Sutherland Matthew R, McQuiggan Douglas A, Ryan Jennifer D, Mather Mara
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California.
Rotman Research Institute.
Emotion. 2017 Jun;17(4):700-706. doi: 10.1037/emo0000245. Epub 2017 Jan 12.
Emotional arousal impairs top-down attentional control while strengthening bottom-up attentional biases. In this study, we examined whether top-down impairments due to arousal can be modulated by increasing the perceptual salience of the target stimulus. To examine this question, we briefly displayed positive and negative arousing images prior to the encoding of 2 emotionally neutral items, 1 of which was to be remembered and 1 of which was perceptually salient (the to-be-remembered and the salient items were either the same item or different items). Eye tracking was used to measure attention biases during the encoding of the 2 competing neutral items, as well as to measure pupillary responses to the preceding modulator image. Viewing emotional images, regardless of valence, impaired top-down attention to animate stimulus targets (i.e., animals), regardless of perceptual salience. However, these effects on encoding had no influence on recognition memory. Taken together, these findings reveal that exposure to emotionally arousing images impairs top-down attention to animate stimuli, regardless of whether that stimulus is perceptually salient. (PsycINFO Database Record
情绪唤起会损害自上而下的注意力控制，同时增强自下而上的注意力偏差。在本研究中，我们考察了由于唤起导致的自上而下的损伤是否可以通过提高目标刺激的感知显著性来调节。为了研究这个问题，我们在对两个情绪中性项目进行编码之前，短暂呈现积极和消极的唤起性图像，其中一个项目需要被记住，另一个项目在感知上显著（需要被记住的项目和显著项目可以是同一个项目，也可以是不同的项目）。在对这两个相互竞争的中性项目进行编码时，使用眼动追踪来测量注意力偏差，同时测量对先前调节图像的瞳孔反应。观看情绪图像，无论其效价如何，都会损害对有生命刺激目标（即动物）的自上而下的注意力，无论其感知显著性如何。然而，这些对编码的影响对识别记忆没有影响。综上所述，这些发现表明，接触情绪唤起性图像会损害对有生命刺激的自上而下的注意力，无论该刺激在感知上是否显著。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》）
