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Ranfaing S, De Zorzi L, Ruyffelaere R, Honoré J, Critchley H, Sequeira H. The impact of attention bias modification training on behavioral and physiological responses. Biol Psychol 2024; 186:108753. [PMID: 38244853 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2024.108753] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2023] [Revised: 01/15/2024] [Accepted: 01/15/2024] [Indexed: 01/22/2024]
Abstract
Attention bias modification training aims to alter attentional deployment to symptom-relevant emotionally salient stimuli. Such training has therapeutic applications in the management of disorders including anxiety, depression, addiction and chronic pain. In emotional reactions, attentional biases interact with autonomically-mediated changes in bodily arousal putatively underpinning affective feeling states. Here we examined the impact of attention bias modification training on behavioral and autonomic reactivity. Fifty-eight participants were divided into two groups. A training group (TR) received attention bias modification training to enhance attention to pleasant visual information, while a control group (CT) performed a procedure that did not modify attentional bias. After training, participants performed an evaluation task in which pairs of emotional and neutral images (unpleasant-neutral, pleasant-neutral, neutral-neutral) were presented, while behavioral (eye movements) and autonomic (skin conductance; heart rate) responses were recorded. At the behavioral level, trained participants were faster to orientate attention to pleasant images, and slower to orientate to unpleasant images. At the autonomic level, trained participants showed attenuated skin conductance responses to unpleasant images, while stronger skin conductance responses were generally associated with higher anxiety. These data argue for the use of attentional training to address both the attentional and the physiological sides of emotional responses, appropriate for anxious and depressive symptomatology, characterized by atypical attentional deployment and autonomic reactivity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stéphane Ranfaing
- PSyCOS - ETHICS EA 7446, Université Catholique de Lille, F-59000 Lille, France.
| | - Lucas De Zorzi
- Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9193 - SCALab - Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, F-59000 Lille, France
| | - Rémi Ruyffelaere
- Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9193 - SCALab - Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, F-59000 Lille, France
| | - Jacques Honoré
- Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9193 - SCALab - Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, F-59000 Lille, France
| | - Hugo Critchley
- Psychiatry, Department of Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, United Kingdom
| | - Henrique Sequeira
- Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9193 - SCALab - Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, F-59000 Lille, France
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De Zorzi L, Ranfaing S, Roux C, Honoré J, Sequeira H. Impact of visual eccentricity on emotional reactivity: implications for anxious and depressive symptomatology. JOURNAL OF AFFECTIVE DISORDERS REPORTS 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jadr.2021.100304] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022] Open
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3
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Leroy A, Spotorno S, Faure S. Traitements sémantiques et émotionnels des scènes visuelles complexes : une synthèse critique de l’état actuel des connaissances. ANNEE PSYCHOLOGIQUE 2021. [DOI: 10.3917/anpsy1.211.0101] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022]
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4
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Maurage P, Bollen Z, Masson N, D'Hondt F. Eye Tracking Studies Exploring Cognitive and Affective Processes among Alcohol Drinkers: a Systematic Review and Perspectives. Neuropsychol Rev 2020; 31:167-201. [PMID: 33099714 DOI: 10.1007/s11065-020-09458-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/05/2019] [Accepted: 09/23/2020] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Acute alcohol intoxication and alcohol use disorders are characterized by a wide range of psychological and cerebral impairments, which have been widely explored using neuropsychological and neuroscientific techniques. Eye tracking has recently emerged as an innovative tool to renew this exploration, as eye movements offer complementary information on the processes underlying perceptive, attentional, memory or executive abilities. Building on this, the present systematic and critical literature review provides a comprehensive overview of eye tracking studies exploring cognitive and affective processes among alcohol drinkers. Using PRISMA guidelines, 36 papers that measured eye movements among alcohol drinkers were extracted from three databases (PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus). They were assessed for methodological quality using a standardized procedure, and categorized based on the main cognitive function measured, namely perceptive abilities, attentional bias, executive function, emotion and prevention/intervention. Eye tracking indexes showed that alcohol-related disorders are related to: (1) a stable pattern of basic eye movement impairments, particularly during alcohol intoxication; (2) a robust attentional bias, indexed by increased dwell times for alcohol-related stimuli; (3) a reduced inhibitory control on saccadic movements; (4) an increased pupillary reactivity to visual stimuli, regardless of their emotional content; (5) a limited visual attention to prevention messages. Perspectives for future research are proposed, notably encouraging the exploration of eye movements in severe alcohol use disorders and the establishment of methodological gold standards for eye tracking measures in this field.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pierre Maurage
