负性情绪刺激对大学生多目标追踪能力的影响

探讨了负性情绪对大学生多目标追踪能力的影响以及其影响机制。实验要求被试在观看国际情绪图库中的负性或中性图片后,完成多目标追踪和点探测任务,同时设置基线条件作为对照。采用状态-特质焦虑量表和贝克抑郁自评量表考察不同情绪图片条件下被试的诱发情绪状态。研究结果发现：（1）被试观看负性情绪图片后状态焦虑程度和抑郁量表评分显著提高,观看情绪图片有效诱发了被试的负性情绪;（2）基线条件下的被试追踪正确率显著低于中性条件,基线条件和负性图片条件下的追踪正确率无差异,说明训练可以提高被试的多目标追踪能力,但负性情绪抑制了被试在基线追踪任务中的训练效果;（3）负性图片条件下的点探测觉察率显著低于中性图片条件,说明负性情绪影响了被试的注意资源分配。研究结果表明：负性情绪可能干扰了被试目标导向的注意系统,使得个体更易受刺激驱动的注意系统影响,并且在追踪过程中影响被试中央执行系统的抑制和转移功能。     

青少年负性情绪信息注意偏向的情绪弹性和性别效应

探讨情绪弹性和性别变量对青少年加工负性情绪信息时注意偏向的影响,采用情绪stroop实验范式,以46名青少年为被试,以负性情绪图片为实验材料,考察不同情绪弹性和性别的青少年在负性情绪图片颜色识别时的反应时间差异。结果发现,情绪弹性对负性情绪图片颜色识别的主效应显著,统计效力非常明显;性别对负性情绪图片颜色识别的主效应显著,统计效力明显;情绪弹性与性别在颜色识别上的交互作用不显著。这说明青少年负性情绪信息加工过程中产生的注意偏向效应受情绪弹性和性别因素的影响。     

情绪诱发的视盲：一种独特的功能性视盲

功能性视盲是指由于某种原因导致正常的视觉系统出现视觉觉察丧失的现象, 例如变化知盲、注意瞬脱等都属于功能性视盲。情绪诱发的视盲指的是一个与任务无关的情绪性刺激的呈现吸引了注意以致个体无法对快速呈现的靶刺激有所觉察的现象。与注意瞬脱特别是情绪性注意瞬脱相比, 情绪诱发的视盲是以情绪刺激为干扰刺激, 考察情绪刺激如何以自下而上的方式吸引注意并干扰靶刺激的加工, 因此有着自己的特点：它没有lag1节省现象, 也没有像注意瞬脱那样严格的时间窗口限制, 不受干扰刺激与靶刺激物理特征相似程度的限制, 在心理机制上属于早期知觉阶段的加工竞争等等。情绪诱发的视盲表明情绪对注意在时间和空间两个维度上都有吸引或干扰作用。未来可以从考察神经机制、了解影响因素等多方面深化此领域的研究。     

语言标识对情绪体验的影响

本研究通过两个实验考察了语言标识对个体情绪体验的调节作用。实验一探讨了中性标识对不同类型的情绪体验的影响,结果发现与韩文字符标识相比,中性双字词标识时被试对负性图片的消极情绪体验强度显著降低。实验二进一步探讨了不同情绪色彩的词语的标识效应,结果发现与中性标识相比,负性或正性标识时被试对负性图片的消极情绪体验程度更低。结果表明了语言标识对负性情绪体验具有显著的调节作用,并且标识效应的产生依赖于词汇语义信息的通达。     

情绪信息优先权的效价差异

采用两个实验考察不同效价的情绪信息在竞争注意资源的优先权上是否存在差异。结果表明:(1)作为干扰刺激呈现,只有负性干扰刺激诱发了Ei B,而且在lag-1条件时干扰作用最强;(2)作为靶刺激呈现,正、负性刺激在lag-1条件时对T2的干扰显著大于中性刺激。研究表明负性刺激的优先权很强;正性刺激在与任务目标相关时具有认知加工的优先权;情绪信息的优先权在刺激最初呈现时最强烈,然后迅速减弱。     

