title: Emotional and neutral scenes in competition: orienting, efficiency, and identification.
abstract: To investigate preferential processing of emotional scenes competing for limited attentional resources with neutral scenes, prime pictures were presented briefly (450 ms), peripherally (5.2 degrees away from fixation), and simultaneously (one emotional and one neutral scene) versus singly. Primes were followed by a mask and a probe for recognition. Hit rate was higher for emotional than for neutral scenes in the dual- but not in the single-prime condition, and A' sensitivity decreased for neutral but not for emotional scenes in the dual-prime condition. This preferential processing involved both selective orienting and efficient encoding, as revealed, respectively, by a higher probability of first fixation on--and shorter saccade latencies to--emotional scenes and by shorter fixation time needed to accurately identify emotional scenes, in comparison with neutral scenes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205 Tenerife, Spain. mgcalvo@ull.es
authors.forename: Manuel G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Calvo
authors.forename: Lauri
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nummenmaa
authors.forename: Jukka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hyönä
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004526:Efficiency / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology