Perceptual Salience Does Not Influence Emotional Arousal’s Impairing Effects on Top-Down Attention

Emotional arousal impairs top-down attentional control while strengthening bottom-up attentional biases. In this study, we examined whether top-down impairments due to arousal can be modulated by increasing the perceptual salience of the target stimulus. To examine this question, positive and negative arousing images were briefly displayed prior to the encoding of two emotionally neutral items, one of which was to be remembered, and one of which was perceptually salient (the to-be-remembered and the salient item were either the same item or different items). Eyetracking was used to measure attention biases during the encoding of the two competing neutral items, as well as to measure pupillary responses to the preceding modulator image. Viewing emotional images regardless of valence, impaired top-down attention to animate stimulus targets (i.e. animals), regardless of perceptual salience. However, these effects on encoding had no influence on recognition memory. Taken together, these findings reveal that exposure to emotionally arousing images impairs top-down attention to animate stimuli, regardless of whether or not that stimulus is perceptually salient.

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(30/01/2024, 16:21:53 )

Emotional arousal impacts salience-driven attention biases, a goal relevant stimulus can low lower this effect

“In addition, our findings suggest that although emotional arousal can impact bottom-up attention biases that are driven by differences in perceptual salience, such effects are not observed when the contents of working memory are consumed by a goal-relevant stimulus.” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 15)

“the impairing effects of emotion on top-down attention dominate and the effects on bottom-up attention are no longer observed” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 15)

“exposure to an emotionally arousing stimulus changes how bottom-up and top- down influences interact during perception” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 17)

arousal, attention and memory

“Emotionally arousing stimuli attract attention and are more memorable than non-emotional stimuli (Mather, 2007; Pourtois, Schettino, & Vuilleumier, 2013; Talmi, 2013)” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 3)

“Emotionally arousing stimuli are attention grabbing and highly memorable, and they also have influences on attention and memory that continue after the removal of the emotional stimulus.” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 13)

“Yet it is unclear whether arousal’s influence on attention is consistent across top-down and bottom-up attention biases

. It is also unclear whether the associated valence of the arousal modulates these effects similarly.” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 3)

Visual Salience: “resulting in a ‘bottom-up’ attention bias towards the salient stimuli”

“Stimuli have visual salience when they stand out due to contrast with their surroundings, resulting in a ‘bottom-up’ attention bias towards the salient stimuli (Itti & Koch, 2001)” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 3)

Valence … for positive and negative

“It is important to note that emotional arousal is not limited to negative valence, and there is evidence that arousal has similar effects on bottom-up attention biases regardless of whether the associated valence is positive or negative (Brosch, Sander, Pourtois, & Scherer, 2008; Sutherland & Mather, under review)” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 5)

“Moreover, the degree to which a stimulus receives attention should be reflected in later memory. Emotional stimuli themselves receive more attention and are better remembered than neutral stimuli (Mather, 2007),” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 5)

Arousal enhances stimuli towards salience when attention is bottom up

“Evidence suggests that exposure to emotionally arousing stimuli enhances subsequent attention biases to perceptual salient stimuli when the attention bias is bottom up and does not rely on executive control (T.-H. Lee, Baek, Lu, & Mather, in press; T.-H. Lee et al., 2012; Sutherland & Mather, 2012, 2015)” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 14)

Higher attention in animal targets

“From this perspective animal targets should receive more overall attention than object targets, which is what we observed. Because of this overall bias, emotion’s influence on top-down attention may be greater for animal targets, as we observed in our results.” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 14)

“our findings provide evidence that emotion’s influence on attention may be greater for neutral items that in reality move or are to some degree animate, such animals. In addition, the recognition results suggest the impact of bottom-up salience on memory is greater for animals than for objects.” (Sutherland et al., 2017, p. 15)