Affective distraction along the flexibility-stability continuum

This study explored whether conditions that promote flexibility in task processing enhance the detrimental impact of irrelevant negative stimulation on performance. We approached this flexibility from a transient and a sustained perspective, by manipulating whether participants repeated or switched between two tasks in consecutive trials and whether they performed the tasks in separate blocks or randomly mixed. Participants categorised either a letter or the colour of a bar, which were presented close to an irrelevant negative or neutral picture. Performance was worse in the presence of negative rather than neutral pictures. Repeating or switching tasks transiently did not modulate this detrimental impact of affective distraction in three experiments (n_Exp1 = 32, n_Exp2 = 32, n_Exp3 = 64). Attentional capture by negative content did decline in single compared to mixed task contexts, but only when these sustained task contexts also differed in the frequency of affective stimulation. When affective stimulation was the same in mixed and single task contexts, this modulation vanished. Overall, these results suggest that the influence of task-irrelevant negative stimulation on performance is surprisingly independent of cognitive states that favour either flexible or stable processing of task-relevant information.