Abstract
The extent of the attentional blink effect on detection rates in rapid serial visual presentations is modulated by the emotionality of the stimuli. Emotionally salient stimuli are detected more often, even if presented in the attentional blink period, and elicit an enlarged P3 response, which has been interpreted as enhanced consolidation. This effect correlates with individual differences in trait affectivity such as anxiety or dysphoria. Here, we ask if it is also related to the capacity to detect emotions in others, i.e., to interpersonal social traits. We therefore presented emotional and neutral images depicting social scenes as targets in an attentional blink design and measured detection rates and event-related potentials. In addition, we recorded self-reports of empathy as measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The results show enhanced performance for emotional stimuli and increased P3 amplitudes, which correlated with individual differences in empathy. The data suggest that self-reported empathy goes along with enhanced processing of emotion in social stimuli, even under stimulus conditions that are suboptimal for conscious target detection.
Highlights
The attentional blink phenomenon occurs when two stimuli are presented briefly one after the other, with the first stimulus impairing processing of the second stimulus because attentional resources cannot be sufficiently allocated (Raymond et al, 1992)
The magnitude of the P3 amplitude differed as a function of emotion category [F(2,52) = 16.783, p < 0.001, partial η2 = 0.392; Cz: positivemean(SD) = 10.55 μV (6.05), neutralmean(SD) = 6.56 μV (3.84), negativemean(SD) = 11.07 μV (5.53)], with post-hoc pairwise comparisons indicating that the mean P3 amplitude to highly arousing positive and negative pictures differed from the P3 amplitudes to neutral pictures, but not from each other
The present study showed a correlation of the P3 increase to emotional stimuli presented in the attentional blink with inter-individual differences in empathy as measured through selfreports
Summary
The attentional blink phenomenon occurs when two stimuli are presented briefly one after the other, with the first stimulus impairing processing of the second stimulus because attentional resources cannot be sufficiently allocated (Raymond et al, 1992). The critical question regarding the stages at which processing of the second target is interrupted has been thoroughly addressed with the help of event-related potentials (ERPs) of the electroencephalogram These data showed that the N1, P1, and N400 components of the ERP in response to T2 are not altered, which suggests that early sensory processing and semantic analysis of T2 are intact (Vogel et al, 1998). The suggestion that the P3 indexes working memory processes is already relatively old and based on data showing its sensitivity to the probability of taskdefined stimulus categories (Donchin, 1981; Donchin and Coles, 1988). It is still consistent with the accumulated evidence, for example, through manipulations of memory load or subsequent recognition (for a review on P3 function, see Polich, 2007)
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