Hoffman James E, Kim Minwoo, Taylor Matt, Holiday Kelsey
University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
Cortex. 2020 Jan;122:140-158. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.03.013. Epub 2019 Mar 27.
The present research used behavioral and event-related brain potentials (ERP) measures to determine whether emotional capture is automatic in the emotion-induced blindness (EIB) paradigm. The first experiment varied the priority of performing two concurrent tasks: identifying a negative or neutral picture appearing in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream of pictures and multiple object tracking (MOT). Results showed that increased attention to the MOT task resulted in decreased accuracy for identifying both negative and neutral target pictures accompanied by decreases in the amplitude of the P3b component. In contrast, the early posterior negativity (EPN) component elicited by negative pictures was unaffected by variations in attention. Similarly, there was a decrement in MOT performance for dual-task versus single task conditions but no effect of picture type (negative vs neutral) on MOT accuracy which isn't consistent with automatic emotional capture of attention. However, the MOT task might simply be insensitive to brief interruptions of attention. The second experiment used a more sensitive reaction time (RT) measure to examine this possibility. Results showed that RT to discriminate a gap appearing in a tracked object was delayed by the simultaneous appearance of to-be-ignored distractor pictures even though MOT performance was once again unaffected by the distractor. Importantly, the RT delay was the same for both negative and neutral distractors suggesting that capture was driven by physical salience rather than emotional salience of the distractors. Despite this lack of emotional capture, the EPN component, which is thought to reflect emotional capture, was still present. We suggest that the EPN doesn't reflect capture but rather downstream effects of attention, including object recognition. These results show that capture by emotional pictures in EIB can be suppressed when attention is engaged in another difficult task. The results have important implications for understanding capture effects in EIB.
本研究采用行为学和事件相关脑电位（ERP）测量方法，以确定在情绪诱发失明（EIB）范式中，情绪捕获是否是自动的。第一个实验改变了执行两项并发任务的优先级：识别出现在快速序列视觉呈现（RSVP）图片流中的负面或中性图片，以及多目标跟踪（MOT）。结果表明，对MOT任务的注意力增加导致识别负面和中性目标图片的准确性下降，同时伴随P3b成分的波幅降低。相反，负面图片引发的早期后负波（EPN）成分不受注意力变化的影响。同样，双任务与单任务条件下的MOT表现有所下降，但图片类型（负面与中性）对MOT准确性没有影响，这与注意力的自动情绪捕获不一致。然而，MOT任务可能只是对注意力的短暂中断不敏感。第二个实验使用了更敏感的反应时间（RT）测量方法来检验这种可能性。结果表明，即使MOT表现再次不受干扰物的影响，但在被跟踪物体中出现间隙时进行辨别反应的时间，会因同时出现的被忽略干扰物图片而延迟。重要的是，负面和中性干扰物的RT延迟是相同的，这表明捕获是由干扰物的物理显著性而非情绪显著性驱动的。尽管缺乏情绪捕获，但被认为反映情绪捕获的EPN成分仍然存在。我们认为，EPN并不反映捕获，而是反映注意力的下游效应，包括物体识别。这些结果表明，当注意力投入到另一项困难任务中时，EIB中情绪图片的捕获可以被抑制。这些结果对理解EIB中的捕获效应具有重要意义。
