On the role of goal relevance in emotional attention: Disgust evokes early attention to cleanliness

Prior evidence has shown that aversive emotional states are characterised by an attentional bias towards aversive events. The present study investigated whether aversive emotions also bias attention towards stimuli that represent means by which the emotion can be alleviated. We induced disgust by having participants touch fake disgusting objects. Participants in the control condition touched non-disgusting objects. The results of a subsequent dot-probe task revealed that attention was oriented to disgusting pictures irrespective of condition. However, participants in the disgust condition also oriented towards pictures representing cleanliness. These findings suggest that the deployment of attention in aversive emotional states is not purely stimulus driven but is also guided by the goal to alleviate this emotional state.     

Visual attention and emotional memory: recall of aversive pictures is partially mediated by concurrent task performance

The emotional enhancement of memory is often thought to be determined by attention. However, recent evidence using divided attention paradigms suggests that attention does not play a significant role in the formation of memories for aversive pictures. We report a study that investigated this question using a paradigm in which participants had to encode lists of randomly intermixed negative and neutral pictures under conditions of full attention and divided attention followed by a free recall test. Attention was divided by a highly demanding concurrent task tapping visual processing resources. Results showed that the advantage in recall for aversive pictures was still present in the DA condition. However, mediation analyses also revealed that concurrent task performance significantly mediated the emotional enhancement of memory under divided attention. This finding suggests that visual attentional processes play a significant role in the formation of emotional memories.     

注意偏向训练对广泛性焦虑障碍负性情绪注意偏向的影响

采用改良的点探测任务,探讨了注意偏向训练能否改变GAD患者的负性情绪注意偏向并缓解其焦虑状态,及注意偏向训练的作用机制。结果发现,与控制组相比,训练组被试的负性注意偏向分数显著降低,具体表现为训练后训练组的负性注意解除能力显著高于控制组,两组被试的负性注意警觉在前后测均未有显著变化;注意偏向训练引起了GAD患者积极情绪的变化,缓解了状态焦虑。这证明了注意偏向训练对改变GAD患者负性情绪注意偏向及缓解其焦虑状态的有效性,并揭示这种改变主要是通过提升其对负性刺激的注意解除能力来实现的。     

Case Study: A Quantitative Report of Early Attention,Fear, Disgust,and Avoidance in Specific Phobia for Buttons

Specific phobia is characterized by elevated early attention to the phobic object, negative emotion, and avoidance. Typically, phobic objects are biologically relevant, such as potentially threatening snakes or spiders, or potentially contaminating needles or rodents. It is unclear whether the same early attention, emotion, and avoidance responses can be observed in phobia for uncommon, nonbiologically relevant objects, such as buttons (koumpounophobia). In an experimental case study, we measured early attention (detection rates to briefly presented images before a backward mask), emotion, and avoidance to clothing buttons in a button-phobic participant. We compared these responses to nonphobic objects (zippers), and to well-matched control participants. We observed elevated early attention, fear, and disgust to buttons, which did not generalize to nonphobic emotional stimuli. In addition, we observed elevated avoidance of buttons, which did generalize to normatively fearful and disgusting pictures. If replicated, our results indicate that nonbiologically prepared phobic objects elicit similar elevated early attention, emotion, and avoidance as biologically prepared phobic objects. The finding that avoidance was the only response that generalized to nonphobic objects may have treatment implications—namely, that therapeutic attempts to reduce avoidance might consider including a variety of objects, not just the phobic object.     

恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统的编制：基于两种情绪的区分

基于恐惧与厌恶情绪刺激材料界定模糊的问题,实验一在总结前人研究中实验材料方面混淆恐惧和厌恶的基础上,通过问卷法完成了对恐惧与厌恶图片系统初步的搜集、整理工作;实验二通过进一步测评得到了具有良好信度的恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统,图片系统中的恐惧与厌恶情绪很好的分离,且图片系统中动物、场景、物体三类图片的恐惧、厌恶程度均存在显著差异,可适用于需要不同种类情绪刺激的具体应用性研究。     

恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统的编制：基于两种情绪的区分

基于恐惧与厌恶情绪刺激材料界定模糊的问题,实验一在总结前人研究中实验材料方面混淆恐惧和厌恶的基础上,通过问卷法完成了对恐惧与厌恶图片系统初步的搜集、整理工作;实验二通过进一步测评得到了具有良好信度的恐惧与厌恶情绪图片系统,图片系统中的恐惧与厌恶情绪很好的分离,且图片系统中动物、场景、物体三类图片的恐惧、厌恶程度均存在显著差异,可适用于需要不同种类情绪刺激的具体应用性研究。     

