title: Emotional modulation of the attentional blink is awareness-dependent.
abstract: It is well known that emotion can modulate attentional processes. Previous studies have shown that even under restricted awareness, emotional facial expressions (especially threat-related) can guide the direction of spatial attention. However, it remains unclear whether emotional facial expressions under restricted awareness can affect temporal attention. To address this issue, we used a modified attentional blink (AB) paradigm in which masked (Experiment 1) or unmasked (Experiment 2) emotional faces (fearful or neutral) were presented before the AB sequence. We found that, in comparison with neutral faces, masked fearful faces significantly decreased the AB magnitude (Experiment 1), whereas unmasked fearful faces significantly increased the AB magnitude (Experiment 2). These results indicate that effects of emotional expression on the AB are modulated by the level of awareness.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Wenli
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.forename: Qianli
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D054518:Attentional Blink / Q000502:physiology*; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult