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Affective influences on the attentional dynamics supporting awareness
- Journal of Experimental Psycholology: General
, 2005
"... Identification of a 1st target stimulus in a rapid serial visual presentation sequence leads to transient impairment in report for a 2nd target;this is known as the attentional blink (AB). This AB impairment was substantially alleviated for emotionally significant target words. AB sparing was not at ..."
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Cited by 105 (3 self)
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Identification of a 1st target stimulus in a rapid serial visual presentation sequence leads to transient impairment in report for a 2nd target;this is known as the attentional blink (AB). This AB impairment was substantially alleviated for emotionally significant target words. AB sparing was not attributable to a variety of nonaffective stimulus factors that could result in augmented distinctiveness. Arousal value, not the valence of stimulus events, was found to be responsible for AB sparing. These results suggest that arousal is associated with decreased attentional prerequisites for awareness, enabling emotional significance to shape perceptual experience. Perceptions and memories are not all created equal, nor should they be. It has been long known that memories for the significant and mundane events in a person’s life are not formed with equal durability and fidelity but are instead modulated by their emotional significance (for a review, see Christianson, 1992). A functionalist account suggests this difference in the fate of remembered and forgotten events is due to the fact that memories are to serve some predictive utility that aids one’s ability to later navigate within
On second glance: Still no high-level pop-out effect for faces
- Vision Res
, 2006
"... Research, 45(13), 1707–1724) reported, in contradiction to several earlier studies, that photographs of human faces can be searched for efficiently (i.e., ‘‘pop out’’) among photographs of other objects (as long as these objects are not ‘‘too similar’ ’ to faces). An apparent search asymmetry betwee ..."
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Cited by 23 (0 self)
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Research, 45(13), 1707–1724) reported, in contradiction to several earlier studies, that photographs of human faces can be searched for efficiently (i.e., ‘‘pop out’’) among photographs of other objects (as long as these objects are not ‘‘too similar’ ’ to faces). An apparent search asymmetry between faces and other categories (houses, cars) pointed to the existence of a specialized ‘‘face map’’. Findings of impaired performance for scrambled images were presented as evidence that this face pop out is a high-level, ‘‘holistic’ ’ effect. While the main pop-out effect cannot be disputed, several choices made in that study in terms of experiment design, analysis and interpretation are questionable. After discussing these issues, I report novel experiments which show that (i) the face pop-out effect can be replicated, but under controlled conditions there is no asymmetry between faces and other objects (cars); (ii) inverting pictures and hence disrupting holistic face processing has only a minor effect on search performance; (iii) finally, search becomes inefficient when Fourier amplitude information (which carries global low-level statistical properties of images) is made irrelevant, and only phase information (carrying contour localization) can be used to detect faces. These results imply, contrary to the target article, that the face pop-out effect is mostly based on low-level factors.
Spatial attention modulates initial afferent activity in human primary visual cortex
- Cereb. Cortex
, 2008
"... It is well established that spatially directed attention enhances visual perceptual processing. However, the earliest level at which processing can be affected remains unknown. To date, there has been no report of modulation of the earliest visual event-related potential component ‘‘C1’ ’ in humans, ..."
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Cited by 16 (1 self)
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It is well established that spatially directed attention enhances visual perceptual processing. However, the earliest level at which processing can be affected remains unknown. To date, there has been no report of modulation of the earliest visual event-related potential component ‘‘C1’ ’ in humans, which indexes initial afference in primary visual cortex (V1). Thus it has been suggested that initial V1 activity is impenetrable, and that the earliest modulations occur in extrastriate cortex. However, the C1 is highly variable across individuals, to the extent that uniform measurement across a group may poorly reflect the dynamics of V1 activity. In the present study we employed an individualized mapping procedure to control for such variability. Parameters for optimal C1 measurement were determined in an independent, preliminary ‘‘probe’ ’ session and later applied in a follow-up session involving a spatial cueing task. In the spatial task, subjects were cued on each trial to direct attention toward 1 of 2 locations in anticipation of an imperative Gabor stimulus and were required to detect a region of lower luminance appearing within the Gabor pattern 30 % of the time at the cued location only. Our data show robust spatial attentional enhancement of the C1, beginning as early as its point of onset (57 ms). Source analysis of the attentional modulations points to generation in striate cortex. This finding demonstrates that at the very moment that visual information first arrives in cortex, it is already being shaped by the brain’s attentional biases.
Awareness of faces is modulated by their emotional meaning
- Emotion
, 2006
"... A central question in perception is how stimuli are selected for access to awareness. This study investigated the impact of emotional meaning on detection of faces using the attention blink paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that fearful faces were detected more frequently than neutral faces, and Experim ..."
