These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Why does a red snake in the grass capture your attention?
    Author: Huang YM, Yeh YY.
    Journal: Emotion; 2011 Apr; 11(2):224-32. PubMed ID: 21500891.
    Abstract:
    It has been suggested that affective stimuli automatically capture attention; this preferential processing is thought to be related to the evolutionary significance of affective stimuli. However, recent evidence suggests that perceptual salience alone might explain why some affective stimuli are more likely to influence attentional processes in certain contexts. In this study, we manipulated affective and perceptual salience to better understand how affective information is processed and how it impacts attentional processes in different contexts. We used stimuli that are both affectively and perceptually salient, while varying the task requirement to encourage the processing of perceptually salient (Experiment 1) or affectively salient (Experiment 2) information. This design made it possible to observe independent and interdependent relationships between perceptual and affective salience. The results showed that when the task encouraged the processing of perceptually salient information, affective salience did not influence task performance. In contrast, when the task encouraged the processing of affectively salient information, affectively salient information impaired task performance. The findings suggest that the affective nature of the stimuli does not always influence attentional processes.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]