a School of Psychology , University of New South Wales , Sydney , Australia.
Cogn Emot. 2019 May;33(3):442-451. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2018.1459490. Epub 2018 Apr 12.
Emotional distractors can impair perception of subsequently presented targets, a phenomenon called emotion-induced blindness. Do emotional distractors lose their power to disrupt perception when appearing with increased frequency, perhaps due to desensitisation or enhanced recruitment of proactive control? Non-emotional tasks, such as the Stroop, have revealed that high frequency distractors or conflict lead to reduced interference, and distractor frequency appears to modulate attentional capture by emotional distractors in spatial attention tasks. But emotion-induced blindness is thought to reflect perceptual competition between targets and emotional distractors, and it is unclear whether high frequency emotional stimuli cause less disruption at this relatively early stage of processing. In four experiments, participants searched streams of images for a rotated target image. A negative or neutral distractor appeared before the target, and their relative frequency was manipulated. Across all experiments, the frequency of emotional distractors did not modulate emotion-induced blindness even when participants were explicitly informed that they would appear often or seldom. Thus, increased distractor frequency does not appear to mitigate the priority allotted to emotional distractors during perceptual competition.
情绪干扰物会损害随后呈现的目标的感知，这种现象称为情绪诱导的盲视。当情绪干扰物以更高的频率出现时，它们是否会因为脱敏或主动控制的增强而失去干扰感知的能力？非情绪任务，如 Stroop 任务，已经揭示出高频干扰物或冲突会导致干扰减少，并且在空间注意任务中，干扰物的频率似乎会调节情绪干扰物对注意力的捕获。但是，情绪诱导的盲视被认为反映了目标和情绪干扰物之间的感知竞争，并且尚不清楚高频情绪刺激是否会在处理的这个相对早期阶段造成较小的干扰。在四项实验中，参与者在图像流中搜索旋转的目标图像。一个负性或中性的干扰物在目标之前出现，并且它们的相对频率被操纵。在所有实验中，即使参与者明确被告知情绪干扰物会经常或很少出现，情绪干扰物的频率也不会调节情绪诱导的盲视。因此，增加干扰物的频率似乎不会减轻在感知竞争中分配给情绪干扰物的优先级。