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。     

情绪记忆的鲜活性和准确性的关系*

采用记得/知道范式,以正性、负性和中性图片为实验材料,以32名大学本科生为被试,考察情绪记忆鲜活性和准确性的关系。结果发现,情绪记忆的记得成绩好于中性记忆,说明情绪记忆较中性记忆更具鲜活性;情绪记忆的鲜活性和准确性存在较大的关联,在正性、负性和中性图片上相关都达到了显著,表明情绪记忆的鲜活性与刺激中心细节的恢复相联系。     

情绪干扰听觉反应冲突的ERP研究

采用ERP技术研究13例正常青年人在声音诱发的不同情绪条件下,对反应抑制加工过程的影响,并试图阐明其潜在脑机制。实验中选择正、中、负三种声音各50种,作为诱发情绪的刺激材料。结果发现Go条件下的反应时在负性、中性、正性条件下依次减短;Go与Nogo刺激均诱发出显著的N1成分,中性条件下波幅显著大于正负性情绪条件。此外,三种情绪背景下, Nogo刺激诱发出显著的N2与P3成分。Nogo-N2主要分布在头皮前中部,在Fz点波幅最大。Nogo-P3主要分布在头皮中部,Pz点波幅最大。中性条件下Nogo-N2波幅显著大于负性与正性条件,而正性和负性之间差异不显著。行为结果表明,听觉负性情绪诱发对反应执行有干扰作用;ERP结果表明声音诱发的情绪对早期听觉选择性注意具有调节作用。听觉情绪诱发对反应抑制加工过程有显著影响,且该影响在早期反应冲突监控阶段最为明显。     

高、低自尊个体对负性情绪注意偏向的眼动研究

采用"点探测任务"实验范式,选取29名大学生被试,用眼动仪记录被试观察情绪图片的眼动轨迹,考察高、低自尊个体注意偏向的内部加工机制。结果表明:低自尊个体对正性情绪图片的总注视时间显著短于高自尊个体,即低自尊个体缺乏对正性情绪图片的注意偏向,对负性情绪图片不存在注意警觉和注意维持,存在注意回避;高自尊个体对负性情绪图片的总注视时间显著长于正性情绪图片,即对负性情绪图片存在注意偏向。     

无关工作记忆表征的负性情绪信息能否捕获视觉注意?一项眼动研究

研究通过分析视觉搜索任务的首次注视点和行为反应时, 探讨无关工作记忆表征的负性情绪信息对视觉注意选择的影响。实验1发现在反映早期注意选择的首次注视点百分率指标上, 不管工作记忆表征的情绪效价如何, 均出现了显著的注意捕获效应; 实验2发现当采用中性情绪靶子刺激时, 首次注视点百分率指标上仍表现出了稳健的注意捕获效应; 在首次注视点持续时间指标上, 实验1和实验2均发现记忆匹配条件的干扰刺激显著小于控制条件的干扰刺激, 表现出注意的快速脱离; 而在行为反应时指标上, 早期的注意捕获效应消失(实验1), 甚至被反转为注意抑制效应(实验2)。这些结果表明在早期注意选择阶段, 记忆驱动的注意捕获效应不受工作记忆表征情绪效价的影响, 但认知控制会在早期注意捕获之后促使注意快速脱离记忆匹配的干扰刺激, 其作用效果受靶子刺激情绪效价的调节。     

Angry faces are tracked more easily than neutral faces during multiple identity tracking

We investigated whether and how emotional facial expressions affect sustained attention in face tracking. In a multiple-identity and object tracking paradigm, participants tracked multiple target faces that continuously moved around together with several distractor faces, and subsequently reported where each target face had moved to. The emotional expression (angry, happy, and neutral) of the target and distractor faces was manipulated. Tracking performance was better when the target faces were angry rather than neutral, whereas angry distractor faces did not affect tracking. The effect persisted when the angry faces were presented upside-down and when surface features of the faces were irrelevant to the ongoing task. There was only suggestive and weak evidence for a facilitatory effect of happy targets and a distraction effect of happy distractors in comparison to neutral faces. The results show that angry expressions on the target faces can facilitate sustained attention on the targets via increased vigilance, yet this effect likely depends on both emotional information and visual features of the angry faces.     

