A Review of Relationships Between Attention and Emotion

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A Review of Relationships Between Attention and
Emotion
Lokyin Chan1, *, †, Yutong Xie2, *, †, Xueyu Zhao3, †
1Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy, Shanghai, China
2Beijing Beanstalk International Bilingual School, Beijing, China
3Beijing National Day School, Beijing, China
*Corresponding author. Email: 1lokyin_chan@stu.swfla.org, 2YutongXie2022@bibs.com.cn
†These authors contributed equally.
ABSTRACT
Attention is crucially important in deciding human activities, such as rewards and emotions. However, attention itself
does not dominate the whole authority. Well engaged with emotions, attention can produce a completely different result.
Over recent decades, the relationship between emotion and attention has been well investigated. This paper will
investigate and analyze different studies understanding of the interaction between attention and emotion. First, theories
considering the relationship between attention and emotion will be introduced. This would provide insight into how
proven theories view the relationship between the two subjects. Next, several studies, together with their methodology
and results, would be presented. The studies commendably proved hypothetical guesses about how attention and
emotion may affect each other.
Keywords: Attention, Emotion, biased competition, Event-related brain potentials (ERP).
1. INTRODUCTION
When students realize that their exam dates or their
deadline is approaching, they may start to feel anxious
and frustrated, making them either more concentrated on
their studies or deciding to give up. When people are
listening to a speech, lecturers with a fixed tone of voice
usually make the audience drowsy, while those who are
full of emotion tend to attract spectators’ attention. These
examples from daily life demonstrate the underlying
impact of emotions on human attention. Recent decades
have witnessed the progress of researches on the
relationship between attention and emotion. Before going
further into the relationship between the two, it is
necessary to define them clearly.
In order to further the research on the interaction
between attention and emotion, it is crucial to have a clear
perspective on the definition of these two concepts. Up
until now, there has not been a specific and precise
definition that could be given to attention. It’s undeniable
that under different situations, the definition of attention
could be different. Attention is such a great academic area
that could not be explicitly explained in a simple
definition. However, different authors have given
different attitudes toward the definition of attention. (i)
Attention is a psychological activity that describes
various phenomena [1]. (ii) Attention is a mechanism that
monitors which brain processes are allowed to enter
access awareness and which cannot [2, 3]. (iii) Attention
is a burgeoning phenomenon coming from re-entry and
slow competitive interactions [4, 5]. Again, the definition
given to attention is different in different situations due
to various types of attention. As with discussion of
emotion, selective attention would be mainly considered,
and focus mainly on visual attentions. First, in foveal
short-sustained, long-sustained, and vigilance attention
tasks. Second, in covert attention task, subjects attend
peripheral stimulus without moving eyes. Third, in
divided attention task, subjects divide their attention
between various stimuli. Fourth, in selective attention
task, subjects focus on the target and ignore disturbance
terms [6-8]. Fifth, in switching attention task, subjects
switch attention to other tasks by disintegrating attention
from the first and engaging to the second.
As for emotion, it is a complex behavioural
phenomenon. Emotions include anger, disgust, fear, joy,
sadness, and surprise [9]. Having a strong sense of
emotions represents a man with high level of sympathy.
Sometimes positive and negative emotions are the key
theoretical structures. Emotions have been studied in
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Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Public Relations and
Social Sciences (ICPRSS 2021)
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
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several scientific disciplines, such as biology, psychology,
etc. As a result, there are different views on emotions. For
example, in psychology, letting someone have too many
emotions with them [overwhelming happiness,
overwhelming sadness] is a mental issue, however, if one
has a lot of emotions when communicating with others,
that is actually, a pretty good thing [10].
The following review focuses on the possible ways in
which emotion influences attention. Overall, people,
objects, and events that arouse our emotions can attract
our attention. It is a fact that when people are performing
tasks in a strong emotional state, their limited attention
resource would be divided, which makes them soak in
that specific emotion rather than focusing on the task.
First, an overview of the theories regarding the
interaction between emotion and attention. Next, some
experimental evidences supporting the relations between
emotion and attention will be reviewed.
2. THEORIES
2.1. Biased Competition Theory
Biased competition is a theory of attention proposed,
stating that stimulus will compete for representation [11-
13]. Humans only own a processing system with a
limited-capacity though need to deal with overloading
information, including internal and external stimulus.
Competition between these pieces of information is
crucial to ensure no supercharging of information occurs.
