Strongly-motivated positive affects induce faster responses to local than global information of visual stimuli: an approach using large-size Navon letters.

Kouta Tomoike,Yasuki Noguchi

doi:10.1038/srep19136

Abstract

Recent studies argue that strongly-motivated positive emotions (e.g. desire) narrow a scope of attention. This argument is mainly based on an observation that, while humans normally respond faster to global than local information of a visual stimulus (global advantage), positive affects eliminated the global advantage by selectively speeding responses to local (but not global) information. In other words, narrowing of attentional scope was indirectly evidenced by the elimination of global advantage (the same speed of processing between global and local information). No study has directly shown that strongly-motivated positive affects induce faster responses to local than global information while excluding a bias for global information (global advantage) in a baseline (emotionally-neutral) condition. In the present study, we addressed this issue by eliminating the global advantage in a baseline (neutral) state. Induction of positive affects under this state resulted in faster responses to local than global information. Our results provided direct evidence that positive affects in high motivational intensity narrow a scope of attention.

Highlights

Performed the Navon letter task[8]
Another problem in Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008) would be a diminishment of global advantage in dessert-prime condition. This diminishment might reflect a selective shortening of reaction times to the local target, another interpretation is that the positive affects eliminated perceptual bias for the global information in the baseline condition
We investigated how strongly-motivated positive affects influenced a scope of attention

Summary

Introduction

Performed the Navon letter task[8]. The stimulus in this task (Navon letter) was a large letter composed of smaller letters (see Fig. 1A for examples). Another problem in Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008) would be a diminishment of global advantage in dessert-prime condition This diminishment might reflect a selective shortening of reaction times to the local target, another interpretation is that the positive affects eliminated perceptual (or attentional) bias for the global information in the baseline condition. The authors found that viewing images of pleasant food induced no change in task performances despite a requirement of narrowed attentional focus in this task[18] Their results might suggest a possibility that the shortened reaction times to local targets in Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008) did not reflect narrowing of attentional scope by dessert primes. If the highly-motivated positive affects truly narrow a scope of attention, this should be observed in the present study as faster reaction times to local than global targets (local advantage) in a dessert-prime condition, rather than a diminishment of global advantage in previous studies

Methods

Results

Conclusion