The Influence of Valence and Motivation Dimensions of Affective States on Attentional Breadth and the Attentional Blink

Affective state has been shown to affect attention, but the affective dimension responsible for attentional effects remains under debate. Some studies suggest that attentional effects depend on the valence dimension of the affective state. Others have proposed that attentional effects depend on the motivational intensity of the affective state. We tested the effect of induced affective states on the attentional blink and attentional breadth. In separate conditions, we induced four affective states with different combinations of valence (positive vs. negative) and motivational intensity (low vs. high). We used an RSVP digit identification task to measure the attentional blink and used the local-global visual processing task to measure attentional breadth. For both tasks, affective pictures were presented before each trial to induce the intended affective state. In Experiment 1, the affective pictures were chosen to have similar average arousal across conditions, whereas in Experiment 2, arousal was allowed to covary with expected motivational intensity. Contrary to previous findings, we found no evidence that affective state influenced either the attentional blink or attention breadth. We found no detectable differences between conditions with positive or negative induced affect, nor between affective state conditions with low or high motivational intensity. For attentional blink, the size of the possible effects was at most a 2-3% change in detection rate. Our results suggest that either the affective induction method is not reliably effective, or there is not a direct relationship between the valence or motivational intensity of affective state and the distribution of attention. Public Significance Statement Emotional state has been found to influence distribution of attention. In this study, we distinguish the effects of emotional valence (positive vs negative) and motivational intensity (high vs low) of emotional state. Contrary to previous findings, we found no systematic effects on either the spatial distribution of attention (attentional breadth) or temporal limitation of attention (the attentional blink). Our results suggest that the effect of emotion on attention is not a simple function of either valence or motivational intensity.

Automated summary

Affective state has been found to influence the distribution of attention. This study distinguishes the effects of emotional valence (positive vs. negative) and motivational intensity (high vs. low) on attention. Contrary to previous findings, no systematic effects were found on either the spatial distribution of attention (attentional breadth) or temporal limitation of attention (the attentional blink). The results suggest that the effect of emotion on attention is not solely determined by valence or motivational intensity.