóttir, Sigurðardóttir, Björnsson, & Kristjánsson, 2015;Stebbins & Vanous, 2015;Vermeulen, Godefroid, & Mermillod, 2009) 2) increased target detection accuracy following fearful compared to angry expressions (Taylor & Whalen, 2014) 3) faster visual search for complex images following the presentation of a fearful face (Becker, 2009;Quinlan & Johnson, 2011) 4) slower RTs when fearful and other expressions are presented as task-irrelevant distractors (Berggren, Richards, Taylor, & Derakshan, 2013;Fox et al, 2002;Georgiou et al, 2005;Gupta, Hur, & Lavie, 2016;Hodsoll et al, 2011;Van Dillen & Koole, 2009) and 5) faster RTs for neutral probes following in the same location as a threat-related expression (e.g., Bradley, Mogg, Falla, & Hamilton, 1998). Although it is difficult to summarize the interpretation for each result (for reviews see; Mogg & Bradley, 2016;Yiend, 2010) a common interpretation of both RT and accuracy effects in these studies is that emotion biases the competition for limited resourcesa competition that emotion stimuli are, as the result of evolutionary pressures, predisposed to win or influence.…”

“…Despite this, I think it is unlikely that all previous effects are due to caution. This is because researchers have done more than simply recording RTs and accuracy following facial expressions, they have manipulated temporal attention (e.g., de Jong et al, 2010;Sigurjónsdóttir et al, 2015;Stebbins & Vanous, 2015), spatial attention (e.g., Berggren et al, 2013;Bocanegra et al, 2012;Fox et al, 2002), perceptual load (Gupta et al, 2016;Hodsoll et al, 2011;Pessoa, Padmala, & Morland, 2005) and other variables that are thought to affect the availability of attentional resources. The results of these studies are consistent with the prioritization of emotion stimuli for attentional selection and therefore, it would be remarkable if further analyses or research were to show that increased caution is responsible for these effects.…”

Contrasting reactive and proactive control of emotional distraction.

“…Chiew & Braver, 2011), and because positive images are inherently rewarding, participants might be less motivated (or less able) to control the distraction they cause than they are with negative images (Gupta et al, 2015; Pearson, Donkin, Tran, Most, & Le Pelly, 2015). If so, then positive images would be expected to cause more distraction than negative images under high distractor frequency.…”

“…However, positive and negative distraction might not be equally well controlled when distractors are frequent. Proactive control is subject to motivational factors (Botvinick & Braver, 2015;Chiew & Braver, 2011), and because positive images are inherently rewarding, participants might be less motivated (or less able) to control the distraction they cause than they are with negative images (Gupta et al, 2015;Pearson, Donkin, Tran, Most, & Le Pelly, 2015). If so, then positive images would be expected to cause more distraction than negative images under high distractor frequency.…”

The mediational role of distracting stimuli in emotional word recognition

“…These might be defined as emotional information that impairs cognitive functions due to a high attentional cost or a detrimental effect on inhibition. In this way, several authors have proven that emotional irrelevant information can capture attention from the task in question, in terms of latency components (Gupta, Hur, & Lavie 2016;Hodsoll, Viding, & Lavie 2011). Although many efforts have been made, it remains unclear whether there would be an effect of emotional valence on accuracy for the irrelevant distractors in conditions of low load.…”