School of Psychology, Bangor University, Brigantia Building, Penrallt Road, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2AS, UK.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2012 Apr;19(2):184-9. doi: 10.3758/s13423-011-0210-x.
Brain mechanisms used to control nonemotional aspects of cognition may be distinct from those regulating responses to emotional stimuli, with activity of the latter being detrimental to the former. Previous studies have shown that suppression of irrelevant emotional stimuli produces a largely right-lateralized pattern of frontal brain activation, thus predicting that emotional stimuli may invoke temporary, lateralized costs to performance on nonemotional cognitive tasks. To test this, we briefly (85 ms) presented a central, irrelevant, expressive (angry, happy, sad, or fearful) or neutral face 100 ms prior to a letter search task. The presentation of emotional versus neutral faces slowed subsequent search for targets appearing in the left, but not the right, hemifield, supporting the notion of a right-lateralized, emotional response mechanism that competes for control with nonemotional cognitive processes. Presentation of neutral, scrambled, or inverted neutral faces produced no such laterality effects on visual search response times.
大脑用于控制非情感认知方面的机制可能与调节对情绪刺激反应的机制不同，后者的活动对前者有害。先前的研究表明，抑制无关的情绪刺激会产生一种主要的右侧额叶大脑激活模式，因此可以预测，情绪刺激可能会对非情绪认知任务的表现产生暂时的、偏向一侧的影响。为了验证这一点，我们在进行字母搜索任务之前，短暂地（85 毫秒）呈现一个中央、无关、有表情（生气、高兴、悲伤或恐惧）或中性的面孔，呈现情绪面孔与中性面孔相比，会使随后出现在左视野而非右视野的目标的搜索速度变慢，这支持了一种右侧的、情绪化的反应机制的观点，这种机制与非情感认知过程竞争控制。呈现中性、乱序或反转的中性面孔不会对视觉搜索反应时间产生这种偏侧效应。
