| Attention refers to the selective allocation of processing resources. This allocation of resources is said to be greatly influenced by the presence of emotional stimuli within the perceptual array, as these stimuli may signal threat or reward. Accordingly, psychological models of visual attention predict that the processing of emotionally arousing stimuli will be enhanced compared to cues lacking such emotional relevance. Several prior neurocognitive studies have demonstrated an increased attentional response in the visual cortex related to the processing of emotional stimuli. However, the influence of emotional stimuli on behavioral response remains unclear.;The present study examined the neural and behavioral responses to a visual arithmetic task in the presence of distracters in order to investigate whether the presence of these stimuli influenced attentional processing. Participants completed a series of simple arithmetic problems while high arousal, low arousal, and no-information visual and auditory distracters were presented. The accuracy of responding to arithmetic problems was analyzed as well as the steady-state visual evoked potential elicited by the primary task. This event-related potential was employed as an electrophysiological measure of the allocation of attention, as the amplitude of the sinosuidal waveform is increased significantly with attention. The results of this study revealed that highly arousing distracters impaired the accuracy of responding to the arithmetic problems compared to low arousal and no-information distracters. The examination of the amplitude of the steady-state visual evoked potential revealed that high arousal auditory distracters withdrew attentional processing from the primary visual task, whereas high arousal visual distracters led to a visual facilitation effect. A discussion of these findings and their relationship to previous attentional processing studies is provided. |
