Emotional face processing and attention performance in three domains: Neurophysiological mechanisms and moderating effects of trait anxiety

Abstract

The rapid processing of emotional information adaptively regulates the allocation of attention, but may also divert resources away from attention performance, particularly for those showing elevated anxiety. The temporal organization of rapid emotional processing and its implications for attention performance, however, remain unclear. Participants were 18 healthy adults (12 females) who reported on trait anxiety. Tasks-irrelevant fearful, sad, and neutral faces were presented for 50 ms prior to each trial of a cued attention task measuring alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Electroencephalographic recordings were made from 64 scalp electrodes to generate event-related potentials (ERPs) to faces. Emotional face type and trait anxiety modulated ERP responses at three early stages around 200 ms, 250 ms, and 320 ms. Although behavioral findings showed enhanced orienting and executive attention following presentation of fearful and sad faces, the degree to which these faces modulated ERP responses, particularly around 250 ms, interfered with orienting and executive attention in the high trait anxiety group, and enhanced alerting in the low trait anxiety group. Results are discussed in terms of mechanisms in the emotional capture of attention and implications for understanding attentional processes in anxiety. KeywordsEmotional face processing; ERPs; Emotion-attention interactions; Trait anxiety Rapid and accurate detection of negative emotional information is highly adaptive because it provides critical information about potential danger in the environment. In this way, emotional processes regulate the allocation of attention by highlighting relevant information and inhibiting irrelevant information. On the other hand, preferential attention towards negative information is implicated in the etiology and course of anxiety and mood disorders (Beck and Clark, 1997;Compton, 2003;Derryberry and Reed, 2002). Studies using scalp-recorded eventrelated potentials (ERPs) are able to explore the time course of the emotional capture of attention at a very high temporal resolution. Links between early stages of emotional processing and attention performance, however, are poorly understood.The emotional face processing literature provides important information about rapid and automatic stages of emotional processing (Eimer and Holmes, 2002;Pizzagalli et al., 1999;Righart and de Gelder, 2006;Sato et al., 2001). Negative emotional faces are preferentially processed: As early as 80-100 ms, negative emotional faces compared to neutral faces elicit enhanced ERP activity (Eger et al

Neurophysiological mechanisms in the emotional modulation of attention: The interplay between threat sensitivity and attentional control

“…Future research should also target "later" neurophysiological responses such as the P300 (Nieuwenhuis et al, 2005) and late positive potential (Schupp et al, 2002), which may reflect more elaborated processes. Overall, findings suggest that an "optimal balance" between emotional reactivity and cognitive control may characterize adaptive functioning (Dennis and Chen, 2007). The present findings should be interpreted cautiously in relation to clinical disorders, but provide a basis for future research on emotion and attentional biases in anxiety disorders.…”

“…This task was modified to include briefly presented (50 ms) task-irrelevant emotional faces before each trial (Dennis and Chen, 2007; Dennis et al, in press), thus providing a mildly competitive emotional context, which may facilitate detection of individual differences in attentional biases (Matthews and Mackintosh, 1998). There were three emotional face types varying in threatrelevance and valence: fearful (most threat-related), sad (negative but less threat related), and happy (positive and not threat related).…”

Brain potentials to emotional pictures are modulated by alexithymia during emotion regulation

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Selective Attention and Health Anxiety: Ill-Health Stimuli are Distracting for Everyone

“…It has been proposed that anxiety affects processing efficiency to a greater degree than processing effectiveness (Eysenck et al 2007). For example, increases in cognitive load without accompanying decrements in performance have been observed in anxiety and attention research, using event related potential recordings with high and low trait anxious individuals (Dennis and Chen 2007), and by functional magnetic resonance imaging with clinically anxious patients (van den Heuvel et al 2005). Eysenck et al propose that anxious individuals will employ compensatory strategies (e.g., subvocal articulation) to achieve their goal, and offset their impaired performance.…”