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Emotion-induced impairments in speeded word recognition tasks
René Zeelenberg1, Bruno R Bocanegra, Diane Pecher
1Department of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. zeelenberg@fsw.eur.nl
Experimental Psychology
|May 20, 2011
Summary
Emotional distractors slow down responses to neutral targets, even when targets are clearly visible. These emotional effects on cognitive processing occur regardless of whether semantic understanding is needed.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Psycholinguistics
Background:
- Emotional stimuli are known to interfere with processing of subsequent visual information.
- Previous research focused on impaired target identification due to limited visibility.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if emotional distractors impair target processing when target visibility is not limited.
- To investigate the scope of emotional interference in various cognitive tasks.
Main Methods:
- Participants completed lexical decision, animacy decision, rhyme decision, and nonword naming tasks.
- Emotional (taboo-sexual) and neutral distractors were presented before neutral targets.
- Targets were clearly visible and presented until response.
Main Results:
- Taboo-sexual distractors consistently slowed response times to neutral targets across all tasks.
- Emotional distractors impaired performance even when targets were clearly visible.
- Processing impairments occurred irrespective of semantic task requirements.
Conclusions:
- The detrimental impact of emotional distractors extends beyond conditions of limited target visibility.
- Emotional interference affects cognitive processing even in non-semantic tasks.
- Emotional stimuli can broadly disrupt attention and response selection.
