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The Blink and the Body.

Erik M BenauRuth Ann Atchley
Published in: Experimental psychology (2022)
We evaluated the interaction of emotion, interoceptive awareness (IA), and attention using an attentional blink (AB) task. Healthy undergraduates completed a cardiac awareness task and, based on previously validated cut scores, were classified as high or average perceivers ( n = 19 in each group; matched on age and gender). Participants completed an AB task with counterbalanced emotional and/or neutral lexical stimuli as the first target (T1) and/or the second target (T2). Both high and average perceivers exhibited retroactive interference in conditions where T2 immediately followed T1. However, only the average perceivers exhibited a significant blink effect: They reported T2 inaccurately in trials in which one intervening stimulus occurred between T1 and T2. High perceivers exhibited their best performance in trials where both targets were emotional; average perceivers exhibited their worst performance in these trials. These results contribute to a small but growing literature that suggests IA and exteroceptive attention are related systems.
Keyphrases
  • working memory
  • depressive symptoms
  • left ventricular
  • mental health
  • heart failure
  • atrial fibrillation