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Cited by 15 (2 self)
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A central question in perception is how stimuli are selected for access to awareness. This study investigated the impact of emotional meaning on detection of faces using the attention blink paradigm. Experiment 1 showed that fearful faces were detected more frequently than neutral faces, and Experiment 2 revealed preferential detection of fearful faces compared with happy faces. To rule out image artifacts as a cause for these results, Experiment 3 manipulated the emotional meaning of neutral faces through fear conditioning and showed a selective increase in detection of conditioned faces. These results extend previous reports of preferential detection of emotional words or schematic objects and suggest that fear conditioning can modulate detection of formerly neutral stimuli.
That baby caught my eye. . . Attention capture by infant faces
- Emotion
, 2007
"... An alternative to the view that during evolution the human brain became specialized to preferentially attend to threat-related stimuli is to assume that all classes of stimuli that have high biological significance are prioritized by the attention system. Newborns are highly biologically relevant st ..."
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Cited by 15 (4 self)
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An alternative to the view that during evolution the human brain became specialized to preferentially attend to threat-related stimuli is to assume that all classes of stimuli that have high biological significance are prioritized by the attention system. Newborns are highly biologically relevant stimuli for members of a species, as their survival is important for reproductive success. The authors examined whether the Kindchenschema (baby schema) as described by Lorenz (1943) captures attention in the dot probe task. The results confirm attentional capture by photos of human infants presented to the left visual field, suggesting right hemisphere advantage. The magnitude of the attentional modulation was highly correlated with subjective arousal ratings of the photos. The findings show that biologically significant positive stimuli are prioritized by the attention system.
Neural and behavioral evidence for affective priming from unconsciously perceived emotional facial expressions and the influence of trait anxiety
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
, 2008
"... & Affective judgments can often be influenced by emotional information people unconsciously perceive, but the neural mechanisms responsible for these effects and how they are modulated by individual differences in sensitivity to threat are unclear. Here we studied subliminal affective priming by ..."
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Cited by 15 (3 self)
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& Affective judgments can often be influenced by emotional information people unconsciously perceive, but the neural mechanisms responsible for these effects and how they are modulated by individual differences in sensitivity to threat are unclear. Here we studied subliminal affective priming by re-cording brain potentials to surprise faces preceded by 30-msec happy or fearful prime faces. Participants showed valence-consistent changes in affective ratings of surprise faces, al-though they reported no knowledge of prime-face expressions, nor could they discriminate between prime-face expressions in a forced-choice test. In conjunction with the priming effect on affective evaluation, larger occipital P1 potentials at 145– 175 msec were found with fearful than with happy primes, and source analyses implicated the bilateral extrastriate cortex in this effect. Later brain potentials at 300–400 msec were enhanced with happy versus fearful primes, which may re-f lect differential attentional orienting. Personality testing for sensitivity to threat, especially social threat, was also used to evaluate individual differences potentially relevant to sublim-inal affective priming. Indeed, participants with high trait anxiety demonstrated stronger affective priming and greater P1 differences than did those with low trait anxiety, and these effects were driven by fearful primes. Results thus suggest that unconsciously perceived affective information influences social judgments by altering very early perceptual analyses, and that this influence is accentuated to the extent that peo-ple are oversensitive to threat. In this way, perception may be subject to a variety of inf luences that govern social preferences in the absence of concomitant awareness of such influences. &
The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression.
- Cognitive Brain Research,
, 2005
"... . The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression. Cognitive Brain Research 25 (2): 508-520. This is an author-produced version of a paper published in Cognitive Brain Research . This version has been peer-reviewed, but it does not inc ..."
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Cited by 14 (0 self)
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. The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression. Cognitive Brain Research 25 (2): 508-520. This is an author-produced version of a paper published in Cognitive Brain Research . This version has been peer-reviewed, but it does not include the final publisher proof corrections, published layout or pagination. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any component of this work in other works, must be obtained from the copyright holder. Copyright © 2005 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved. All articles available through Birkbeck ePrints are protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. ABSTRACT To investigate the impact of spatial frequency on emotional facial expression analysis, ERPs were recorded in response to low spatial frequency (LSF), high spatial frequency (HSF), and unfiltered broad spatial frequency (BSF) faces with fearful or neutral expressions, houses, and chairs. In line with previous findings, BSF fearful facial expressions elicited a greater frontal positivity than BSF neutral facial expressions, starting at about 150 ms after stimulus onset. In contrast, this emotional expression effect was absent for HSF and LSF faces. Given that some brain regions involved in emotion processing, such as amygdala and connected structures, are selectively tuned to LSF visual inputs, these data suggest that ERP effects of emotional facial expression do not directly reflect activity in these regions. It is argued that higher order neocortical brain systems are involved in the generation of emotion-specific waveform modulations. The face-sensitive N170 component was neither affected by emotional facial expression nor by spatial frequency information. Theme: Neural Basis of Behaviour Topic: Cognition
Emotional voice areas: anatomic location, functional properties, and structural connections revealed by combined fMRI/DTI
- Cereb. Cortex
, 2012
"... We determined the location, functional response profile, and structural fiber connections of auditory areas with voice- and emotion-sensitive activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging. Bilateral regions responding to emotional voices were consistently f ..."
