Unpleasant emotion inhibits attentional focus toward a peripheral target in a visual search: an ERP study

Previous studies have found that emotional states affect the extent of attention, and the effect has been explained by adaptive views. If the adaptive explanations are true, emotion should modulate attentional focus toward a peripheral stimulus. The present study investigated if emotion affects the focus of attention toward a peripheral target in a visual search paradigm with event-related brain potential (ERP) measurement. In each trial of the experiment, participants performed a visual search task after an emotion (unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant) was induced by presenting an international affective picture system (IAPS) image. We measured N2pc, which is an ERP index reflecting attentional focus toward a peripheral target in a visual search, and compared the amplitudes among the emotion conditions. According to the adaptive view of emotional effects on cognition, this study hypothesized that unpleasant emotion would enhance the focus of attention, and pleasant emotion would inhibit it. These hypotheses predicted that N2pc amplitude would increase with unpleasant emotion and decrease with pleasant emotion. However, this study obtained inconsistent results; N2pc amplitude decreased in the unpleasant condition, and there was no significant effect of pleasant emotion on the ERP. The results suggest that unpleasant emotion inhibited the attentional focusing process. This is the first report to examine how emotion modulates the focus of attention toward a peripheral target in a visual search by using ERP. The findings contribute to understanding the relationship between emotion and cognition.