Selective attention and avoidance on a pictorial cueing task during stress in clinically anxious and depressed participants

Although it is well established that attentional biases exist in anxious populations, the specific components of visual orienting towards and away from emotional stimuli are not well delineated. The present study was designed to examine these processes. We used a modified spatial cueing task to assess the speed of engagement and disengagement from supraliminal and masked pictorial cues depicting threat, dysphoria, or neutral content in 36 clinically anxious, 41 depressed and 41 control participants. Participants were randomly assigned to a stress or neutral condition. During stress, anxious participants were slow to disengage from masked left hemifield pictures depicting threat or dysphoria, but were quick to disengage from supraliminal threat pictures. Information processing in anxious participants during stress was characterized by early selective attention of emotional stimuli, occurring prior to full conscious awareness, followed by effortful avoidance of threat. Depressed participants were distinct from the anxious group, displaying selective attention for stimuli depicting dysphoria, but not threat, during the neutral condition. In sum, attentional biases in clinical populations are associated with difficulties in the disengagement component of visual orienting. Further, a vigilant-avoidant pattern of attentional bias may represent a strategic attempt to compensate for the early activation of a fear response.     

厌恶情绪加工特点的事件相关电位研究

厌恶作为一种威胁相关情绪有着帮助人们躲避有害刺激的进化意义。近年来的研究表明, 厌恶加工能拥有独特的神经机制, 主要表现为在感觉刺激输入早期起抑制作用。本研究使用高时间分辨率的事件相关电位技术(event-related potential, ERP)作为研究手段, 探究正常被试观看厌恶图片时脑电活动变化。采用视觉搜索范式作为实验任务, 考察不同加工阶段注意资源消耗特点。脑电结果表明, 厌恶加工确实存在独特的加工机制, 表现为皮层活动先抑制后增强。行为结果呈显著交互作用：情绪图呈现时间较短时(0/300 ms), 被试任务表现受负性情绪加工干扰; 情绪图呈现时间较长时(600/900 ms), 被试任务表现不受负性情绪干扰。研究结果支持负性情绪两阶段加工模型, 即厌恶加工也存在先自动化后控制化的两个阶段, 并且在自动化加工完全消失之前存在两种加工进程并存的过度阶段。     

Will you touch a dirty diaper? Attitudes towards disgust and behaviour

Individuals differ in their willingness to engage with disgusting stimuli (e.g., dirty diapers). We propose that such differences are associated with attitudes towards disgust. Specifically, we predicted that people with less negative attitudes towards disgust (i.e., those who evaluate disgust less negatively) would be more willing to engage with disgusting stimuli. We asked participants to engage with disgusting stimuli in the laboratory and used two measures that assess behavioural and affective or cognitive components of attitudes towards disgust. As predicted, less negative attitudes towards disgust were associated with greater engagement with disgusting stimuli, above and beyond the current experience of disgust and the tendency to experience disgust. These findings stress the importance of attitudes towards emotions in understanding emotion-relevant behaviour.     

高低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪注意偏向的差异

摘 要 本研究采用返回抑制范式,以诱发厌恶、恐惧和中性情绪的图片为线索,考察高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪刺激注意偏向的差异及其发生机制。结果表明：（1）被试对诱发厌恶和恐惧的图片均产生了注意偏向且注意偏向是由注意解除困难所引起;（2）被试对诱发厌恶图片的注意偏向程度显著大于对诱发恐惧图片的注意偏向程度;（3）高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对诱发厌恶和恐惧图片的注意偏向程度之间的组间差异均不显著。     

Emotional responding to fearful and disgusting stimuli in specific phobics

Individuals with small animal and blood-injection-injury (BII) phobias respond to phobia-relevant stimuli with both fear and disgust. However, recent studies suggest that fear is the dominant emotional response in animal phobics whereas disgust is the primary emotional response in BII phobics. The present study examined emotional responding toward pictures of spiders, surgical procedures, and two categories of general disgust elicitors (rotting food and body products) among analogue spider phobics, BII phobics, and nonphobics. Dominant emotional responses to phobia-relevant stimuli clearly differentiated the groups. as spider phobics were more likely to be classified as primarily fearful when rating pictures of spiders (74%), whereas BII phobics were more likely to be classified as primarily disgusted when rating pictures of surgical procedures (78%). Discriminant function analyses revealed that disgust ratings, but not fear ratings, of the phobic pictures were significant predictors of phobic group membership. Both phobic groups were characterized by elevated disgust sensitivity toward video and pictorial general disgust elicitors. Implications and suggestions for continued research examining fearful and disgusting stimuli in specific phobia are outlined.     

