Abstract
The environment is very complex, as there are many different stimuli that evoke attention, and therefore demands different adaptive reactions. Quick responses to upcoming danger are essential for survival. Highly negative stimuli contain alarm signals that cause an attentional shift toward the stimulus. Past research indicates that high arousal negative words lead to faster reaction times in a Lexical Decision Task. This study tested whether these words can be found faster in a word grid task. Therefore we tested 56 participants who had to find words seen before within a word grid task. Our results show that participants found high arousal negative words faster than high arousal positive or neutral words. This might suggest a pop-out effect for the high arousal negative words within the word grid.
Highlights
Our surrounding environment is very complex and demands adaptive reactions
The first task was an LDT that was based on Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) “Lexical Decision Task”
A paired samples t-test used to assess that participants found high arousal negative words faster than positive words yielded significant results, t(50) = 2.76, p =
Summary
Our surrounding environment is very complex and demands adaptive reactions. This adaptivity is attained by specific systems. That is neutral words, positive words and high arousal negative words, was presented twice in the first task it is not likely that the first task had an effect other than the intended impact of faster and more accurate processing. A paired samples t-test used to assess that participants found high arousal negative words faster than positive words yielded significant results, t(50) = 2.76, p = .008.
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