Calvo Manuel G, Avero Pedro
Department of Cognitive Psychology, University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2008 Mar;8(1):41-53. doi: 10.3758/cabn.8.1.41.
This study investigated whether stimulus affective content can be extracted from visual scenes when these appear in parafoveal locations of the visual field and are foveally masked, and whether there is lateralization involved. Parafoveal prime pleasant or unpleasant scenes were presented for 150 msec 2.5 degrees away from fixation and were followed by a foveal probe scene that was either congruent or incongruent in emotional valence with the prime. Participants responded whether the probe was emotionally positive or negative. Affective priming was demonstrated by shorter response latencies for congruent than for incongruent prime-probe pairs. This effect occurred when the prime was presented in the left visual field at a 300-msec prime-probe stimulus onset asynchrony, even when the prime and the probe were different in physical appearance and semantic category. This result reveals that the affective significance of emotional stimuli can be assessed early through covert attention mechanisms, in the absence of overt eye fixations on the stimuli, and suggests that right-hemisphere dominance is involved.
本研究调查了当视觉场景出现在视野的副中央凹位置并被中央凹掩蔽时，是否能够从这些场景中提取刺激情感内容，以及是否涉及侧化。在离注视点2.5度的位置呈现副中央凹启动刺激，即愉快或不愉快的场景，持续150毫秒，随后呈现中央凹探测场景，其情感效价与启动刺激一致或不一致。参与者回答探测刺激在情感上是积极还是消极。当启动刺激和探测刺激一致时，反应潜伏期比不一致时短，这证明了情感启动效应。当启动刺激在左视野以300毫秒的启动刺激-探测刺激间隔呈现时，即使启动刺激和探测刺激在物理外观和语义类别上不同，这种效应也会出现。这一结果表明，在没有对刺激进行明显眼动注视的情况下，可以通过隐蔽注意机制早期评估情感刺激的情感意义，并表明涉及右半球优势。
