title: Neural correlates of an early attentional capture by positive distractor words.
abstract: Exogenous or automatic attention to emotional distractors has been observed for emotional scenes and faces. In the language domain, however, automatic attention capture by emotional words has been scarcely investigated. In the current event-related potentials study we explored distractor effects elicited by positive, negative and neutral words in a concurrent but distinct target distractor paradigm. Specifically, participants performed a digit categorization task in which task-irrelevant words were flanked by numbers. The results of both temporo-spatial principal component and source location analyses revealed the existence of early distractor effects that were specifically triggered by positive words. At the scalp level, task-irrelevant positive compared to neutral and negative words elicited larger amplitudes in an anterior negative component that peaked around 120 ms. Also, at the voxel level, positive distractor words increased activity in orbitofrontal regions compared to negative words. These results suggest that positive distractor words quickly and automatically capture attentional resources diverting them from the task where attention was voluntarily directed.
authors: Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain ; Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain.
authors: José A
authors: JA
authors: Hinojosa
authors: Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain.
authors: Francisco
authors: F
authors: Mercado
authors: Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain ; Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain.
authors: Jacobo
authors: J
authors: Albert
authors: Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain.
authors: Paloma
authors: P
authors: Barjola
authors: Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, Spain.
authors: Irene
authors: I
authors: Peláez
authors: Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain.
authors: Cristina
authors: C
authors: Villalba-García
authors: Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain.
authors: Luis
authors: L
authors: Carretié
keywords: anterior N1; emotion; event-related potentials; positive distractors; word processing