Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University , Ghent, Belgium.
Front Psychol. 2014 Nov 11;5:1277. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01277. eCollection 2014.
Although earlier studies have related positive emotions to attentional broadening, recent findings point out the complexity of this relation and show that these broadening effects interact with factors such as characteristics of the information that is presented. Besides stimuli characteristics, individual characteristics such as the presence of depressive symptoms could also influence the broadening effects as depressive symptoms have previously been related to a more narrow attentional scope. Therefore, the aim of this study was to further investigate the attentional broadening effects of positive emotions, testing whether this is influenced by the emotional valence of the information presented and secondly, how the presence of depressive symptoms might interact with this relationship. We used a performance-based measure to assess fluctuations in attentional broadening for positive, neutral, and negative stimuli. We assessed the presence and severity of depressive symptoms in an unselected study sample and tested whether these symptoms moderate the relationship between induced positive mood and attentional breadth for emotional information. Results showed no direct relation between positive mood and attentional breadth, regardless of the emotional valence of the stimuli. However, the presence of depressive symptoms moderated this relationship in such a way that among low levels of depressive symptoms, positive mood was related to attentional broadening specifically when positive information was presented, while at high levels of depressive symptoms this relation was reversed. The current findings suggest that both stimuli characteristics, individual characteristics and their interplay should be taken into account when investigating the broadening effects of positive emotions.
虽然早期的研究将积极情绪与注意力拓宽联系起来，但最近的发现指出了这种关系的复杂性，并表明这些拓宽效应与呈现的信息特征等因素相互作用。除了刺激特征外，个体特征，如抑郁症状的存在，也可能影响拓宽效应，因为抑郁症状以前与更狭窄的注意力范围有关。因此，本研究的目的是进一步探讨积极情绪的注意力拓宽效应，测试这种效应是否受到呈现信息的情绪效价的影响，其次，抑郁症状的存在如何与这种关系相互作用。我们使用基于表现的测量来评估积极、中性和消极刺激的注意力拓宽波动。我们在一个未选择的研究样本中评估了抑郁症状的存在和严重程度，并测试了这些症状是否调节了诱导的积极情绪与情绪信息注意力广度之间的关系。结果表明，积极情绪与注意力广度之间没有直接关系，无论刺激的情绪效价如何。然而，抑郁症状的存在调节了这种关系，在低水平的抑郁症状中，积极情绪与注意力拓宽有关，特别是在呈现积极信息时，而在高水平的抑郁症状中，这种关系则相反。目前的研究结果表明，在研究积极情绪的拓宽效应时，应该考虑刺激特征、个体特征及其相互作用。
