title: Alterations in attention capture to auditory emotional stimuli in job burnout: an event-related potential study.
abstract: Job burnout is a significant cause of work absenteeism. Evidence from behavioral studies and patient reports suggests that job burnout is associated with impairments of attention and decreased working capacity, and it has overlapping elements with depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances. Here, we examined the electrophysiological correlates of automatic sound change detection and involuntary attention allocation in job burnout using scalp recordings of event-related potentials (ERP). Volunteers with job burnout symptoms but without severe depression and anxiety disorders and their non-burnout controls were presented with natural speech sound stimuli (standard and nine deviants), as well as three rarely occurring speech sounds with strong emotional prosody. All stimuli elicited mismatch negativity (MMN) responses that were comparable in both groups. The groups differed with respect to the P3a, an ERP component reflecting involuntary shift of attention: job burnout group showed a shorter P3a latency in response to the emotionally negative stimulus, and a longer latency in response to the positive stimulus. Results indicate that in job burnout, automatic speech sound discrimination is intact, but there is an attention capture tendency that is faster for negative, and slower to positive information compared to that of controls.
authors.affiliation: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland. Electronic address: laura.sokka@ttl.fi.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sokka
authors.affiliation: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Minna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Huotilainen
authors.affiliation: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leinikka
authors.affiliation: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Jussi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Korpela
authors.affiliation: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Henelius
authors.affiliation: Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, 3560 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6A 2E1; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Alain
authors.affiliation: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Kiti
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Topeliuksenkatu 41 a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Satu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pakarinen
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002055:Burnout, Professional / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged
keywords: Attention; Emotion; Event-related potential (ERP); Job burnout; Mismatch negativity (MMN); P3a