Abstract
The influence of conditioned emotional arousal on selective attention was evaluated in a go/no-go version of Posner's covert attention spatial orienting task (Posner et al., 1982). Ten males and 10 females participated in the study, which consisted of two phases; an initial conditioning phase and a subsequent attention phase. In the conditioning phase, the Conditioning group received a 90-dB white noise unconditioned stimulus (UCS) contingent with presentations of a frame-lit rectangle, which thus became a conditioned stimulus (CS +), while a completely-lit rectangle was never paired with the noise and became a CS −. The Control group received non-contingent presentations of the noise and the two rectangles. In the attention phase, both groups participated in a go/no-go version of the attention orienting task, where targets were cued by both the CS + and the CS −. Half of the subjects in both the Conditioning and the Control group were instructed to respond only to targets cued by the CS + (go cue) and ignore targets cued by the CS − (no-go cue). The other half of the subjects responded to targets cued by the CS − and ignored targets cued by CS +. The Conditioning group identified targets at the opposite location of the CS + significantly faster than targets at the same location. The emotional salience of the cue thus reversed the typical cost of shifting attention to targets outside the cued location.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have