Grubert Anna, Schmid Petra, Krummenacher Joseph
Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2013 Jan;75(1):41-52. doi: 10.3758/s13414-012-0385-x.
Visual search for feature targets was employed to investigate whether the mechanisms underlying visual selective attention are modulated by observers' mood. The effects of induced mood on overall mean reaction times and on changes and repetitions of target-defining features and dimensions across consecutive trials were measured. The results showed that reaction times were significantly slower in the negative than in the positive and neutral mood groups. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the processing stage that is activated to select visual information in a feature search task is modulated by the observer's mood. In participants with positive or neutral moods, dimension-specific, but no feature-specific, intertrial transition effects were found, suggesting that these observers based their responses on a salience signal coding the most conspicuous display location. Conversely, intertrial effects in observers in a negative mood were feature-specific in nature, suggesting that these participants accessed the feature identity level before responding.
采用视觉搜索特征目标的方法来研究视觉选择性注意的潜在机制是否会受到观察者情绪的调节。测量了诱导情绪对总体平均反应时间以及连续试验中目标定义特征和维度的变化与重复的影响。结果表明，消极情绪组的反应时间显著慢于积极情绪组和中性情绪组。此外，结果还表明，在特征搜索任务中激活以选择视觉信息的处理阶段会受到观察者情绪的调节。在处于积极或中性情绪的参与者中，发现了特定维度而非特定特征的试验间转换效应，这表明这些观察者的反应基于对最显著显示位置进行编码的显著性信号。相反，消极情绪观察者的试验间效应本质上是特定特征的，这表明这些参与者在做出反应之前访问了特征识别水平。