Influence of emotional task relevancy on the temporal dynamic of attentional bias in people with high-trait anxiety

ABSTRACT

It is unknown whether high-trait anxiety (HTA) individuals show facilitated attention or impaired attentional disengagement. In the present study, we have manipulated emotion and task relevance to explore the temporal dynamic of attentional bias in an HTA group via emotional attentional blink (EAB) and emotion-induced blindness (EIB). The results showed that the attentional blink effect was greater in the negative compared to neutral condition. When emotional stimulation was task-irrelevant at lag6, this enhanced effect was only present for the HTA group, indicating impaired attentional disengagement. However, when emotional stimulation was task-relevant at lag4, the enhanced attentional blink was absent for HTA but still present for LTA until lag8, suggesting facilitated attention for HTA. Thus, task relevancy of emotional distractor appears to influence attention biases in HTA individuals. In addition, individual characteristics modulate the magnitude and time window of the attentional blink in the context of EIB and EAB tasks.     

Manipulations of distractor frequency do not mitigate emotion-induced blindness

Emotional distractors can impair perception of subsequently presented targets, a phenomenon called emotion-induced blindness. Do emotional distractors lose their power to disrupt perception when appearing with increased frequency, perhaps due to desensitisation or enhanced recruitment of proactive control? Non-emotional tasks, such as the Stroop, have revealed that high frequency distractors or conflict lead to reduced interference, and distractor frequency appears to modulate attentional capture by emotional distractors in spatial attention tasks. But emotion-induced blindness is thought to reflect perceptual competition between targets and emotional distractors, and it is unclear whether high frequency emotional stimuli cause less disruption at this relatively early stage of processing. In four experiments, participants searched streams of images for a rotated target image. A negative or neutral distractor appeared before the target, and their relative frequency was manipulated. Across all experiments, the frequency of emotional distractors did not modulate emotion-induced blindness even when participants were explicitly informed that they would appear often or seldom. Thus, increased distractor frequency does not appear to mitigate the priority allotted to emotional distractors during perceptual competition.     

Early adolescents show sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by emotional distractors

A child's ability to continuously pay attention to a cognitive task is often challenged by distracting events. Distraction is especially detrimental in a learning or classroom environment in which attended information is typically associated with establishing skills and knowledge. Here we report a study examining the effect of emotional distractors on performance in a subsequent visual lexical decision task in 11- to 13-year-old students (n=30). Lexical decisions about neutral verbs and verb-like pseudowords (i.e., targets) were analysed as a function of the preceding distractor type (pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant photos) and the picture–target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA; 200 or 600 ms). Across distractor categories, emotionally arousing pictures prolonged decisions about word targets when compared to neutral pictures, irrespective of the SOA. The present results demonstrate that similar to adults, early adolescent students exhibit sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by irrelevant emotional events.     

Affective stimuli capture attention regardless of categorical distinctiveness: An emotion-induced blindness study

Affective stimuli capture attention, whether their affective value stems from emotional content or a history of reward. The uniqueness of such stimuli within their experimental contexts might imbue them with an enhanced categorical distinctiveness that accounts for their impact on attention. Indeed, in emotion-induced blindness, categorically distinctive neutral pictures disrupt target perception, albeit to a lesser degree than do emotional pictures. Here, we manipulated the categorical distinctiveness of distractors in an emotion-induced blindness task. Participants searched within RSVP streams for a target that followed an emotional or a neutral distractor picture. In a categorically homogenous condition, all non-distractor items were exemplars from a uniform category, thus enhancing the distractor's categorical distinctiveness. In a categorically heterogeneous condition, each non-distractor item represented a distinct category. Neutral distractors disrupted target perception only in the homogenous condition, but emotional distractors did so regardless of their categorical distinctiveness.     

知觉负载对负性分心面孔的知觉加工和记忆的影响

本研究采用视觉搜索和意外再认记忆任务,结合事件相关电位技术,考察知觉负载对负性分心面孔的知觉加工和记忆的影响。在视觉搜索任务中,行为上恐惧分心面孔在高负载下干扰任务。ERP结果上,恐惧比中性分心面孔诱发更大的N170和N250;在低负载下恐惧比中性分心面孔诱发更大的N700,在高负载下没有差异。在意外再认记忆中,个体对低负载下的恐惧分心面孔表现出记忆。这些结果说明负性分心物在早期是自动化加工;晚期加工受知觉负载的调节,负载越低对负性分心物的过滤越少,存在对负性分心物的记忆偏向。     

Do emotion-induced blindness and the attentional blink share underlying mechanisms? An event-related potential study of emotionally-arousing words