- Louvain Experimental Psychopathology research group (LEP), Psychological Sciences Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
| | - Zoé Bollen
- Louvain Experimental Psychopathology research group (LEP), Psychological Sciences Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
| | - Nicolas Masson
- Numerical Cognition Group, Psychological Sciences Research Institute and Neuroscience Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.,Institute of Cognitive Science and Assessment (COSA), Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (DBCS), Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
| | - Fabien D'Hondt
- Univ. Lille, Inserm, CHU Lille, U1172 - LilNCog - Lille Neuroscience & Cognition, Université de Lille, Lille, France.,Centre National de Ressources et de Résilience (CN2R), Lille, France
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5
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Depression restricts visual capture and promotes the perception of negative information. Biol Psychol 2020; 154:107923. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2020.107923] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2020] [Revised: 05/29/2020] [Accepted: 06/20/2020] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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6
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Maurage P, Masson N, Bollen Z, D’Hondt F. Eye tracking correlates of acute alcohol consumption: A systematic and critical review. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2020; 108:400-422. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.10.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2019] [Revised: 08/30/2019] [Accepted: 10/04/2019] [Indexed: 01/23/2023]
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7
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Williot A, Blanchette I. The influence of an emotional processing strategy on visual threat detection by police trainees and officers. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2019. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.3616] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Alexandre Williot
- Groupe de recherche CogNAC (Cognition, Neurosciences, Affect et Comportement), Department of PsychologyUniversité du Québec à Trois‐Rivières Québec Canada
| | - Isabelle Blanchette
- Groupe de recherche CogNAC (Cognition, Neurosciences, Affect et Comportement), Department of PsychologyUniversité du Québec à Trois‐Rivières Québec Canada
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8
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Creupelandt C, D'Hondt F, Maurage P. Towards a Dynamic Exploration of Vision, Cognition and Emotion in Alcohol-Use Disorders. Curr Neuropharmacol 2019; 17:492-506. [PMID: 30152285 PMCID: PMC6712295 DOI: 10.2174/1570159x16666180828100441] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2017] [Revised: 07/30/2018] [Accepted: 08/17/2018] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Abstract: Visuoperceptive impairments are among the most frequently reported deficits in alcohol-use disorders, but only very few studies have investigated their origin and interactions with other categories of dysfunctions. Besides, these deficits have generally been interpreted in a linear bottom-up perspective, which appears very restrictive with respect to the new models of vision developed in healthy populations. Indeed, new theories highlight the predictive nature of the visual system and demonstrate that it interacts with higher-level cognitive functions to generate top-down predictions. These models nota-bly posit that a fast but coarse visual analysis involving magnocellular pathways helps to compute heuristic guesses regard-ing the identity and affective value of inputs, which are used to facilitate conscious visual recognition. Building on these new proposals, the present review stresses the need to reconsider visual deficits in alcohol-use disorders as they might have cru-cial significance for core features of the pathology, such as attentional bias, loss of inhibitory control and emotion decoding impairments. Centrally, we suggest that individuals with severe alcohol-use disorders could present with magnocellular dam-age and we defend a dynamic explanation of the deficits. Rather than being restricted to high-level processes, deficits could start at early visual stages and then extend and potentially intensify during following steps due to reduced cerebral connec-tivity and dysfunctional cognitive/emotional regions. A new research agenda is specifically provided to test these hypotheses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Coralie Creupelandt
- Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology, Psychological Science Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.,SCALab-Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, CNRS, UMR 9193, Université de Lille, Lille, France
| | - Fabien D'Hondt
- SCALab-Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, CNRS, UMR 9193, Université de Lille, Lille, France.,CHU Lille, Clinique de Psychiatrie, CURE, Lille, France
