Citation

Sussman TJ, Heller W, Miller GA, Mohanty A. Psychol. Sci. 2013; 24(11): 2322-2328.

Affiliation

1Stony Brook University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797613492774

PMID

24058065

Abstract

The deleterious effects of emotional distractors on attention have been well demonstrated. However, it is unclear whether emotional distractors inevitably disrupt task-relevant attention. In the research reported here, the impact of the valence and arousal of distracting emotional stimuli and individual differences in anxiety on task-relevant processing were examined using multilevel modeling. Consistent with prior literature, results showed that high-arousal negative distractors, compared with positive and neutral distractors, were associated with poorer task-relevant attention. However, low-arousal negative distractors were associated with better task-relevant performance than were positive and neutral distractors. Furthermore, these effects were accentuated by individual differences in worry. These findings challenge assumptions that distraction and worry must be minimized for augmented attentional performance. Overall, these results emphasize the importance of taking into account emotional dimensions of arousal and valence as well as individual differences in anxiety when examining attention in the presence of emotional distractors.


Keywords: Driver distraction;

Language: en