Abstract
Emotions have been shown to modulate low-level visual processing of simple stimuli. In this study, we investigate whether emotions only modulate processing of visual representations created from direct visual inputs or whether they also modulate representations that underlie visual mental images. Our results demonstrate that when participants visualize or look at the global shape of written words (low-spatial-frequency visual information), the prior brief presentation of fearful faces enhances processing, whereas when participants visualize or look at details of written words (high-spatial-frequency visual information), the prior brief presentation of fearful faces impairs processing. This study demonstrates that emotions have similar effects on low-level processing of visual percepts and of internal representations created on the basis of information stored in long-term memory.
Highlights
IntroductionEvidence suggests that the emotional state of participants (evoked by the short presentation of faces primes) modulates early visual processing during perception, no study to date has documented similar effects of emotion during processing of visual representations created on the basis of information stored in long-term memory (i.e., on visual mental images)
Evidence suggests that the emotional state of participants modulates early visual processing during perception, no study to date has documented similar effects of emotion during processing of visual representations created on the basis of information stored in long-term memory
Given that the amygdala sends efferent magnocellular projections to portions of early visual areas (Amaral, Behniea & Kelly, 2003; Freese & Amaral, 2005) that are involved in processing coarse, low spatial frequency trials (LSF) visual information, we predicted facilitation -- shorter response times (RTs) and fewer errors (ERs) -following presentation of fearful faces for LSF trials
Summary
Evidence suggests that the emotional state of participants (evoked by the short presentation of faces primes) modulates early visual processing during perception, no study to date has documented similar effects of emotion during processing of visual representations created on the basis of information stored in long-term memory (i.e., on visual mental images). On half of the trials, participants decided whether the overall shape of a word increases from left to right – such as occurs in the word “sell” -- either by visualizing the letters of the words as they had appeared (during an initial study phase) after low-pass filtering (mental imagery task, see Figure 1a) or by seeing the low-pass filtered word on the screen (visual perception task, see Figure 1b). Both the stimuli and the task itself led participants to process only the coarse contours of the word; these were the low spatial frequency trials (LSF). We predicted that having just seen fearful faces should impair performance when fine-grained, HSF visual information needed to be processed; this prediction stems from previous findings (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009) with low-level perceptual tasks that documented inhibitory interactions between magno- and parvocellular pathways (see Yeshurun & Carrasco, 2000)
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