Attentional capture by emotional faces is contingent on attentional control settings

Abstract

Attentional capture by schematic emotional faces was investigated in two experiments using the flanker task devised by Eriksen and Eriksen (1974). In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a central target (a schematic face that was either positive or negative) flanked by two identical distractors, one on either side (schematic faces that were positive, negative, or neutral). The objective was to identify the central target as quickly as possible. The impact of the flankers depended on their emotional expression. Consistent with a threat advantage hypothesis (negative faces are processed faster and attract more processing resources), responses to positive faces were slower when these were flanked by (response incompatible) negative faces as compared with positive or neutral faces, whereas responses to negative faces were unaffected by the identity of the flankers. Experiment 2 was a standard flanker task with letter stimuli except that the task-neutral flankers were schematic faces that were either positive, negative, or emotionally neutral. In this case, in which faces and emotional expressions were to be ignored, performance seemed entirely unaffected by the faces. This result suggests that attentional capture by emotional faces is contingent on attentional control settings.

Keywords:

• Visual attention
• Attentional capture
• Emotional expressions
• Schematic faces
• Flanker task

Notes

¹Other experimental paradigms, not discussed here, include RSVP and attentional blink paradigms (e.g., Anderson & Phelps, 2001), the emotional Stroop task (Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996; also see MacLeod, 1991), and the spatial cuing (dot-probe) task (Bradley, Mogg, Falla, & Hamilton, 1998; MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986; also see Cooper & Langton, 2006; Fox, Russo, Bowles, & Dutton, 2001; Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002).

²We also conducted an overall analysis using a 2 (Target Emotion: positive vs. negative)×4 (Flanker Condition: no-flanker, compatible, neutral, incompatible) repeated-measures ANOVA. This analysis revealed a similar pattern of results: The main effect of Flanker Condition on mean RTs was significant, F(3, 117)=7.42, MSE=263.61, p<.001; the main effect of Target Emotion was not significant, F<1; and the interaction between Target Emotion and Flanker Condition was significant, F(2.64, 102.81)=5.15, MSE=239.18, p<.01. For all of the multi-factor ANOVAs reported in this paper, the Greenhouse–Geisser correction was used to adjust the degrees of freedom in the cases where Mauchly's test indicated that the assumption of sphericity had been violated.