When two targets are presented within approximately 500 ms of each other in the context of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), participants’ ability to report the second target is reduced compared to when the targets are presented further apart in time. This phenomenon is known as the attentional blink (AB). The AB is increased in magnitude when the first target is emotionally arousing. Emotionally arousing stimuli can also capture attention and create an AB-like effect even when these stimuli are presented as to-be-ignored distractor items in a single-target RSVP task. This phenomenon is known as emotion-induced blindness (EIB). The phenomenological similarity in the behavioral results associated with the AB with an emotional T1 and EIB suggest that these effects may result from similar underlying mechanisms – a hypothesis that we tested using event-related electrical brain potentials (ERPs). Behavioral results replicated those reported previously, demonstrating an enhanced AB following an emotionally arousing target and a clear EIB effect. In both paradigms highly arousing taboo/sexual words resulted in an increased early posterior negativity (EPN) component that has been suggested to represent early semantic activation and selection for further processing in working memory. In both paradigms taboo/sexual words also produced an increased late positive potential (LPP) component that has been suggested to represent consolidation of a stimulus in working memory. Therefore, ERP results provide evidence that the EIB and emotion-enhanced AB effects share a common underlying mechanism.     

工作记忆负载对位置干扰子激活加工和抑制加工的影响

针对工作记忆（WM）负载对干扰子加工的影响存在认知控制机制和负载特异机制两种分歧观点的争议及Park等人的负载特异机制研究中存在的不足,文章尝试采用干扰效应和负启动效应双指标考察了三种不同类型的WM负载对位置干扰子加工的影响。结果表明,WM负载对位置干扰子加工的影响存在双重作用机制（认知控制机制和负载特异机制）;目标刺激与干扰子刺激的属性一致时,亦可得出负载特异机制观点,且可将WM任务与选择性注意任务之间竞争的资源锁定为知觉处理资源;导致上述两种观点争议的原因是以往研究未将干扰子加工过程分离为激活加工阶段和抑制加工阶段来考察;用双指标分离干扰子加工阶段的研究思路和方法不但可解决这两种观点的争议且可为两者的统合奠定基础。     

The emotional attentional blink is robust to divided attention

The emotional attentional blink (EAB) refers to a temporary impairment in the ability to identify a target when it is preceded by an emotional distractor. It is thought to occur because the emotional salience of the distractor exogenously captures attention for a brief duration, rendering the target unattended and preventing it from reaching awareness. Here we tested the extent to which the EAB can be attenuated by inducing a diffuse top-down attentional state, which has been shown to improve target identification in an analogous attentional phenomenon, the attentional blink. Rapid sequences of landscape images were presented centrally, and participants reported the orientation of a ± 90° rotation of a landscape target. To induce a diffuse state of attention, participants were given a secondary task of monitoring for the appearance of a colored dot in the periphery. We found that emotional distractors impaired target recognition performance to comparable extents, regardless of whether or not participants concurrently performed the peripheral-monitoring task. Moreover, we found that performance of the secondary task led to an impaired ability to ignore neutral distractors. Subjective ratings of target vividness mirrored the behavioral accuracy, with frequent reports of intermediate levels of vividness suggesting that the EAB might impair target visibility in a graded manner. Our results demonstrate that the EAB is robust to manipulations of top-down attention, suggesting that the temporary capture of attention by emotionally salient stimuli involves processes that are distinct from those that produce the attentional blink.     

Proactive inhibitory control of emotional distractors: Evidence for the benefit of precuing emotional distractors

The present study investigated the role of proactive inhibitory control in processing emotional distractors by examining the benefit of precuing the following emotional distractor. In Experiments 1A and 1B, an emotional flanker task was used while schematic emotional faces were presented as targets and distractors. We found the benefit of precuing the emotional distractor. In Experiment 2, the precue could not predict the following emotional distractor. The benefit of precuing the emotional distractor diminished, suggesting that the benefit was not due to reactive inhibition of the precued distractor. In Experiments 3A and 3B, an emotional Stroop task was used while schematic emotional faces were presented as distractors. The benefit of precuing the emotional distractors was observed when these distractors were emotional faces but not observed when the distractors were scrambled faces. These findings suggested that the benefit of precuing the emotional distractors operates at the emotional level.