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Modulation of auditory spatial attention by visual emotional cues: differential effects of attentional engagement and disengagement for pleasant and unpleasant cues

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Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that threatening, compared to neutral pictures, can bias attention towards non-emotional auditory targets. Here we investigated which subcomponents of attention contributed to the influence of emotional visual stimuli on auditory spatial attention. Participants indicated the location of an auditory target, after brief (250 ms) presentation of a spatially non-predictive peripheral visual cue. Responses to targets were faster at the location of the preceding visual cue, compared to at the opposite location (cue validity effect). The cue validity effect was larger for targets following pleasant and unpleasant cues compared to neutral cues, for right-sided targets. For unpleasant cues, the crossmodal cue validity effect was driven by delayed attentional disengagement, and for pleasant cues, it was driven by enhanced engagement. We conclude that both pleasant and unpleasant visual cues influence the distribution of attention across modalities and that the associated attentional mechanisms depend on the valence of the visual cue.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. IAPS slide numbers for unpleasant pictures: 1090, 1205, 1220, 1274, 1275, 1301, 2682, 2692, 3051, 6020, 6200, 6241, 6244, 9008, 9040, 9182, 9253, 9320, 9373, 9401; slide numbers for pleasant pictures: 1440, 1463, 1540, 1590, 1660, 1710, 1720, 1721, 1722, 5460, 5480, 8090, 8161, 8193, 8210, 8220, 8280, 8500, 8503, 8531; slide numbers for neutral pictures: 1121, 1350, 1616, 1947, 2410, 2720, 2880, 2980, 5395, 5531, 5532, 5535, 6150, 7130, 7170, 7190, 7211, 7236, 7490, 8010 (Lang et al. 2008).

  2. Due to our trial randomization procedure, the number of valid and invalid trials may have differed between the first and the second half of the experiment. On average, there were 120.7 valid versus 119.3 invalid trials in the first half, and 119.3 valid and 120.6 invalid trials in the second half. We statistically compared the ratio of valid to invalid trials between the two halves and found no evidence of a difference in the ratios [t(26) = .687, p = .498]. We are therefore confident that our results do not contain a confound related to different ratios of valid to invalid trials across the first and second halves of the experiment.

  3. Where appropriate, here and in subsequent analyses, Greenhouse–Geisser adjustments to the degrees of freedom were performed. Cohen’s d effect size for post hoc t tests is calculated according to the formula of Morris and DeShon (2002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, L16 9JD, UK

    Neil R. Harrison & Rob Woodhouse

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  1. Neil R. Harrison
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  2. Rob Woodhouse
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Correspondence to Neil R. Harrison.

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Handling Editor: Bruno Laeng, University of Oslo, Norway.

Reviewers: Stefania D’Ascenzo, University of Modena; Reggio Emilia, Italy and an anonymous reviewer.

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Harrison, N.R., Woodhouse, R. Modulation of auditory spatial attention by visual emotional cues: differential effects of attentional engagement and disengagement for pleasant and unpleasant cues. Cogn Process 17, 205–211 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-016-0749-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-016-0749-6

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