Psychology Department, University of California at Berkeley, 3210 Tolman Hall #1650, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Cogn Emot. 2013;27(1):166-76. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2012.689953. Epub 2012 Jul 12.
At attended locations emotion and attention interact to benefit contrast sensitivity, a basic visual dimension. Whether there are associated costs at unattended locations is unknown. Furthermore, emotion and attention affect response time, and anxiety modulates these effects. We investigated how trait-anxiety influences the interaction of emotion and attention on contrast sensitivity. On each trial, non-predictive pre-cues (neutral or fearful faces) directed exogenous attention to four contrast-varying, tilted stimuli (Gabor patches). Attention was cued toward the target (valid), a distracter (invalid), or distributed over all locations. Observers discriminated target orientation, and completed self-report measures of anxiety. Effects of fearful expressions were mediated by trait anxiety. Only high-trait-anxious individuals showed decreased target contrast sensitivity after attention was diverted to a distracter by a fearful cue, and anxiety score correlated with degree of impairment across participants. This indicates that increasing anxiety exacerbates threat-related attentional costs to visual perception, hampering processing at non-threat-related locations.
在有注意的情况下，情绪和注意力相互作用，有利于对比敏感度，这是一个基本的视觉维度。在没有注意的情况下是否存在相关成本尚不清楚。此外，情绪和注意力会影响反应时间，而焦虑会调节这些影响。我们研究了特质焦虑如何影响情绪和注意力对对比敏感度的相互作用。在每次试验中，非预测性前提示（中性或恐惧面孔）将外源性注意力引导到四个对比度变化的倾斜刺激（Gabor 补丁）。注意力被引导到目标（有效）、分心物（无效）或分布在所有位置。观察者辨别目标方向，并完成焦虑的自我报告测量。恐惧表情的影响是由特质焦虑介导的。只有高特质焦虑的个体在注意力被恐惧提示转移到分心物后，目标对比度敏感度才会降低，而且焦虑分数与参与者之间的损伤程度相关。这表明，焦虑程度的增加会加剧与威胁相关的注意力对视觉感知的成本，从而阻碍非威胁相关位置的处理。
