The affective consequences of visual attention in preview search

Comparisons of emotional evaluations of abstract stimuli just seen in a two-object visual search task show that prior distractors are devalued, as compared with prior targets or novel items, perhaps as a consequence of persistent attentional inhibition (Raymond, Fenske, & Tavassoli, 2003). To fu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPsychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 11; no. 6; p. 1055
Main Authors Fenske, Mark J, Raymond, Jane E, Kunar, Melina A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Springer Nature B.V 01.12.2004
Subjects
Adult
Affect
Attention
Emotions
Female
Humans
Male
Neurology
Psychology
Response time
Visual Perception
Visual task performance
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Summary:Comparisons of emotional evaluations of abstract stimuli just seen in a two-object visual search task show that prior distractors are devalued, as compared with prior targets or novel items, perhaps as a consequence of persistent attentional inhibition (Raymond, Fenske, & Tavassoli, 2003). To further explore such attention-emotion effects, we measured search response time in a preview search task and emotional evaluations of colorful, complex images just seen therein. On preview trials, the distractors appeared 1,000 msec before the remaining items. On no-preview trials, all the items were presented simultaneously. A single distractor was then rated for its emotional tone. Previewed distractors were consistently devalued, as compared with nonpreviewed distractors, despite longer exposure and being associated with an easier task. This effect was observed only in the participants demonstrating improved search efficiency with preview, but not in others, indicating that the attentional mechanisms underlying the preview benefit have persistent affective consequences in visual search.
ISSN:1069-9384
1531-5320
DOI:10.3758/BF03196736