| | - Pierre Maurage
- Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology, Psychological Science Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
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Mirabella G. The Weight of Emotions in Decision-Making: How Fearful and Happy Facial Stimuli Modulate Action Readiness of Goal-Directed Actions. Front Psychol 2018; 9:1334. [PMID: 30116211 PMCID: PMC6083043 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01334] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2018] [Accepted: 07/11/2018] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Modern theories of behavioral control converge with the idea that goal-directed/voluntary behaviors are intimately tied to the evaluation of resources. Of key relevance in the decision-making processes that underlie action selection are those stimuli that bear emotional content. However, even though it is acknowledged that emotional information affects behavioral control, the exact way in which emotions impact on action planning is largely unknown. To clarify this issue, I gave an emotional version of a go/no-go task to healthy participants, in which they had to perform the same arm reaching movement when pictures of fearful or happy faces were presented, and to withhold it when pictures of faces with neutral expressions were presented. This task allows for the investigation of the effects of emotional stimuli when they are task-relevant without conflating movement planning with target detection and task switching. It was found that both the reaction times (RTs) and the percentages of errors increased when the go-signal was the image of a fearful looking face, as opposed to when the go-signal was a happy looking face. Importantly, to control for the role of the features of the stimuli, I ran a control task in which the same pictures were shown; however, participants had to move/withhold the commanded movement according to gender, disregarding the emotional valence. In this context, the differences between RTs and error percentages between the fearful and happy faces disappeared. On the one hand, these results suggest that fearful facial stimuli are likely to capture and hold attention more strongly than faces that express happiness, which could serve to increase vigilance for detecting a potential threat in an observer’s environment. On the other hand, they also suggest that the influence of fearful facial stimuli is not automatic, but it depends on the task requirements.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giovanni Mirabella
- Istituto Neurologico Mediterraneo (IRCCS), Pozzilli, Italy.,Department of Anatomy, Histology, Forensic Medicine and Orthopaedics, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy
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10
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Schoen F, Lochmann M, Prell J, Herfurth K, Rampp S. Neuronal Correlates of Product Feature Attractiveness. Front Behav Neurosci 2018; 12:147. [PMID: 30072882 PMCID: PMC6059068 DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00147] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2018] [Accepted: 06/26/2018] [Indexed: 01/15/2023] Open
Abstract
Decision-making is the process of selecting a logical choice from among the available options and happens as a complex process in the human brain. It is based on information processing and cost-analysis; it involves psychological factors, specifically, emotions. In addition to cost factors personal preferences have significant influence on decision making. For marketing purposes, it is interesting to know how these emotions are related to product acquisition decision and how to improve these products according to the user's preferences. For our proof-of-concept study, we use magneto- and electro-encephalography (MEG, EEG) to evaluate the very early reactions in the brain related to the emotions. Recordings from these methods are comprehensive sources of information to investigate neural processes of the human brain with good spatial- and excellent temporal resolution. Those characteristics make these methods suitable to examine the neurologic process that gives origin to human behavior and specifically, decision making. Literature describes some neuronal correlates for individual preferences, like asymmetrical distribution of frequency specific activity in frontal and prefrontal areas, which are associated with emotional processing. Such correlates could be used to objectively evaluate the pleasantness of product appearance and branding (i.e., logo), thus avoiding subjective bias. This study evaluates the effects of different product features on brain activity and whether these methods could potentially be used for marketing and product design. We analyzed the influence of color and fit of sports shirts, as well as a brand logo on the brain activity, specifically in frontal asymmetric activation. Measurements were performed using MEG and EEG with 10 healthy subjects. Images of t-shirts with different characteristics were presented on a screen. We recorded the subjective evaluation by asking for a positive, negative or neutral rating. The results showed significantly different responses between positively and negatively rated shirts. While the influence of the presence of a logo was present in behavioral data, but not in the neurocognitive data, the influence of shirt fit and color could be reconstructed in both data sets. This method may enable evaluation of subjective product preference.
