Emotional Content Modulates Attentional Visual Orientation During Free Viewing of Natural Images

Shifts in task absorption during decision-making episodes

In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, this study investigates the impact of new technology on organizational work dynamics. By integrating the Job Demands-Resources theory and the Episodic Process Model, we examine the cognitive mechanisms that influence task performance during decision-making episodes. Our research focuses on episodic job demands and resources, emphasizing the mediating role of task absorption in the relationship between these factors and task performance. Our findings reveal that episodic job resources positively affect task absorption and performance, while job demands moderate the relationship between job resources and task absorption. Employing the Beer Distribution Game alongside neuroscience-based eye-tracking techniques, we analyze visual attention dynamics during decision-making episodes, providing novel insights into the interplay between task absorption and task performance. Theoretically, our study highlights the significance of task absorption in understanding how episodic job resources impact decision-making performance. Practically, our results advocate for the implementation of decision-making-focused skills development through physiological measures such as neurofeedback training programs. This research underscores the importance of individual time management in enhancing task performance, contributing to a nuanced understanding of job resources, job demands, and task absorption in the context of technological transformation.

Eye movements reveal age differences in how arousal modulates saliency priority but not attention processing speed

The arousal-biased competition theory posits that inducing arousal increases attentional priority of salient stimuli while reducing priority of non-pertinent stimuli. However, unlike in young adults, older adults rarely exhibit shifts in priority under increased arousal, and prior studies have proposed different neural mechanisms to explain how arousal differentially modulates selective attention in older adults. Therefore, we investigated how the threat of unpredictable shock differentially modulates attentional control mechanisms in young and older adults by observing eye movements. Participants completed two oculomotor search tasks in which the salient distractor was typically captured by attention (singleton search) or proactively suppressed (feature search). We found that arousal did not modulate attentional priority for any stimulus among older adults nor affect the speed of attention processing in either age group. Furthermore, we observed that arousal modulated pupil sizes and found a correlation between evoked pupil responses and oculomotor function. Our findings suggest age differences in how the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system interacts with neural networks of attention and oculomotor function.

The effect of emotional arousal on visual attentional performance: a systematic review

Although the arousal elicited by emotional stimuli, similarly to valence, is an integrative part of emotion theories, previous studies and reviews mostly focused on the valence of a stimulus and rarely investigated the role of arousal. Here, I systematically searched for articles that used visual attentional paradigms, manipulated emotional arousal by auditory or visual, task-relevant or task-irrelevant stimuli, measured behavioral responses, ocular behavior, or neural correlates. I found that task-relevant arousing stimuli draw and hold attention regardless of the modality. In contrast, task-irrelevant arousing stimuli impaired task performance. However, when the emotional content precedes the task or it is presented for a longer duration, arousal increased performance. Future directions on how research could address the remaining questions are discussed.

Influence of social media and corrected smile photographs in patients with malocclusion

INTRODUCTION

The increased use of social networking sites, such as Instagram (Meta Platforms, Menlo Park, Calif), has been silently affecting facial satisfaction among patients. However, the potential of Instagram to motivate participants for orthodontic treatment when used with an adjunct, a photograph editing software, is yet to be assessed.

METHODS

From the initial 300 participants, 256 were included and randomly divided into an experimental group (participants were asked to provide their frontal smiling photograph) and a control group. The photographs received were corrected using photograph editing software and were shown along with other ideal smile photographs in an Instagram account to the experimental group, whereas the control group participants had access to only the ideal smile photographs. After browsing, the participants were given a modified version of the Malocclusion-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire.

RESULTS

Questions assessing the general perception about one's smile, comparison with peers, desire to undergo orthodontic treatment, and the role of socioeconomic status showed a statistically significant difference (P <0.05) as most of the control group participants were unsatisfied with their teeth, had less desire to undergo orthodontic treatment and did not feel family's financial income to be a hurdle, contrary to the experimental group participants. A statistically significant difference (P <0.05) was also seen in assessing external acceptance, speech difficulties, and the influence of Instagram on orthodontic treatment, whereas the influence of photograph editing software did not show the same.

CONCLUSIONS

The study concluded that the experimental group participants were motivated to undergo orthodontic treatment after viewing their corrected photograph.

The relationship between self, value-based reward, and emotion prioritisation effects

People show systematic biases in perception, memory, attention, and decision-making to prioritise information related to self, reward, and positive emotion. A long-standing set of experimental findings points towards putative common properties of these effects. However, the relationship between them remains largely unknown. Here, we addressed this question by assessing and linking these prioritisation effects generated by a common associative matching procedure in three experiments. Self, reward, and positive emotion prioritisation effects were assessed using cluster and shift function analyses to explore and test associations between these effects across individuals. Cluster analysis revealed two distinct patterns of the relationship between the biases. Individuals with faster responses showed a smaller reward and linear positive association between reward and emotion biases. Individuals with slower responses demonstrated a large reward and no association between reward and emotion biases. No evidence of the relationship between self and value-based reward or positive emotion prioritisation effects was found among the clusters. A shift function indicated a partial dominance of high-reward over low-reward distributions at later processing stages in participants with slower but not faster responses. Full stochastic dominance of self-relevance over others and positive over neutral emotion was pertinent to each subgroup of participants. Our findings suggest the independent origin of the self-prioritisation effect. In contrast, commonalities in cognitive mechanisms supporting value-based reward and positive emotion processing are subject to individual differences. These findings add important evidence to a steadily growing research base about the relationship between basic behavioural drivers.