Since top-down and bottom-up factors are able to
influence the activation of representations, it is therefore
called “biased” in terms of the competition. Undeniably,
information must be selected, remaining the important
part, and rejecting the remainder. The brain must then
develop a system or a measure to select the information
based on a theory. While considering attention together
with emotion, it’s crucial to notice that emotional
materials may increase salience, and lead to attentional
prioritization of these materials (bottom-up factors).
Considering top-down factors, they could also bring up
similar prioritization as bottom-up factors. Examples
such as prior perceptions and past experiences could
bring about similar biased competitions [14]. In general,
information provided with any enhancing effect may gain
priority in the selective attention, and be best understood
by the system. Remaining the left to be selectively “not
noticed”. However, noticing competition is often used
within two or more subjects, and only a single emotional
stimulus could not be accounted under selective attention.
Instead, stimulus should appear simultaneously, and at
least two should be accounted.
2.2. Cognitive Motivated Analysis
Cognitive motivated analysis is a model that focuses
on the effects of a state of anxiety and trait anxiety on the
cognitive processing of threat. Anxiety is conceptualized
as an aversive motivational state [15]. The cognitive
motivated analysis mainly has two cognitive structures.
One is called VES which stands for valence evaluation
system and GES which stands for goal engagement
system. GES has a mode called “safety mode”, this mode
first thinks about the positive simulations, and will
consider or even ignore the negative stimulations. When
not considering the basic stimulations, VES will change
due to the state of anxiety and the traits of anxiety. The
VES is really sensitive with people that have higher
levels of anxiety compared with people that have lower
levels of anxiety. That results in individuals with higher
levels of anxiety were rated as "highly threatening",
while individuals with low levels of anxiety were not.
The attention will be separated differently due to the level
of the threat. Therefore, unlike the other models that
focus on how does the system reacts to the threat, this
model focus on what constitutes a threat instead [15, 16].
2.3. Feature Integration Theory
The Feature Integration Theory proposed by Anne
Treisman is a milestone in cognitive psychology [17],
which illustrates the way perceptual features, such as
colour and depth, go through a process of being
automatically processed before selective attention
happens. Attention is considered the process of
representing a relatively complicated stimulus by fusing
individual characteristics together [18].
Feature Integration Theory successfully integrated
cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and
psychophysics. It was when the cognitive revolution took
place during the 1950s researchers started to study the
nature of mental processes (such as memory and
attention). According to the findings in cognitive
psychology, an “internal mechanism” such as attention
can be used to explain the process of stimuli being
selected for processing. Treisman’s work played an
important role in illustrating the traits of attentional filter,
which is one of the ideas that inspired the feature
integration theory. Another is that different processing
steps are involved in the processing of stimulus.
Additionally, in psychophysics, feature integration
theory has succeeded in no small measure in providing a
framework for and governing a number of disparate
theories [17].
When being applied to a visual search experiment,
several stimuli will be presented to study participants’
reaction time towards those differing ones by asking
subjects to point out them as soon as they detect them. It
turns out that participants’ performances are always
excellent when there is only a single feature is presented,
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regardless of the interference of distracters. However, if
complex features are appearing simultaneously,
participants tend to perform increasingly erroneously
with the increase of the number of stimuli. Normally,
reaction times are negatively correlated with the number
of distracters [18].
3. STUDIES
3.1. Approach Motivated Positive Affect Reduces
Breadth of Attention
Theories propose that more attentional focus after
viewing low approach motivating positive stimuli than
after viewing high approach motivating positive stimuli.
This is because participants tend not to focus on
irrelevant objects when they approach desired objects.
Several studies were conducted that proofs the
hypothesis.
With preceding overviews, Harmon-Jones and Gable
invited 39 participants to the experiment. Participants
were given the same piece of video clip to watch, aiming
to make them feel neutral before the formal experiment
after they were given instructions for the local-global task.
Next, participants were randomly assigned to two
different groups: either watching a video clip with high-
approach motivating positive stimuli, which is delicious
desserts, or low-approach-motivating positive stimuli,
which depicting humorous situation cats. After the
experiment, they will do Kimchi and Palmer’s 24-item
local-global visual-processing task [19]. This task results
that various elements were processed as texture and
forms, and, global and local elements normally were
processed separately [19]. The experiment allows testing
the breadth of attention [20]. A higher score in the task
indicates participants show more global focus, and vice
versa [21]. The results show that participants were more
global after a cat clip compared with a dessert clip. This
result indicates that attentional focus would be broader
when experiencing low-approach motivating positive
stimuli than that of high-approach motivating positive
stimuli.