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Affiliation(s)
- Franziska Schoen
- Division of Sports and Exercise Medicine, Department of Sport Science and Sport, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Matthias Lochmann
- Division of Sports and Exercise Medicine, Department of Sport Science and Sport, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Julian Prell
- Department of Neurosurgery, University of Halle, Halle, Germany
| | - Kirsten Herfurth
- Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Stefan Rampp
- Department of Neurosurgery, University of Halle, Halle, Germany
- Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany
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11
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Adaptive attunement of selective covert attention to evolutionary-relevant emotional visual scenes. Conscious Cogn 2017; 51:223-235. [DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2017.03.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2016] [Revised: 03/12/2017] [Accepted: 03/28/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
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12
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Young KS, Parsons CE, Stein A, Vuust P, Craske MG, Kringelbach ML. The neural basis of responsive caregiving behaviour: Investigating temporal dynamics within the parental brain. Behav Brain Res 2017; 325:105-116. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2016.09.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/02/2016] [Revised: 09/01/2016] [Accepted: 09/05/2016] [Indexed: 02/09/2023]
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13
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Explicit and implicit emotional processing in peripheral vision: A saccadic choice paradigm. Biol Psychol 2016; 119:91-100. [PMID: 27423626 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.07.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/22/2015] [Revised: 07/12/2016] [Accepted: 07/12/2016] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
We investigated explicit and implicit emotional processing in peripheral vision using saccadic choice tasks. Emotional-neutral pairs of scenes were presented peripherally either at 10, 30 or 60° away from fixation. The participants had to make a saccadic eye movement to the target scene: emotional vs neutral in the explicit task, and oval vs rectangular in the implicit task. In the explicit task, pleasant scenes were reliably categorized as emotional up to 60° while performance for unpleasant scenes decreased between 10° and 30° and did not differ from chance at 60°. Categorization of neutral scenes did not differ from chance. Performance in the implicit task was significantly better for emotional targets than for neutral targets at 10° and this beneficial effect of emotion persisted only for pleasant scenes at 30°. Thus, these findings show that explicit and implicit emotional processing in peripheral vision depends on eccentricity and valence of stimuli.
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Young KS, Parsons CE, Jegindoe Elmholdt EM, Woolrich MW, van Hartevelt TJ, Stevner ABA, Stein A, Kringelbach ML. Evidence for a Caregiving Instinct: Rapid Differentiation of Infant from Adult Vocalizations Using Magnetoencephalography. Cereb Cortex 2016; 26:1309-1321. [PMID: 26656998 PMCID: PMC4737615 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhv306] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Crying is the most salient vocal signal of distress. The cries of a newborn infant alert adult listeners and often elicit caregiving behavior. For the parent, rapid responding to an infant in distress is an adaptive behavior, functioning to ensure offspring survival. The ability to react rapidly requires quick recognition and evaluation of stimuli followed by a co-ordinated motor response. Previous neuroimaging research has demonstrated early specialized activity in response to infant faces. Using magnetoencephalography, we found similarly early (100-200 ms) differences in neural responses to infant and adult cry vocalizations in auditory, emotional, and motor cortical brain regions. We propose that this early differential activity may help to rapidly identify infant cries and engage affective and motor neural circuitry to promote adaptive behavioral responding, before conscious awareness. These differences were observed in adults who were not parents, perhaps indicative of a universal brain-based "caregiving instinct."
