Attentional orienting towards emotion: P2 and N400 ERP effects

Attention can be oriented to different spatial locations yielding faster processing of attended compared to unattended stimuli. Similarly attention can be oriented to a semantic category such as "animals" or "tools". Words from the attended category will also be recognized faster than words from an unattended category. Here, we asked whether it is possible to orient attention to an emotional category, for example, "negative emotional stimuli". Furthermore, we investigated which mechanisms facilitate processing of attended stimuli. In an attentional orienting paradigm in which cues are informative with regard to the spatial location, semantic category, or emotional category of subsequent target words, we found attention effects in all three cue conditions. Words at attended locations or of the attended semantic or emotional category were responded to faster than unattended categories. While spatial attention acted upon early visual processing and amplified occipital N1-P2 potentials, semantic cues modulated the N400 amplitude indexing semantic processing. Emotional cues also yielded an N400 modulation; however, in addition, a left anterior P2 effect was observed. The data clearly show that attention can be oriented to emotional categories. Emotional orienting yields facilitated processing of an attended emotional category through the modulation of early and late word processing stages.