The effect of fatigue on the attentional blink

Abstract

Published online: 11 July 2013(Q> Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2013It has been suggested that attention and emotional states are tightly linked, in that negative moods are associated with narrowed attentional focus, whereas positive moods are asso- ciated with broadened focus. However, recent studies on the effect of affective states, using the attentional blink deficit as a reflection of the temporary unavailability of attentional re- sources, have reported ambiguous results regarding the deploy- ment of attention in the temporal domain. In the present study, we examined whether the effect of affective state on the atten- tional blink should be interpreted in terms of valence and arousal axes or in terms of the specificity of the connection between affect and attention. We chose to use fatigue to test these alternatives because, according to the two-axis view, fatigue would not be expected to increase the attentional blink. Participants identified two targets embedded in a stream of nontargets, and for half of the participants, a state of fatigue was induced using the Trier Social Stress Test. Those in the experimental group demonstrated a greater attentional blink relative to those in the control group, who did not receive the mood manipulation. The results suggest unique links between mood states and attention during a task involving temporal selection.Studies in cognitive psychology have shown that the de- ployment of attentional resources (Kahneman, 1973; Matthews & Desmond, 1998) is determined by various external factors, such as physically (Theeuwes, 2010) and socially (West, Anderson, & Pratt, 2009) distinctive items, as well as by endogenous factors, such as intention (Hommel, 2010). Moreover, the deployment of attention can also be affected by such internal factors as motivation (Delia Libera & Chelazzi, 2006) and the current mood state (Fredrickson, 2004; Friedman & Forster, 2010), because the internal states of observers can influence executive function (Ashby, Isen, & Turken, 1999), which governs the major cognitive systems, thereby including the deployment of attention.In terms of the spatial domain, it is generally agreed that negative moods are associated with narrowed attentional focus, whereas positive moods are associated with broad- ened focus (Rowe, Hirsh, & Anderson, 2007). Therefore, in a typical Eriksen flanker task, in which observers identify a target, the flanking distractors interfered less when partici- pants were in a negative than when they were in a neutral mood (Sato, Takenaka, & Kawahara, 2012). In contrast, broadened and more distributed attention is more likely in positive than in neutral moods (Moriya & Nittono, 2011).Such effects of mood states can also be demonstrated in the temporal domain by using the attentional blink task (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992), in which identification of the second of two targets embedded in a rapid stream of nontargets is impaired at short intertarget lags (about 100- 300 ms). This impairment has been attributed to the unavailability of temporary attentional resources immediate- ly after processing of the first target. Recently, MacLean, Arnell, and Busseri (2010) demonstrated that higher levels of self-reported negative trait affect were associated with a greater attentional blink. These researchers also found that the magnitude of the attentional blink was negatively corre- lated with trait positive affect and that negative affect was more strongly correlated with the attentional blink than was positive affect, suggesting that negative affect is not simply the absence of positive affect, but rather appears to have its own impact. Moreover, MacLean and Arnell (2010) found that greater dispositional positive affect was associated with a smaller attentional blink, whereas greater negative trait affect was associated with a larger attentional blink (see also Rokke, Arnell, Koch, & Andrews, 2002, for a similar finding related to depression). …