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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 28, 2026

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

Published on: November 16, 2017

Anxious mood narrows attention in feature space.

Ezra Wegbreit¹, Steven Franconeri, Mark Beeman

¹a Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior , Brown University Alpert Medical School , Providence , RI , USA.

Cognition & Emotion

|June 6, 2014

Summary

Anxious moods narrow attentional scope in feature space, increasing interference from irrelevant features. Happy moods did not affect feature-based attention, unlike spatial attention.

Keywords:

Anxiety Emotion Happiness Mood induction Selective attention Visual attention

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience

Background:

Spatial attention acts like a spotlight, varying in scope with task demands.
Emotional states influence spatial attention, narrowing it during anxiety and broadening it during happiness.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if mood states influence attentional scope in feature space.
To examine how anxious and happy moods affect feature-based attention.

Main Methods:

Participants underwent mood inductions (anxious or happy).
They identified a central target while ignoring flanking items with varying colors.
Interference from flankers was measured under different mood conditions.

Main Results:

Anxious participants showed increased interference when target and flanker colors were the same, and reduced interference when colors differed.
This indicates anxious individuals attended to irrelevant features.
Happy and neutral mood conditions showed no significant effect of color on interference.

Conclusions:

Mood states, particularly anxiety, significantly impact feature-based attention scope.
Anxiety leads to a less flexible attentional focus in feature space.
Findings bridge spatial, feature-based, and conceptual attention research.