Institute of Psychology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2012 Mar;60(1):130-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.12.016. Epub 2011 Dec 20.
Numerous studies have found that emotionally arousing faces or scenes capture visual processing resources. Here we investigated whether emotional distractor words capture attention in an analogous way. Participants detected brief intervals of coherent motion in an array of otherwise randomly moving squares superimposed on words of positive, neutral or negative valence. Processing of the foreground task was assessed by behavioural responses and steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) elicited by the squares flickering at 15 Hz. Although words were task-irrelevant, P2 and N400 deflections to negative words were enhanced, indicating that emotionally negative word content modulated lexico-semantic processing and that emotional significance was detected. In contrast, the time course of behavioural data and SSVEP amplitudes revealed no interference with the task regardless of the emotional connotation of distractor words. This dissociation of emotion effects on early perceptual versus lexical stages of processing suggests that written emotional words do not inevitably lead to attentional modulation in early visual areas. Prior studies have shown a distraction effect of emotional pictures on a similar task. Thus, our results indicate the specificity of emotion effects on sensory processing and semantic encoding dependent on the information channel that emotional significance is derived from.
许多研究发现，情绪唤起的面孔或场景会吸引视觉处理资源。在这里，我们研究了情绪干扰词是否以类似的方式吸引注意力。参与者在一个由正性、中性或负性效价的单词组成的背景上，检测到一组随机移动的方块中短暂的连贯运动。通过方块以 15 Hz 的频率闪烁引起的行为反应和稳态视觉诱发电位（SSVEP）来评估对前景任务的处理。尽管单词与任务无关，但负性单词的 P2 和 N400 偏移增强了，这表明情绪负性词的内容调节了词汇语义处理，并且情绪意义被检测到。相比之下，无论干扰词的情绪内涵如何，行为数据和 SSVEP 幅度的时间进程都没有显示出对任务的干扰。这种对早期感知与词汇处理阶段的情绪效应的分离表明，书面情绪词并不一定会导致早期视觉区域的注意力调节。先前的研究表明，情绪图片在类似任务上会产生分心效应。因此，我们的结果表明，情绪对感觉处理和语义编码的影响具有特异性，这取决于情绪意义来自的信息通道。
