Is the emotional modulation of the attentional blink driven by response bias?
Several studies have shown that the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992) is diminished for highly arousing T2 stimuli (e.g., Anderson, 2005). Whereas this effect is most often interpreted as evidence for a more efficient processing of arousing information, it could be due also to a bias to report more arousing stimuli than neutral stimuli. We introduce a paradigm that allows one to control for such a response bias. Using this paradigm, we obtained evidence that the diminished AB for taboo words cannot be explained by a response bias. This supports the idea that the emotional modulation of the AB is caused by attentional processes.
Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. helen.tibboel@ugent.be
Helen
H
Tibboel
Bram
B
Van Bockstaele
Jan
J
De Houwer
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D054518:Attentional Blink; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012718:Set, Psychology; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013997:Time Factors