title: Emotion-induced blindness reflects competition at early and late processing stages: an ERP study.
abstract: Emotion-induced blindness (EIB) refers to impaired awareness of items appearing soon after an irrelevant, emotionally arousing stimulus. Superficially, EIB appears to be similar to the attentional blink (AB), a failure to report a target that closely follows another relevant target. Previous studies of AB using event-related potentials suggest that the AB results from interference with selection (N2 component) and consolidation (P3b component) of the second target into working memory. The present study applied a similar analysis to EIB and, similarly, found that an irrelevant emotional distractor suppressed the N2 and P3b components associated with the following target at short lags. Emotional distractors also elicited a positive deflection that appeared to be similar to the PD component, which has been associated with attempts to suppress salient, irrelevant distractors (Kiss, Grubert, Petersen, & Eimer, 2012; Sawaki, Geng, & Luck, 2012; Sawaki & Luck, 2010). These results suggest that irrelevant emotional pictures gain access to working memory, even when observers are attempting to ignore them and, like the AB, prevent access of a closely following target.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia, b.kennedy@student.unsw.edu.au.
authors.forename: Briana L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rawding
authors.forename: Steven B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Most
authors.forename: James E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Hoffman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D019521:Body Patterning / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003118:Color Perception; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult