Chaisilprungraung Thitaporn, Kaewbuapan Poopa, Intrachooto Singh, Pongsuwan Sarigga, Itthipuripat Sirawaj
Neuroscience Center for Research and Innovation, Learning Institute, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand.
School of Information Technology, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand.
Sci Rep. 2024 Dec 4;14(1):30231. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-80666-x.
The brain's ability to prioritize behaviorally relevant sensory inputs (i.e., targets) while ignoring irrelevant distractors is crucial for efficient information processing. However, the role of emotional valence in modulating selective attention remains underexplored. This study examined how positive and negative emotions alter the spatial scope of visual selective attention using a modified Eriksen Flanker task. Participants viewed an emotional face cue (happy, angry, or neutral) randomly positioned on the screen and then identified the shape of a subsequent neutral target (bowtie or diamond) at the cued location. Adjacent stimuli either matched the target shape (congruent) or differed (incongruent). Results showed that happy faces increased susceptibility to distractors (i.e., a larger incongruency effect), suggesting a broadening of attentional scope, while angry faces reduced susceptibility (i.e., a smaller incongruency effect), indicating a narrowing of focus. Importantly, the magnitude of this emotion-driven attention modulation was negatively correlated with participants' self-reported levels of psychological distress. Participants with higher stress and depression exhibited weaker attention broadening in response to positive cues. Together, the findings provide behavioral evidence of how emotional valence influences attention scope, offering potential insights into the dynamic interplay between psychological distress, emotional processing, and attention modulation.
大脑在忽略无关干扰因素的同时，对行为相关的感觉输入（即目标）进行优先级排序的能力，对于高效的信息处理至关重要。然而，情绪效价在调节选择性注意方面的作用仍未得到充分探索。本研究使用改良的埃里克森侧翼任务，考察了积极情绪和消极情绪如何改变视觉选择性注意的空间范围。参与者观看随机置于屏幕上的情绪面孔线索（开心、愤怒或中性），然后在提示位置识别随后出现的中性目标（领结或菱形）的形状。相邻刺激要么与目标形状匹配（一致），要么不同（不一致）。结果显示，开心面孔会增加对干扰因素的易感性（即更大的不一致效应），表明注意范围扩大；而愤怒面孔则会降低易感性（即较小的不一致效应），表明注意力焦点缩小。重要的是，这种由情绪驱动的注意调节幅度与参与者自我报告的心理困扰水平呈负相关。压力和抑郁程度较高的参与者对积极线索的注意范围扩大反应较弱。总之，这些发现为情绪效价如何影响注意范围提供了行为证据，为心理困扰、情绪处理和注意调节之间的动态相互作用提供了潜在见解。
