Electrophysiological Responses to Rapidly-Presented Affective Stimuli Predict Individual Differences in Subsequent Attention.

We are constantly surrounded by a dynamically changing perceptual landscape that can influence our behavior even without our full conscious awareness. Emotional processing can have effects on subsequent attention, but there are mixed findings on whether it induces attentional enhancement or interference. The present study used a new multimodal approach to explain and predict such attentional effects based on individual differences in responses to emotional stimuli. We briefly presented affective pictures (neutral, positive, erotic, mutilation, and horror categories) for 80 ms, immediately followed by a cued flanker task that was unrelated to the pictures. Event-related potentials (ERP), skin conductance response (SCR), and reaction time (RT) were measured for each participant. We found that, in general, affective pictures induced higher electrophysiological responses compared to neutral pictures (P300 and late positive potential (LPP) in the erotic condition; P300, LPP, and SCR in the horror condition). In particular, individuals who showed a strong ERP response to the pictures were impeded in the erotic condition (only P300) and facilitated in the horror condition (both P300 and LPP). Those who did not show a significant ERP or SCR response to the pictures were facilitated in the erotic condition and impeded in the horror condition. Furthermore, it was possible to classify the direction of the attentional effect in the erotic and horror conditions from the participants' P300, LPP, and SCR responses. These results demonstrate that underlying individual differences in emotional processing must be considered in understanding and predicting the effects of emotions on attention and cognition.Significance StatementAutomatic influence of emotions on subsequent attention may be adaptive for fast behavioral response to environmental stimuli. The majority of past studies have claimed that pleasant emotions facilitate subsequent attention and that unpleasant emotions impede it. However, several studies directly contradicted such findings by reporting opposite effects, with pleasant pictures impeding attention and unpleasant pictures facilitating it. Our results resolve this discrepancy in the existing literature by showing that depending on how weakly or strongly someone responds to emotional stimuli (erotic and horror categories), they may be either facilitated or distracted in their subsequent attention. Furthermore, we were able to accurately classify the direction of this attentional effect using their ERP and SCR responses to the pictures.