The functional field of view becomes narrower while viewing negative emotional stimuli

摘要

We investigated how viewing positive and negative emotional stimuli influences the functional field of view. Two types of emotional pictures were used, representing either a negative emotion such as disgust or fear, or a positive emotion such vigour or excitement. The participants' task was to detect and identify a digit presented in any of the four corners of a picture on the display, while discriminating a letter in the centre of the display. We used two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), of 500 and 3000 ms, between the picture and the digit. Performance was poorer in the negative condition than in the positive and non-emotional conditions. Performance in the 500 ms SOA condition was poorer than in the 3000 ms SOA condition. These results suggest that the functional field of view (FFOV) becomes narrower when people view negative emotional stimuli, whereas it does not change when viewing positive or neutral emotional stimuli.View full textDownload full textKeywordsEmotional stimuli, The functional field of view, SOARelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930902955954