Differences between overt, covert and natural attention shifts to emotional faces.
Neuroscience
; 559: 283-292, 2024 Sep 13.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39265801
ABSTRACT
In daily life, individuals pay attention to emotional facial expressions and dynamically choose how to shift their attention, i.e. either overtly (with eye-movements) or covertly (without eye-movements). However, research on attention to emotional faces has mostly been conducted in controlled laboratory settings, in which people were instructed where to look. The current preregistered study co-registered EEG and eye-tracking to investigate differences in emotion-driven attention between instructed and uninstructed natural attention shifts in 48 adults. While a central stimulus was presented to the participant, a face appeared in the periphery, showing either a happy, neutral or an angry expression. In three counterbalanced blocks participants were instructed to either move their eyes overtly to the peripheral face, keep fixating the center and therefore covertly shift their attention, or freely look wherever they would like to look. We found that emotional content had stronger effects on the amplitude of the Early Posterior Negativity when participants shifted attention naturally, and that natural shifts of attention differed from instructed shifts in both saccade behavior and neural mechanisms. In summary, our results emphasize the importance of investigating modulation of attention using paradigms that allow participants to allocate their attention naturally.
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Neuroscience
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Alemania
Pais de publicación:
Estados Unidos