Abstract
Research shows that emotional stimuli can capture attention, and this can benefit or impair performance, depending on the characteristics of a task. Additionally, whilst some findings show that attention expands under positive conditions, others show that emotion has no influence on the broadening of attention. The current study investigated whether emotional real-world scenes influence attention in a visual search task. Participants were asked to identify a target letter embedded in the centre or periphery of emotional images. Identification accuracy was lower in positive images compared to neutral images, and response times were slower in negative images. This suggests that real-world emotional stimuli have a distracting effect on visual attention and search. There was no evidence that emotional images influenced the spatial spread of attention. Instead, it is suggested that findings may provide support for the argument that positive emotion encourages a global processing style and negative emotion promotes local processing.
Highlights
Selective visual attention refers to the biasing of attentional resources due to an inability to attend to all items and areas of the visual world simultaneously
Data collected included accuracy and response times to the visual search task
The aim of the current study was to investigate the allocation of attention to neutral targets within emotional realworld scenes
Summary
Selective visual attention refers to the biasing of attentional resources due to an inability to attend to all items and areas of the visual world simultaneously. This biasing of resources is dependent upon top-down processing (characterised by goaldirected behaviour, e.g. searching for a target item located in a visual display) and bottom-up processing Emotion influences cognition in a bottom-up manner, whilst simultaneously, individuals adopt top-down cognitive control strategies to direct resources to emotion regulation (Ochsner et al 2012). Emotion has the potential to influence resources and impact selective attention
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