Horstmann Gernot, Borgstedt Kirsten, Heumann Manfred
Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany.
Emotion. 2006 Feb;6(1):28-39. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.6.1.28.
Do threatening or negative faces capture attention? The authors argue that evidence from visual search, spatial cuing, and flanker tasks is equivocal and that perceptual differences may account for effects attributed to emotional categories. Empirically, the authors examine the flanker task. Although they replicate previous results in which a positive face flanked by negative faces suffers more interference than a negative face flanked by positive faces, further results indicate that face perception is not necessary for the flanker-effect asymmetry and that the asymmetry also occurs with nonemotional stimuli. The authors conclude that the flanker-effect asymmetry with affective faces cannot be unambiguously attributed to emotional differences and may well be due to purely perceptual differences between the stimuli.
具有威胁性或负面的面孔会吸引注意力吗？作者认为，来自视觉搜索、空间线索提示和侧翼任务的证据并不明确，感知差异可能是导致情感类别效应的原因。从实证角度来看，作者对侧翼任务进行了研究。尽管他们重复了之前的研究结果，即被负面面孔包围的正面面孔比被正面面孔包围的负面面孔受到的干扰更大，但进一步的结果表明，面孔感知对于侧翼效应的不对称性并非必要条件，而且这种不对称性在非情感刺激中也会出现。作者得出结论，情感面孔的侧翼效应不对称性不能明确归因于情感差异，很可能是由于刺激之间纯粹的感知差异所致。
