Abstract
The interplay between exogenous attention to emotional distractors and the baseline affective state has not been well established yet. The present study aimed to explore this issue through behavioral measures and event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants (N = 30) completed a digit categorization task depicted over negative, positive or neutral distractor background pictures, while they experienced negative, positive and neutral affective states elicited by movie scenes. Behavioral results showed higher error rates and longer reaction times for negative distractors than for neutral and positive ones, irrespective of the current emotional state. Neural indices showed that the participants’ affective state modulated N1 amplitudes, irrespective of distractor type, while the emotional charge of distractors modulated N2, irrespective of the emotional state. Importantly, an interaction of state and distractor type was observed in LPP. These results demonstrate that exogenous attention to emotional distractors is independent from modulating effects of the emotional baseline state at early, automatic stages of processing. However, attention to emotional distractors and affective state interact at later latencies.
Highlights
Background distractor pictures were selected fromEmoMadrid database according to valence and arousal average normative ratings
Bonferroni-corrected post hoc tests indicated that significantly longer Reaction times (RT) and higher error rates (ER) were associated with negative distractors, compared to neutral and positive ones [all p < 0.05]
Paired-samples t-tests computed on SCL data showed that SCLs were significantly higher when participants were exposed to the arousing movie fragments compared to the neutral one [t(27) = 2.5, p < 0.05], and this difference was still observed when starting the experimental task of each affective block [t(27) = 3.4, p < 0.01]
Summary
Background distractor pictures were selected fromEmoMadrid database (www.uam.es/CEACO/EmoMadrid. htm) according to valence (ranging from negative to positive) and arousal (ranging from relaxing to arousing) average normative ratings (for database codes of pictures please see supplementary information). Htm) according to valence (ranging from negative to positive) and arousal (ranging from relaxing to arousing) average normative ratings (for database codes of pictures please see supplementary information). These two theoretically orthogonal affective dimensions are widely used to explain the principal variance of emotional meaning[88,89,90,91]. Statistical analyses were carried out on these ratings to confirm, first, that stimulus valence was as assumed a priori, and second, that positive and negative pictures were balanced with respect to their arousal levels. One-way repeated-measures ANOVAs were computed for valence and arousal dimensions, using Emotion (negative, neutral, positive) as factor. Bonferroni corrected post-hoc contrasts indicated that negative and positive pictures showed different valence [p < 0.001] but not different arousal levels [p > 0.05], and that they differed from neutral pictures in both dimensions [all p < 0.001]
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