Effects of spatial cues on locating emotional targets

Abstract

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slower responding to a visual target appearing at a previously cued versus uncued location. In three experiments, we asked whether IOR would be affected by the emotional content of target stimuli. Participants reported the location of negative (spiders, angry faces) or neutral (objects, neutral faces) targets as quickly and accurately as possible after a valid or invalid location cue (a simple circle). IOR was significantly smaller when detecting negative versus neutral targets, but only after repeated exposures to these stimuli (i.e., with blocked presentations). This effect was eliminated when target type was randomized within blocks. By presenting negative versus neutral targets in short alternating blocks and examining IOR on the first trial of each new block, we show that the emotional modulation of IOR stems from the affective context in place before visual orienting is initiated, not by perceptual processing of the target after cue offset.

Keywords:

• Affect
• Emotion
• Inhibition of return
• Visual orienting

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by grant BBS/B/16178 to JR from BBSRC (UK). HR was supported by a studentship from the ESRC (UK).

Notes

¹Note that Taylor and Therrien (2008, Experiments 1–3) found the IOR effect was modulated by target content, but this modulation was only evident when employing a discrimination response, a response mode not used in their earlier study orin the experiments reported here.

²This absence of an interaction between target type and cue validity was still absent when the trial numbers were equated to match those from Experiment 1A at the 1000 ms SOA, F<1.

³Again trial numbers here were equated with those from Experiment 2A. The target expression and cue validity interaction still remained nonsignificant, F(1, 38) = 2.52, p=.12.