The immediate effects of positive and negative feedback signals

Reaction time priming techniques were used in 4 experiments to assess the effects of feedback signals on arousal, response, and attentional processes. The letter A, C, or F served as a priming signal presented 100 ms before a target letter. Emotional value was manipulated by using A, C, and F to reflect good, average, and poor performance on the previous trial. The positive (A), neutral (C), and negative (F) primes did not differ in their effects on arousal. At the response level, positive and neutral primes exerted similar effects, and negative primes led to response inhibition. Regarding attention, positive and negative primes attracted greater attention than neutral primes, with the effect stronger for positive than for negative primes. These effects disappeared when the emotional value of the stimuli was removed, and the effects were not a consequence of expectancies or performance factors extending across trials.