情绪场景图片的注意偏向：眼动研究

注意实验中,与不带情绪色彩的刺激相比,具有情绪意义的刺激可引起注意偏向。本研究以情绪场景图片为材料,通过眼动技术分别记录被试在反向眼跳任务和Go/No-go任务中的眼动数据,考察了情绪图片的注意偏向。结果发现：反向眼跳任务中,对情绪图片的眼跳潜伏期比中性图片更长,眼跳错误率也更高;在Go任务中,相对于呈现在中央的中性图片,情绪图片引起的对靶子的眼跳潜伏期更长;在No-go任务中,相对于呈现在中央的中性图片,情绪图片引起的眼跳错误率更低。实验结果说明,情绪图片可引起注意偏向,表现为更快的捕获注意并且注意更难从情绪图片上转移。     

厌恶情绪影响道德判断的发展研究

厌恶情绪的产生是为了回避潜在的病菌的威胁。研究发现,相比中性情绪状态下,厌恶情绪让人们更反对违背道德的行为,认为这些行为更错。目前,对于厌恶情绪对道德判断影响的发展还没有相关的研究。本实验以小学一年级,四年级及成人为研究对象来考察厌恶情绪对道德判断影响的发展。实验中被试被随机分入厌恶启动组和控制组,完成厌恶情绪任务和行为的道德判断任务。研究结果显示,在启动厌恶情绪之后,四年级和成人被试对道德违背行为的错误程度判断更为严格,同时四年级被试对行为的回避程度更高。一年级被试在厌恶情绪和控制条件下道德判断差异不显著。研究结果说明厌恶情绪对道德判断的影响是从无到有逐渐发展的。     

The effects of anxiety upon attention allocation to affective stimuli

Pictures of emotionally aversive, neutral, and pleasant scenes were presented for 500 ms, followed by a probe presented in the same location (valid trials) or an alternate location (invalid trials) as the picture. Response-times to the probes were recorded in low (N=20) and high (N=27) trait anxious participants. Results revealed an overall negative cue validity effect of shorter reaction times (RTs) on invalid than valid trials, suggestive of an inhibition of return effect. Moreover, high trait anxious females showed a reduced negative cue validity effect for aversive pictures in comparison with neutral and pleasant pictures, suggestive of selective interference by the unpleasant material. By contrast, low trait anxious females showed an enhanced negative cue validity effect for aversive pictures relative to neutral and pleasant pictures, suggestive of attentional avoidance of the aversive content. The emotional content of picture cues did not significantly affect RTs in males, regardless of anxiety status. The results suggest that biased attention processes for aversive stimuli may contribute to the greater female propensity for anxiety disorders.     

Disgust-specific modulation of early attention processes

Although threatening images are known to attract and keep our attention, little is known about the existence of emotion-specific attention effects. In this study (N = 46), characteristics of an anticipated, disgust-specific effect were investigated by means of a covert orienting paradigm incorporating pictures that were either disgust-evoking, fear-evoking, happiness-evoking or neutral. Attention adhesion to these pictures was measured by the time necessary to identify a peripheral target, presented 100, 200, 500, or 800 ms after picture onset. Main results showed that reaction times were delayed for targets following the disgust-evoking pictures by 100 and 200 ms, suggesting that only these pictures temporarily grabbed hold of participants' attention. These delays were similar for ignore- and attend-instructions, and they were not affected by the participants' anxiety levels or disgust sensitivity. The disgust-specific influence on early attention processes thus appeared very robust, occurring in the majority of participants and without contribution of voluntary- and strategic-attention processes. In contrast, a smaller and less reliable effect of all emotional (arousing) pictures was present in the form of delayed responding in the 100 ms cue-target interval. This effect was more transitory and apparent only in participants with relatively high state-anxiety scores. Practical and theoretical consequences of these findings are discussed.     

