title: Emotional event-related potentials are reduced if negative pictures presented at fixation are unattended.
abstract: Viewing of emotional pictures elicits two event-related potentials (ERPs) to emotional versus neutral pictures: an early posterior negativity (EPN) and a late positive potential (LPP). Because it is unresolved whether these indexes of emotional processing are reduced to task-irrelevant pictures at fixation, negative and neutral pictures from the International Affective Picture Set (IAPS) were shown at fixation together with 6 letters that surrounded the pictures. In separate tasks, participants were instructed to attend either the pictures or the letters. When the pictures were task relevant, results showed an EPN and LPP. In contrast, when the pictures were task irrelevant, the EPN was eliminated and the LPP reduced. Performance was high in both tasks (hit rates>87%), but somewhat better when the pictures were relevant. However, analyses showed no relationship between this performance difference and the differences in EPN and LPP between tasks. These results suggest that emotional processing of strong, negative pictures is sensitive to manipulations of attention even if the pictures are shown at fixation.
authors: Department of Psychology, Frescati Hagväg 9, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. sws@psychology.su.se
authors: Stefan
authors: S
authors: Wiens
authors: Anders
authors: A
authors: Sand
authors: Joakim
authors: J
authors: Norberg
authors: Per
authors: P
authors: Andersson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult