Reciprocal competition between cognitive tasks and emotional processing revealed by EEG and eye tracking

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Neuroscience
• Psychology

Background:

• Engaging stimuli increase visual exploration, late positive potential (LPP), and alpha-band desynchronization (a-ERD), indicating attention allocation.
• Salient background images can impair cognitive task performance by consuming processing resources.
• Attentional competition occurs between simultaneously presented stimuli, influencing emotional response reduction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the attentional competition between a demanding cognitive task and background emotional images.
• To determine how the brain allocates resources when faced with competing visual stimuli.

Main Methods:

• Utilized electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking to monitor brain activity and visual attention.
• Presented a cognitive task within a small image area (1.2%) against a background of emotional images.

Main Results:

• The cognitive task exerted an early attentional pull, shown by rapid decoding accuracy and enhanced N1 component.
• Task engagement led to reduced LPP amplitudes and increased a-ERD, indicating suppressed background image processing.
• Participants spent more time fixated on the task, exploring and processing emotional images only after task completion.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the competition model of selective attention.
• Top-down control mechanisms play a dominant role in prioritizing task-relevant information and shaping perception.
• Cognitive task demands can override the processing of salient emotional background stimuli.