Emotional real-world scenes impact visual search

Bendall, RCA; Mohamed, A; Thompson, C

Abstract

Research shows that emotional stimuli can capture attention, and this can benefit or impair performance, depending on the characteristics of a task. Additionally, whilst some findings show that attention expands under positive conditions, others show that emotion has no influence on the broadening of attention. The current study investigated whether emotional real-world scenes influence attention in a visual search task. Participants were asked to identify a target letter embedded in the centre or periphery of emotional images. Identification accuracy was lower in positive images compared to neutral images, and
response times were slower in negative images. This suggests that real-world emotional stimuli have a distracting effect on visual attention and search. There was no evidence that emotional images influenced the spatial spread of attention. Instead, it is suggested that findings may provide support for the argument that positive emotion encourages a global processing style and negative emotion promotes local processing.

Citation

Bendall, R., Mohamed, A., & Thompson, C. (2019). Emotional real-world scenes impact visual search. Cognitive processing, 20, 309-316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0898-x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 17, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Dec 24, 2018
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 7, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 7, 2019
• Journal: Cognitive Processing
• Print ISSN: 1612-4782
• Electronic ISSN: 1612-4790
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Volume: 20
• Pages: 309-316
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0898-x
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0898-x
• Related Public URLs: https://link.springer.com/journal/10339