selective attention to task-irrelevant emotional distractors is unaffected by the perceptual load associated with a foreground task选择性注意task-irrelevant情感干扰物的影响知觉负载与前台相关的任务.pdfVIP

Selective Attention to Task-Irrelevant Emotional Distractors Is Unaffected by the Perceptual Load Associated with a Foreground Task 1,2 ¨ 1 Catherine Hindi Attar , Matthias M. Muller * 1 Institute of Psychology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, 2 Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany Abstract A number of studies have shown that emotionally arousing stimuli are preferentially processed in the human brain. Whether or not this preference persists under increased perceptual load associated with a task at hand remains an open question. Here we manipulated two possible determinants of the attentional selection process, perceptual load associated with a foreground task and the emotional valence of concurrently presented task-irrelevant distractors. As a direct measure of sustained attentional resource allocation in early visual cortex we used steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) elicited by distinct flicker frequencies of task and distractor stimuli. Subjects either performed a detection (low load) or discrimination (high load) task at a centrally presented symbol stream that flickered at 8.6 Hz while task-irrelevant neutral or unpleasant pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) flickered at a frequency of 12 Hz in the background of the stream. As reflected in target detection rates and SSVEP amplitudes to both task and distractor stimuli, unpleasant relative to neutral background pictures more strongly withdrew processing resources from the foreground task. Importantly, this finding was unaffected by the factor ‘load’ which turned out to be a weak modulator of attentional processin