Considering the above experiment does not include
the neutrality effect, Gable and Harmon-Jones conducted
another study that includes neutral trails. Participants
were given six neutral trails (photographs of rocks)
followed by 64 experimental trails (graphs of rocks or
deserts). Throughout the exhibiting of the trails, the
Navon’s letter task was engaged to test the attentional
breadth [22]. Task, for example, a letter J composed of
many closely packed I’s. Participants were required to
respond whether they see the global or local targets as
fast as possible. Ideally, responding to the larger letters
indicates a global focus, and oppositely, responding to
smaller letters indicates a local focus. [23]. Together with
the previous study, they both concluded that a high-
approach positive effect could reduce the breadth of
attention focus [24].
3.2. Event-related Brain Potentials
Event-related brain potentials (ERP) is derived from
the electroencephalogram (EEG), which is useful to
assess the correlation between attention and emotion at
every different level of processing and of great
advantages [25].
ERP opens up new possibilities for the brain to
process information, allowing emotional cues to be
carefully studied. This approach has played an important
role in operating selective processing activated by
reflexive or explicit attention. To be specific, the
processes of perceptual encoding, working memory, and
motor preparation are considered to be demonstrated by
ERP studies that are applied to experiments such as “the
attentional blink, refractory period, visual search, and
spatial cuing paradigms” [26]. Three areas have attracted
particular attention of researchers among the valuable
information offering the emotional perspective of
selective attention that provided by ERPs, namely
pinpointing particular processing stages at which
emotional signals are selectively processed, electing
whether the distinctive emotional cues processing has an
impact on processing phases, and collating the ERP
version of attentional control [25].
ERP measures alone are helpful, however, in
revealing the magnitude of attentional resources that are
being recruited and the duration that these resources are
being utilized to process a particular stimulus or set of
stimuli [27]. For example, two ERP studies that showed
cocaine and neutral pictures to recent abstinent cocaine-
dependent individuals found greater ERP was positively
linked with cocaine craving, especially for the with the
late positive potential. ERP component that is up to
1500ms in those studies is also thought to reflect the
motivational salience of a stimulus. The results suggest
cocaine users might use cocaine for an extended duration
of time [27]. In the study above, abstinent cocaine-
dependent patients exhibited larger LPP amplitudes in
central brain regions in response to heroin-related images,
activation that was correlated with higher post
experiment negative reinforcement craving ratings [27].
The ERPs were adopted to study facilitated emotional
stimulus so as to prove that labelling emotional stimuli in
an early and automatic way may help select significant
stimuli to prioritize. The examinators invited 15
participants from the University of Greifswald. Three
categories of stimuli, namely “pleasant”, “neutral”, and
“unpleasant”, were presented. Task-related stimuli were
red/white or yellow/white images with a black or white
rectangle in the center. Participants were asked to count
those images with black or white rectangle respectively.
A 129-lead geodesic sensor net was used to measure the
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brain and ocular scalp potentials. The statistical control
of artifact was the basis of data editing. The results of the
study turned out to be consistent with the previous
hypothesis. Participants’ performances in the target
discrimination task were good, nine of them counted the
images entirely right and the remaining of them only
made one or two mistakes. The results of event-related
potentials also indicate that participants were focused on
the explicit task. Additionally, even though participants
carried out an explicit non-emotional task, emotion-
significant stimuli appeared to be selectively processed
as the EPN amplitudes increased when pleasant and
unpleasant stimuli occurred compared to neutral ones.
Further analyses also confirm the hypothesis that stimuli
with higher evolutionary significance can evoke greater
EPN amplitudes, for example, pictures of threat gave rise
to larger EPN amplitudes than did pictures that make less
evolutionary sense [28].
In brief, ERP is a type of measurement that has unique
advantages and high temporal resolution, which can be
adopted to study the relation
4. CONCLUSION
The review includes various definitions given to
attention and emotion, and how these terms differ in
different contexts. As the paper aims to discuss and
analyze the interactions between emotion and attention,
the paper presents several theories upon their
relationships. Despite the pre-existing theories, the paper
also presents studies that in different perspectives and
explores the relationship between attention and emotion.
One of the studies discovers how Approach motivated
positive effect could work to reduce the breadth of
attention. As a conclusion, this paper could well benefit
researchers who aim to discover the interactions between
attention and emotion. Also, it provides an overview of
pre-existing theories and studies that investigates their
relationships.
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