Auditory emotional cues enhance visual perception.
Recent studies show that emotional stimuli impair performance to subsequently presented neutral stimuli. Here we show a cross-modal perceptual enhancement caused by emotional cues. Auditory cue words were followed by a visually presented neutral target word. Two-alternative forced-choice identification of the visual target was improved by emotional cues as compared to neutral cues. When the cue was presented visually we replicated the emotion-induced impairment found in other studies. Our results suggest emotional stimuli have a twofold effect on perception. They impair perception by reflexively attracting attention at the expense of competing stimuli. However, emotional stimuli also induce a nonspecific perceptual enhancement that carries over onto other stimuli when competition is reduced, for example, by presenting stimuli in different modalities.
Zeelenberg
René
R
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Department of Psychology, Woudestein, T13-31, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands. zeelenberg@fsw.eur.nl
Bocanegra
Bruno R
BR
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*