Pop-out or emotional blink? Differentiating two phases of emotional capture in temporal attention

In the emotional attentional blink (EAB; also termed emotion-induced blindness/EIB), a target in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream of fillers is difficult to report when it is preceded by a task-irrelevant emotional distractor. This is typically interpreted as capture of temporal attention by emotion. However, recent research has pointed out that many EAB tasks use emotional distractors that are visually distinct from other task stimuli, and that controlling for visual distinctiveness attenuates the EAB. This suggests that emotion alone is not a strong driver of the initial attentional capture in the EAB. The current study thus asked if this "emotional" blink is best understood as a salience-driven pop-out initiated by visual salience that is subsequently modulated by emotion. Using RSVP of images with unusually dense temporal sampling and factorial manipulations of critical distractor emotion and visual salience, the results support this account, and further suggest that the EAB can be characterized as two phases. Specifically, Phase 1 reflects visual salience, evidenced by an immediate but rapidly attenuating blink elicited by low emotion + high visual salience distractors. Phase 2 reflects emotional modulation, evidenced by a longer-latency and weaker blink elicited by high emotion + low visual salience distractors. High emotion + high visual salience distractors highlighted both phases: an immediate blink, presumably from visual salience, that continued into later lags. These results yield a mechanistic understanding of how emotion and visual salience interact to drive visual attention in rapidly-changing environments.