Lee Tae-Ho, Itti Laurent, Mather Mara
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Front Psychol. 2012 Jul 19;3:241. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00241. eCollection 2012.
Arousal-biased competition theory predicts that arousal biases competition in favor of perceptually salient stimuli and against non-salient stimuli (Mather and Sutherland, 2011). The current study tested this hypothesis by having observers complete many trials in a visual search task in which the target either always was salient (a 55° tilted line among 80° distractors) or non-salient (a 55° tilted line among 50° distractors). Each participant completed one session in an emotional condition, in which visual search trials were preceded by negative arousing images, and one session in a non-emotional condition, in which the arousing images were replaced with neutral images (with session order counterbalanced). Test trials in which the target line had to be selected from among a set of lines with different tilts revealed that the emotional condition enhanced identification of the salient target line tilt but impaired identification of the non-salient target line tilt. Thus, arousal enhanced perceptual learning of salient stimuli but impaired perceptual learning of non-salient stimuli.
唤醒偏向竞争理论预测，唤醒会使竞争偏向于感知显著的刺激，而不利于非显著刺激（马瑟和萨瑟兰，2011年）。本研究通过让观察者在视觉搜索任务中完成多次试验来检验这一假设，在该任务中，目标要么总是显著的（在80°的干扰物中一条55°倾斜的线），要么是非显著的（在50°的干扰物中一条55°倾斜的线）。每位参与者在一种情绪条件下完成一个阶段的试验，在该条件下，视觉搜索试验之前会呈现负面唤醒图像；在一种非情绪条件下完成一个阶段的试验，在该条件下，唤醒图像被中性图像取代（阶段顺序平衡）。在测试试验中，目标线必须从一组具有不同倾斜度的线中选出，结果显示，情绪条件增强了对显著目标线倾斜度的识别，但损害了对非显著目标线倾斜度的识别。因此，唤醒增强了对显著刺激的感知学习，但损害了对非显著刺激的感知学习。
