title: The Rapid Perceptual Impact of Emotional Distractors.
abstract: The brief presentation of an emotional distractor can temporarily impair perception of a subsequent, rapidly presented target, an effect known as emotion-induced blindness (EIB). How rapidly does this impairment unfold? To probe this question, we examined EIB for targets that immediately succeeded ("lag-1") emotional distractors in a rapid stream of items relative to EIB for targets at later serial positions. Experiments 1 and 2 suggested that emotional distractors interfere with items presented very soon after them, with impaired target perception emerging as early as lag-1. Experiment 3 included an exploratory examination of individual differences, which suggested that EIB onsets more rapidly among participants scoring high in measures linked to negative affect.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Briana L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Steven B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Most
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception; D055815:Young Adult