Body image concern and selective attention to disgusting and non-self appearance-related stimuli

Although selective attention to one's own appearance has been widely documented in studies of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), little is known about attentional bias toward non-self appearance-related stimuli in BDD. Furthermore, despite reports of heightened experience of disgust in BDD, it is unknown whether these individuals differentially attend to disgusting stimuli and whether disgust is important in processing of unattractive stimuli. We used a dot probe procedure to investigate the relationship between dysmorphic concern, a defining feature of BDD, and selective attention to faces, attractive, unattractive and disgusting images in a female heterosexual student population (N = 92). At the long stimulus presentation (1000 ms), dysmorphic concern was positively associated with attention to faces in general and attractive appearance-related images. In contrast, at the short stimulus presentation (200 ms), there was a positive association between dysmorphic concern and disgusting images. Implications for theoretical models of BDD are discussed.     

厌恶与恐惧面孔的记忆编码、保持、提取

情绪记忆增强效应在负性情绪记忆研究中被反复证实。尽管厌恶和恐惧同属负性情绪, 提示威胁的存在, 但由于它们的进化意义和生理功能不同, 可能导致它们对记忆的编码、保持、提取三个阶段不同的调节方向或调节强度。本文采用延迟再认任务, 采用事件相关电位考察健康成年被试对唤醒度和效价相当的恐惧和厌恶面孔的记忆编码、保持和提取。结果显示, 1)在记忆编码的早期, 被试主要加强了对恐惧面孔的注意(P1)和结构编码(N170), 而厌恶信息的加工受到了抑制; 2)从记忆编码晚期到记忆保持的整个阶段, 被试对厌恶信息的精细评估(编码阶段P3)和复述保持(保持阶段的负走向慢波)均强于恐惧信息; 3)相比于恐惧面孔, 厌恶面孔可能在工作记忆系统形成了更强的表征, 从而使被试在记忆提取时可回忆起更多的细节, 对记忆提取的信心更足(提取阶段P3)。这后两条发现是导致行为层面上厌恶情绪记忆优于恐惧情绪记忆的原因。本研究为“厌恶比恐惧具有更强的记忆增强效应”提供了高时间分辨率的脑活动层面的证据, 从而进一步揭示了负性情绪增强记忆的认知机制。     

Consequences of agreement versus disagreement on physical disgust: How do people perceive the cleanliness and morality of someone who expresses inappropriate disgust

We examined how people perceived a person who expressed inappropriate physical disgust—a person who was either under-disgusted by physically disgusting stimuli or over-disgusted by neutral stimuli. Participants formed an impression of a target after receiving information on how s/he rated disgusting (Studies 1, 2) or neutral (Studies 2, 3) pictures, and disgusting or angering scenarios (Study 4). Studies 1, 2 and 4 found that a target person who failed to experience disgust was seen as disgusting, immoral (but only to the extent that s/he was also seen unclean), and not socially desirable. A target who rated neutral stimuli as disgusting was not judged as disgusting but was nevertheless judged as immoral and not socially desirable (Studies 2, 3). Our results show that a target whose judgments of physical disgust deviate from one's own by showing either too much or too little disgust is perceived to be immoral.     

面孔可爱度和客观熟悉度对婴儿面孔注意偏向效应的影响

近年来, 研究发现, 与成人面孔和其他社会性刺激相比, 成人对婴儿面孔表现出更多的注意偏向。本研究利用点探测范式, 结合眼动技术, 探讨了面孔可爱度和熟悉度对婴儿面孔注意偏向效应的影响。行为结果表明, 成人对高可爱度的婴儿面孔的反应时注意偏向更强; 眼动结果发现, 高可爱度的婴儿面孔的首注视时间偏向和总注视时间偏向更强, 表现为注意维持模式, 并且, 这一效应只出现在低熟悉度条件下; 而在可爱度评分上, 高熟悉度的婴儿面孔的可爱度评分显著高于低熟悉度的婴儿面孔。结果表明, 在低熟悉度条件下, 可爱度才会影响成人对婴儿面孔注意偏向效应; 在偏好行为上, 对婴儿面孔的主观评定和观看行为上可能存在分离的情况。     

Emotion, attention, and the startle reflex

This theoretical model of emotion is based on research using the startle-probe methodology. It explains inconsistencies in probe studies of attention and fear conditioning and provides a new approach to emotional perception, imagery, and memory. Emotions are organized biphasically, as appetitive or aversive (defensive). Reflexes with the same valence as an ongoing emotional state are augmented; mismatched reflexes are inhibited. Thus, the startle response (an aversive reflex) is enhanced during a fear state and is diminished in a pleasant emotional context. This affect-startle effect is not determined by general arousal, simple attention, or probe modality. The effect is found when affects are prompted by pictures or memory images, changes appropriately with aversive conditioning, and may be dependent on right-hemisphere processing. Implications for clinical, neurophysiological, and basic research in emotion are outlined.