What you see is what you want to see: motivationally relevant stimuli can interrupt current resource allocation

McSorley, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2054-879X and Morriss, J. (2017) What you see is what you want to see: motivationally relevant stimuli can interrupt current resource allocation. Cognition & Emotion, 31 (1). pp. 168-174. ISSN 0269-9931 doi: 10.1080/02699931.2015.1081872

Abstract/Summary

Arousing stimuli, either threat-related or pleasant, may be selected for priority at different stages within the processing stream. Here we examine the pattern of processing for non-task-relevant threatening (spiders: arousing to some) and pleasant stimuli (babies or chocolate: arousing to all) by recording the gaze of a spider Fearful and Non-fearful group while they performed a simple “follow the cross” task. There was no difference in first saccade latencies. Saccade trajectories showed a general hypervigilance for all stimuli in the Fearful group. Saccade landing positions corresponded to what each group would find arousing, such that the Fearful group deviated towards both types of images whereas the Non-fearful group deviated towards pleasant images. Secondary corrective saccade latencies away from threat-related stimuli were longer for the Fearful group (difficulty in disengaging) compared with the Non-fearful group. These results suggest that attentional biases towards arousing stimuli may occur at different processing stages.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/43322
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Neuroscience Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Language and Cognition Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Perception and Action
Publisher	Psychology Press
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