Emotion facilitates perception and potentiates the perceptual benefits of attention

Elizabeth A. Phelps, Sam Ling, Marisa Carrasco

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Does emotion affect how people see? We investigated the effects of emotion and attention, as well as their conjoint effect, on contrast sensitivity, a dimension of early vision. We manipulated the emotional valence and the attentional distribution of cues preceding a target stimulus and asked observers to judge the orientation of the target as contrast varied. This study provides the first behavioral evidence that (a) emotion enhances contrast sensitivity irrespective of attention and (b) emotion potentiates the effect of attention on contrast sensitivity.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)292-299
Number of pages8
JournalPsychological Science
Volume17
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2006

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Psychology

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