Emotional induced attentional blink in trauma-exposed veterans: associations with trauma specific and nonspecific symptoms

Crisis-related stimuli do not increase the emotional attentional blink in a general university student population

Crises such as natural disasters or pandemics negatively impact the mental health of the affected community, increasing rates of depression, anxiety, or stress. It has been proposed that this stems in part from crisis-related stimuli triggering negative reactions that interrupt daily life. Given the frequency and prominence of crisis events, it is crucial to understand when crisis-related stimuli involuntarily capture attention and trigger increased stress and distraction from obligations. The emotional attentional blink (EAB) paradigm-in which emotional distractors hinder report of subsequent targets in streams of rapidly displayed stimuli-allows examination of such attentional capture in a rapidly changing dynamic environment. EABs are typically observed with generally disturbing stimuli, but stimuli related to personal traumas yield similar or greater effects, indicating strong attentional capture by stimuli related to individual trauma history. The current study investigated whether a similar comparable or increased crisis-related EAB exists within a community affected by large-scale crisis. Specifically, effects of conventional emotional distractors and distractors related to recent crises were compared using EABs in university students without a mental health diagnosis. Experiment 1 used images related to Hurricane Harvey, evaluating a crisis 4 years prior to data collection. Experiment 2 used words related to the COVID pandemic, evaluating an ongoing crisis at the time of data collection. In both experiments, the conventional EAB distractors yielded strong EABs, while the crisis-related distractors yielded absent or weak EABs in the same participants. This suggests that crisis-related stimuli do not have special potency for capturing attention in the general university student population. More generally, crises affecting communities do not necessarily yield widespread, strong reactivity to crisis-related stimuli.

More than a feeling: The emotional attentional blink relies on non-emotional "pop out," but is weak compared to the attentional blink

The attentional blink (AB) reveals temporal limits of goal-driven attention: the second of two proximate targets presented in a rapid stream of non-targets is often missed. In the emotional AB (EAB, also termed emotion-induced blindness), an emotionally valenced distractor replacing the first target yields a similar blink. However, the AB and EAB have not been adequately compared, and thus the extent of their mechanistic similarity remains unclear. The current study interleaved AB and EAB trials using identical stimuli in the same participants and observed that the AB is consistently larger than the EAB. Moreover, the four main experiments varied in both target-defining features (semantic vs. perceptual) and EAB distractor salience (emotion alone vs. emotion plus physical distinctiveness); an EAB was observed only when distractors were physically distinct. Even when a large EAB was observed, the AB was still larger using a task with identical targets and fillers in the same individuals. These results suggest that: (1) goal-driven attentional control (measured by the AB) has a greater influence than stimulus-driven attentional control (measured by the EAB: emotion valence and physical distinctiveness) on selection from a dynamic series of stimuli, and (2) emotional valence is insufficient on its own to trigger an EAB. However, these results are consistent with the account that when attention has already been captured by a physically salient distractor, emotional content can interfere with disengagement from the already-attended stimulus.

Time course of attentional bias and its relationship with PTSD symptoms in bereaved Chinese parents who have lost their only child

Background: The death of a child is a highly traumatic event for parents and often leads to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Attentional bias has been demonstrated in the onset and maintenance of PTSD symptoms.Objective: This study aimed to investigate the time course of attentional bias among bereaved Chinese parents who have lost their only child (Shidu parents), and to examine its relationship with PTSD symptoms and symptom clusters.Methods: Shidu parents (n = 38; 50-72 years of age) completed a dot-probe task with negative (trauma-related), positive, and neutral images at four stimulus presentation times (250, 500, 750, and 1250 ms). PTSD symptoms were measured by the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5).Results: We observed difficulty in disengaging from both negative and positive stimuli at 750 ms and attentional bias away from negative stimuli at 1250 ms. At 1250 ms, attentional avoidance of trauma-related stimuli was positively correlated with PCL-5 total and intrusion scores. Difficulty in disengaging from positive stimuli was negatively correlated with PCL-5 total and intrusion scores as well as negative alterations in cogniti and mood scores.Conclusions: These findings enhance our understanding of attentional bias and cognitive-affective processing in PTSD. This study provides evidence that attentional bias (difficulty in disengaging from positive stimuli and bias away from negative stimuli) are correlated with PTSD symptoms and certain symptom clusters.