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Affiliation(s)
- Katherine S Young
- Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
- Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Department of Psychology
| | - Christine E Parsons
- Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
- Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Else-Marie Jegindoe Elmholdt
- Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Mark W Woolrich
- Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Tim J van Hartevelt
- Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
- Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Angus B A Stevner
- Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
- Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Alan Stein
- Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
- Wits/MRC Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
| | - Morten L Kringelbach
- Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry
- Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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15
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Electrophysiological correlates of problematic Internet use: Critical review and perspectives for future research. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2015; 59:64-82. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.10.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2015] [Revised: 10/09/2015] [Accepted: 10/12/2015] [Indexed: 12/19/2022]
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16
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Tessier S, Lambert A, Scherzer P, Jemel B, Godbout R. REM sleep and emotional face memory in typically-developing children and children with autism. Biol Psychol 2015. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.07.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/06/2023]
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17
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Hot P, Sequeira H. Diurnal emotional reactivity: Ultradian changes at neural and behavioral levels in men. Chronobiol Int 2015; 32:687-96. [DOI: 10.3109/07420528.2015.1039645] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
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18
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D'Hondt F, Lepore F, Maurage P. Are visual impairments responsible for emotion decoding deficits in alcohol-dependence? Front Hum Neurosci 2014; 8:128. [PMID: 24653688 PMCID: PMC3948105 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00128] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/11/2013] [Accepted: 02/20/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Emotional visual perception deficits constitute a major problem in alcohol-dependence. Indeed, the ability to assess the affective content of external cues is a key adaptive function, as it allows on the one hand the processing of potentially threatening or advantageous stimuli, and on the other hand the establishment of appropriate social interactions (by enabling rapid decoding of the affective state of others from their facial expressions). While such deficits have been classically considered as reflecting a genuine emotion decoding impairment in alcohol-dependence, converging evidence suggests that underlying visual deficits might play a role in emotional alterations. This hypothesis appears to be relevant especially as data from healthy populations indicate that a coarse but fast analysis of visual inputs would allow emotional processing to arise from early stages of perception. After reviewing those findings and the associated models, the present paper underlines data showing that rapid interactions between emotion and vision could be impaired in alcohol-dependence and provides new research avenues that may ultimately offer a better understanding of the roots of emotional deficits in this pathological state.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fabien D'Hondt
- Département de Psychologie, Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition, Université de Montréal Montréal, QC, Canada ; Centre de Recherche CHU Sainte-Justine Montréal, QC, Canada
| | - Franco Lepore
- Département de Psychologie, Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition, Université de Montréal Montréal, QC, Canada ; Centre de Recherche CHU Sainte-Justine Montréal, QC, Canada
| | - Pierre Maurage
- Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology, Faculty of Psychology, Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
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D'Hondt F, Honoré J, Williot A, Sequeira H. State anxiety modulates the impact of peripherally presented affective stimuli on foveal processing. J Affect Disord 2014; 152-154:91-6. [PMID: 23768530 DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2013.05.051] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/23/2013] [Accepted: 05/17/2013] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The priority processing of peripherally presented affective stimuli was recently shown in healthy individuals to divert attentional resources dedicated to foveal processing. Here we investigated the influence of sub-clinical levels of anxiety and depression on this bias. METHODS Eighty-four participants were submitted to psychological tests that evaluate anxiety and depression levels. Then, they had to make speeded responses to the direction of left- or right-oriented arrows that were presented foveally at fixation. Each arrow was preceded by a peripherally presented pair of pictures, one neutral and one emotional, unpleasant or pleasant. Thus, the direction of the foveal arrow was either congruent or not with the peripheral location of the previously presented emotional picture. Data analysis focused on the differences of reaction times between congruent and incongruent conditions, which assess the spatial response bias in the task. RESULTS A main effect of state-anxiety was observed suggesting that the higher the level of state-anxiety, the greater the congruence effect. LIMITATIONS Since the obtained result relates to subclinical anxiety levels, its generalization to anxiety disorders remains tentative. CONCLUSIONS State-anxiety appears to modulate the propensity to be influenced by emotionally salient information occurring in peripheral vision, independently of its relevance to the ongoing behavior. The long-term persistence of a high level of alertness for emotional cues in visual periphery could contribute to the causation and the maintenance of anxiety disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fabien D'Hondt
- Université Lille Nord de France, Lille, France; LNFP, UDSL, Lille, France; Neurosciences, Université de Lille 1, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
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