Work

Emotion Facilitates Perception and Potentiates the Perceptual Benefits of Attention

Year: 2006

Type: article

Abstract: Does emotion affect how people see? We investigated the effects of emotion and attention, as well as their conjoint effect, on contrast sensitivity, a dimension of early vision. We manipulated the emotional valence and the attentional distribution of cues preceding a target stimulus and asked observers to judge the orientation of the target as contrast varied. This study provides the first behavioral evidence that (a) emotion enhances contrast sensitivity irrespective of attention and (b) emotion potentiates the effect of attention on contrast sensitivity.

Source: Psychological Science

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01701.x

Authors: Elizabeth A. Phelps, Sam Ling, Marisa Carrasco

Institution: New York University

Language: English

Topic: Visual perception and processing mechanisms

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Award: How Sustained Attention Affects Perception