Evidence for Arousal-Biased Competition in Perceptual Learning

Frontiers in Psychology

Tae-Ho Lee¹ 

关键词: bottom-up salience;    emotional arousal;    optimal gain bias;    pop-out search;    threat;    visual search;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00241

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Arousal-biased competition theory predicts that arousal biases competition in favor of perceptually salient stimuli and against non-salient stimuli (Mather and Sutherland, 2011). The current study tested this hypothesis by having observers complete many trials in a visual search task in which the target either always was salient (a 55° tilted line among 80° distractors) or non-salient (a 55° tilted line among 50° distractors). Each participant completed one session in an emotional condition, in which visual search trials were preceded by negative arousing images, and one session in a non-emotional condition, in which the arousing images were replaced with neutral images (with session order counterbalanced). Test trials in which the target line had to be selected from among a set of lines with different tilts revealed that the emotional condition enhanced identification of the salient target line tilt but impaired identification of the non-salient target line tilt. Thus, arousal enhanced perceptual learning of salient stimuli but impaired perceptual learning of non-salient stimuli.

【 授权许可】

CC BY