Emotional Modulation of the Attentional Blink by Pleasant and Unpleasant Pictures

When shown a rapid series of images, attention to a second target that follows in short proximity to a first is diminished-a phenomenon sometimes called an "attentional blink." Three experiments compared detection of motivationally relevant pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures when t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of general psychology 2012-10, Vol.139 (4), p.289-314
Main Authors: de Oca, Beatrice M., Villa, Marie, Cervantes, Miguel, Welbourne, Tyler
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity levels. Psychomotricity
Attention
Attentional Blink
Biological and medical sciences
emotion
Emotions
Experimental psychology
Experiments
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Motivation
Perception
Photic Stimulation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
RSVP
Self control
Sensory perception
Task Performance and Analysis
Vigilance. Attention. Sleep
Vision
visual attention
Visual Perception
Visualization
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Summary:When shown a rapid series of images, attention to a second target that follows in short proximity to a first is diminished-a phenomenon sometimes called an "attentional blink." Three experiments compared detection of motivationally relevant pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures when they appeared as the second target following a neutral (Experiment 1), unpleasant (Experiment 2) and pleasant (Experiment 3) picture target. The second target followed at lags of 2, 3 or 8 pictures. In all three experiments, detection of neutral pictures was reduced at lags 2 and 3, indicative of an attentional blink. In contrast, unpleasant pictures were detected more than neutral pictures at lags 2 and 3. Unexpectedly, pleasant pictures not only resisted the attentional blink, but they were detected substantially more than other pictures at all lags in all three experiments. Overall, the experiments support the idea that motivationally relevant stimuli preferentially capture attention more than motivationally neutral stimuli.
ISSN:0022-1309
1940-0888
DOI:10.1080/00221309.2012.708681