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Cited by 12 (0 self)
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We determined the location, functional response profile, and structural fiber connections of auditory areas with voice- and emotion-sensitive activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging. Bilateral regions responding to emotional voices were consistently found in the superior temporal gyrus, posterolateral to the primary auditory cortex. Event-related fMRI showed stronger responses in these areas to voices-expressing anger, sadness, joy, and relief, relative to voices with neutral prosody. Their neural responses were primarily driven by prosodic arousal, irrespective of valence. Probabilistic fiber tracking revealed direct structural connections of these ‘‘emotional voice areas’ ’ (EVA) with ipsilateral medial geniculate body, which is the major input source of early auditory cortex, as well as with the ipsilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal lobe (IPL). In addition, vocal emotions (compared with neutral prosody) increased the functional coupling of EVA with the ipsilateral IFG but not IPL. These results provide new insights into the neural architecture of the human voice processing system and support a crucial involvement of IFG in the recognition of vocal emotions, whereas IPL may subserve distinct auditory spatial functions, consistent with distinct anatomical substrates for the processing of ‘‘how’ ’ and ‘‘where’ ’ information within the auditory pathways.
Emotion and the processing of symbolic gestures: An event-related brain potential study
- Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
, 2011
"... The present study used event-related brain potentials to examine the hypothesis that emotional gestures draw attentional resources at the level of distinct processing stages. Twenty healthy volunteers viewed pictures of hand gestures with negative (insult) and positive (approval) emotional meaning a ..."
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Cited by 10 (4 self)
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The present study used event-related brain potentials to examine the hypothesis that emotional gestures draw attentional resources at the level of distinct processing stages. Twenty healthy volunteers viewed pictures of hand gestures with negative (insult) and positive (approval) emotional meaning as well as neutral control gestures (pointing) while dense sensor event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Emotion effects were reflected in distinct ERP modulations in early and later time windows. Insult gestures elicited increased P1, early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components as compared to neutral control gestures. Processing of approval gestures was associated with an increased P1 wave and enlarged EPN amplitudes during an early time window, while the LPP amplitude was not significantly modulated. Accordingly, negative insult gestures appear more potent than positive approval gestures in inducing a heightened state of attention during processing stages implicated in stimulus recognition and focused attention.
The costs of emotional attention: affective processing inhibits subsequent lexico-semantic analysis
- J
, 2007
"... & The human brain has evolved to process motivationally rel-evant information in an optimized manner. The perceptual benefit for emotionally arousing material, termed motivated attention, is indexed by electrocortical amplification at various levels of stimulus analysis. An outstanding issue, pa ..."
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Cited by 9 (2 self)
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& The human brain has evolved to process motivationally rel-evant information in an optimized manner. The perceptual benefit for emotionally arousing material, termed motivated attention, is indexed by electrocortical amplification at various levels of stimulus analysis. An outstanding issue, particularly on a neuronal level, refers to whether and how perceptual enhancement for arousing signals translates into modified processing of information presented in temporal or spatial proximity to the affective cue. The present studies aimed to examine facilitation and interference effects of task-irrelevant emotional pictures on subsequent word identification. In the context of forced-choice lexical decision tasks, pictures vary-ing in hedonic valence and emotional arousal preceded word/ pseudoword targets. Across measures and experiments, high-arousing compared to low-arousing pictures were associated with impaired processing of word targets. Arousing pleasant and unpleasant pictures prolonged word reaction times irrespective of stimulus-onset asynchrony (80 msec, 200 msec, 440 msec) and salient semantic category differences (e.g., erot-ica vs. mutilation pictures). On a neuronal level, interference was reflected in reduced N1 responses (204–264 msec) to both target types. Paralleling behavioral effects, suppression of the late positivity (404–704 msec) was more pronounced for word compared to pseudoword targets. Regional source mod-eling indicated that early reduction effects originated from in-hibited cortical activity in posterior areas of the left inferior temporal cortex associated with orthographic processing. Mod-eling of later reduction effects argues for interference in distributed semantic networks comprising left anterior tempo-ral and parietal sources. Thus, affective processing interferes with subsequent lexico-semantic analysis along the ventral stream. &