An emotion-eliciting version of the Hayling Sentence Completion Test

INTRODUCTION

Executive functions comprise a suite of higher-order cognitive processes, which interact with other processes, such as emotion, to drive goal-directed behavior. The Hayling Sentence Completion Test is a widely used standard neuropsychological tool to measure executive functions, namely verbal initiation and suppression. The current studies aimed to establish and validate an emotion-eliciting version of the Hayling Sentence Completion Test, in order to examine the executive processes of initiation and suppression in an emotional context. Study 1 aimed to provide a quantitative evaluation of the emotional content of the Emotional Hayling Test. Study 2 investigated the differences between the Standard and Emotional Hayling Tests, and explored how performance relates to specific emotional properties of the sentences within the Emotional Hayling.

METHODS

Study 1 included N = 100 participants, who were asked to rate each Emotional Hayling Sentence stem in terms of valence (pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (intensity: low-high). Study 2 included N = 204 participants who completed the Emotional Hayling Test, along with other neuropsychological measures of cognitive and affective functioning.

RESULTS

As designed, the sentence stimuli in the Emotional Hayling were rated as significantly higher in absolute emotional valence and arousal, compared to the Standard Hayling (Study 1). Overall, initiation and suppression on the Emotional Hayling were significantly poorer than on the Standard Hayling (Study 2). Finally, within the Emotional Hayling, participants made more suppression errors in response to negative sentences compared to positive sentences, and this effect was present in younger but not older adults.

CONCLUSIONS

Reduced performance on the Emotional Hayling Test, particularly in response to negative sentences, is consistent with the emotional content placing increased demands on the executive function system. We present the Emotional Hayling Test as a promising clinical tool, with the potential to capture disruptions in emotional processing.

The influence of stimuli valence, extraversion, and emotion regulation on visual search within real-world scenes

Affective traits, including extraversion and emotion regulation, are important considerations in clinical psychology due to their associations with the occurrence of affective disorders. Previously, emotional real-world scenes have been shown to influence visual search. However, it is currently unknown whether extraversion and emotion regulation can influence visual search towards neutral targets embedded within real-world scenes, or whether these traits can impact the effect of emotional stimuli on visual search. An opportunity sample of healthy individuals had trait levels of extraversion and emotion regulation recorded before completing a visual search task. Participants more accurately identified search targets in neutral images compared to positive images, whilst response times were slower in negative images. Importantly, individuals with higher trait levels of expressive suppression displayed faster identification of search targets regardless of the emotional valence of the stimuli. Extraversion and cognitive reappraisal did not influence visual search. These findings add to our understanding regarding the influence of extraversion, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression on our ability to allocate attention during visual search when viewing real-world scenes.

The relationship between dispositional attention to feelings and visual attention to emotion

Attention to feelings is a core dimension of individual differences in the perception of one's emotions. It concerns the frequency with which own emotions are attended to. The aim of the present eye-tracking investigation was to examine the relationship of dispositional attention to feelings with early and late attentional processes in the visual perception of emotional information. Attentional orientation was assessed in a sample of healthy women (N = 91) using eye-tracking during a free viewing task in which images with positive, negative and neutral content were shown simultaneously. Pictures were taken from the Besançon Affective Picture Set. State and trait affect, depression, and intelligence of participants were controlled. In our sample, attention to feelings was not related to positive affect, negative affect, depression or intelligence. Attention to feelings was negatively correlated with entry times for all emotional picture types. Moreover, attention to feelings was positively correlated with dwell time on positive images and negatively correlated with dwell time on neutral images. Our data indicate that devoting habitually attention to one's feelings is linked to an enhanced initial orientation of attention towards emotional scenes, irrespective of affective valence. Dispositional attention to feelings might also be associated with an attentional preference for emotional over neutral visual stimuli. The present findings on general individual differences in attention to feelings could have important implications for future clinical research on attentional biases.

Influence of Attention Control on Implicit and Explicit Emotion Processing of Face and Body: Evidence From Flanker and Same-or-Different Paradigms

Many existing findings indicate that processing of emotional information is pre-attentive, largely immune from attentional control. Nevertheless, inconsistent evidence on the interference of emotional cues on cognitive processing suggests that this influence may be a highly conditional phenomenon. The aim of the present study was twofold: (1) to examine the modulation of attention control on emotion processing using facial expressions (2) explore the very same effect for emotional body expressions. In Experiment 1, participants performed a Flanker task in which they had to indicate either the emotion (happy/fearful) or the gender of the target stimulus while ignoring the distracting stimuli at the side. We found evidence for intrusion of the emotional dimension of a stimulus in both the emotion and gender discrimination performance, thus when either task-relevant or task-irrelevant. To further explore the influence of attention control mechanisms, in Experiment 2 participants performed a same-or-different judgment task in which they were asked to pay attention to both the central and lateral stimuli and indicated whether the central stimulus matched the lateral for emotion or gender. Results showed that emotional features exerted an influence at an implicit level (i.e., during gender judgments) for bodies only. Gender features did not affect emotional processing in either experiments. To rule out the possibility that this effect was driven by postural rather than emotional features of fearful vs. happy stimuli, a control experiment was conducted. In Experiment 3, bodies with an opening/up-ward or closing/down-ward posture but with no emotional valence were presented. Results revealed that the body posture did not influence gender discrimination. Findings suggest that the emotional valence of a face or body stimulus can overpass attention filtering mechanisms, independently from the level of attentional modulation (Experiment 1). However, broadening the focus of attention to include the lateral stimuli led emotional information to intrude on the main task, exerting an implicit, bottom–up influence on gender processing, only when conveyed by bodies (Experiment 2). Results point to different mechanisms for the implicit processing of face and body emotional expressions, with the latter likely having role on action preparation processes.