Attentional capture by angry faces depends on the distribution of attention
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1
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
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2
The University of Edinburgh, Scotland
According to the threat-capture hypothesis (Fenker et al., 2010), threatening stimuli activate a threat-detection mechanism, which directs attention to their location. Importantly, this mechanism is theorised to operate preattentively (i.e., in a capacity-free manner). It follows that threatening stimuli should capture attention when they are task-irrelevant, even when attention is engaged elsewhere. We tested this prediction in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants identified a lateralised target that followed a non-informative bilateral display, consisting of one neutral and one angry face. Task demands ensured that attention was broadly distributed across the face display. In Experiment 2, participants performed a central letter-classification task, under conditions of high or low perceptual load, while ignoring the same bilateral face displays. We recorded ERPs time-locked to the onset of the face displays to examine the N2pc component, an index of attentional selection. An N2pc for angry faces was observed in Experiment 1, suggesting that they capture attention when it is broadly distributed. This effect was preserved when the faces were Fourier phase scrambled, suggesting that attentional capture is driven by low-level visual information and not the emotion per se. The N2pc effect was abolished in Experiment 2, even under conditions of low perceptual load, suggesting that concurrent target processing eliminates attentional capture by angry faces. These findings challenge the threat-capture hypothesis; angry faces are preferentially processed under conditions of distributed attention but not when attention is engaged elsewhere.
References
Fenker, D. B., Heipertz, D., Boehler, C. N., Schoenfeld, M. A., Noesselt, T., Henze, H-J., Duezel, E., and Hopf, J-M. (2010). Mandatory processing of irrelevant fearful face features in visual search. J Cognitive Neurosci 22, 2926-2938.
Keywords:
Attention,
emotion,
perceptual load,
ERPs,
N2pc
Conference:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Attention
Citation:
Foster
JJ,
Carmel
D and
Grimshaw
GM
(2012). Attentional capture by angry faces depends on the distribution of attention.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00037
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Received:
14 Oct 2012;
Published Online:
07 Nov 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Joshua J Foster, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, joshua.foster@vuw.ac.nz