Does arousal per se account for the influence of appetitive stimuli on attentional scope and the late positive potential?

Past research suggests that high approach-motivated positive affects narrow attentional scope and cause greater late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes. However, because arousal is related to motivational intensity, arousal may be responsible for these past findings. The present research investigated whether arousal, manipulated independently of affect using physical exercise, would influence attentional and LPP responses to stimuli. Results revealed that appetitive (vs. neutral) pictures evoked larger LPPs over central and left frontal regions, and caused more attentional narrowing. Individual differences in approach motivation predicted more attentional narrowing following appetitive stimuli. However, manipulated arousal did not influence attentional scope or LPPs to neutral or appetitive stimuli. Results suggest that attentional narrowing and LPPs to appetitive stimuli are related to approach motivation rather than enhanced general arousal.

[1]  P A Hancock,et al.  Time estimation performance before, during, and following physical activity. , 1989, Journal of human ergology.

[2]  M. Bradley,et al.  Emotional perception: correlation of functional MRI and event-related potentials. , 2006, Cerebral cortex.

[3]  D. Zillmann,et al.  Excitation transfer from physical exercise to subsequent aggressive behavior. , 1972 .

[4]  Annmarie MacNamara,et al.  ERPs and the Study of Emotion , 2011 .

[5]  Matthias M. Müller,et al.  Effects of emotional arousal in the cerebral hemispheres: a study of oscillatory brain activity and event-related potentials , 2001, Clinical Neurophysiology.

[6]  E. Harmon-Jones,et al.  Attentional Consequences of Pregoal and Postgoal Positive Affects Motivational Intensity in Affects , 2022 .

[7]  J. Bryant,et al.  Enhancement of experienced sexual arousal in response to erotic stimuli through misattribution of unrelated residual excitation. , 1975, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[8]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Handbook Of Psychophysiology , 2019 .

[9]  Robin S. Edelstein,et al.  Emotion and memory narrowing: A review and goal-relevance approach , 2009 .

[10]  H. Semlitsch,et al.  A solution for reliable and valid reduction of ocular artifacts, applied to the P300 ERP. , 1986, Psychophysiology.

[11]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  The motivational dimensional model of affect: Implications for breadth of attention, memory, and cognitive categorisation , 2010 .

[12]  Right frontal brain activity, cortisol, and withdrawal behavior in 6-month-old infants. , 2003, Behavioral neuroscience.

[13]  David N. Towers,et al.  The many metrics of cardiac chronotropy: A pragmatic primer and a brief comparison of metrics , 2007, Biological Psychology.

[14]  R. Cabeza,et al.  Event-related potentials of recognizing happy and neutral faces , 2001, Neuroreport.

[15]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  Neural Activity Underlying the Effect of Approach-Motivated Positive Affect on Narrowed Attention , 2009, Psychological science.

[16]  Richard J. Davidson,et al.  The functional neuroimaging of human emotion: Asymmetric contributions of cortical and subcortical circuitry. , 2003 .

[17]  E. Harmon-Jones,et al.  The role of asymmetrical frontal cortical activity in aggression. , 2007, Psychophysiology.

[18]  H. Moriya,et al.  The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus , 2012, PloS one.

[19]  M. Bradley,et al.  Motivated attention: Affect, activation, and action. , 1997 .

[20]  Richard J. Davidson,et al.  Right frontal brain activity, cortisol, and withdrawal behavior in 6-month-old infants. , 2003, Behavioral neuroscience.

[21]  T. Beauchaine,et al.  A comparison of psychophysiological and self-report measures of BAS and BIS activation. , 2005, Psychophysiology.

[22]  D. Fowles,et al.  The three arousal model: implications of gray's two-factor learning theory for heart rate, electrodermal activity, and psychopathy. , 1980, Psychophysiology.

[23]  C. Carver,et al.  Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: The BIS/BAS Scales , 1994 .

[24]  P. Wachtel,et al.  Anxiety, attention, and coping with threat. , 1968, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[25]  G H Egstrom,et al.  Perceptual Narrowing in Novice Divers1 , 1966, Human factors.

[26]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  Relative left frontal activation to appetitive stimuli: considering the role of individual differences. , 2008, Psychophysiology.

[27]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  Late positive potential to appetitive stimuli and local attentional bias. , 2010, Emotion.

[28]  Jeffrey D. Green,et al.  Arousal and attraction: Evidence for automatic and controlled processes. , 1998 .

[29]  Michel Audiffren,et al.  Acute aerobic exercise and information processing: energizing motor processes during a choice reaction time task. , 2008, Acta psychologica.

[30]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  Toward an understanding of the influence of affective states on attentional tuning: comment on Friedman and Förster (2010). , 2011, Psychological bulletin.

[31]  E. Harmon-Jones,et al.  The Effect of Personal Relevance and Approach-Related Action Expectation on Relative Left Frontal Cortical Activity , 2006, Psychological science.

[32]  E. Harmon-Jones,et al.  Embodying approach motivation: Body posture influences startle eyeblink and event-related potential responses to appetitive stimuli , 2012, Biological Psychology.

[33]  P. Tomporowski,et al.  The effect of exercise-induced arousal on cognitive task performance: A meta-regression analysis , 2010, Brain Research.

[34]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  Approach-Motivated Positive Affect Reduces Breadth of Attention , 2008, Psychological science.

[35]  S. Puttonen,et al.  BIS-BAS sensitivity and cardiac autonomic stress profiles. , 2003, Psychophysiology.

[36]  E. Harmon-Jones,et al.  Postauricular reflex responses to pictures varying in valence and arousal. , 2009, Psychophysiology.

[37]  D. Navon.  Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[38]  J. Blascovich,et al.  Culture and the body: East-West differences in visceral perception. , 2012, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[39]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Decision making, the P3, and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system. , 2005, Psychological bulletin.

[40]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  The role of asymmetric frontal cortical activity in emotion-related phenomena: A review and update , 2010, Biological Psychology.

[41]  M. Bradley,et al.  Emotion and motivation. , 2007 .

[42]  David Navon,et al.  The forest revisited: More on global precedence , 1981 .

[43]  E. Harmon-Jones,et al.  The effect of embodied emotive states on cognitive categorization. , 2010, Emotion.

[44]  C. Carver.  Pleasure as a sign you can attend to something else: Placing positive feelings within a general model of affect , 2003, Cognition & emotion.

[45]  C. Colder,et al.  Gray's Reinforcement Sensitivity Model and Child Psychopathology: Laboratory and Questionnaire Assessment of the BAS and BIS , 2004, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[46]  L. Pessoa,et al.  Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires , 2005, Cognition & emotion.

[47]  E. Harmon-Jones.  Toward an understanding of the motivation underlying dissonance effects: Is the production of aversive consequences necessary? , 1999 .

[48]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  Incorporating motivational intensity and direction into the study of emotions: implications for brain mechanisms of emotion and cognition-emotion interactions , 2008 .

[49]  F. Figura,et al.  Focusing of visual attention under submaximal physical load , 2003 .

[50]  William A. Cunningham,et al.  Attitudes to the right- and left: Frontal ERP asymmetries associated with stimulus valence and processing goals , 2005, NeuroImage.

[51]  M. Bradley,et al.  Measuring emotion: the Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential. , 1994, Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry.

[52]  Jonas K. Olofsson,et al.  Affective picture processing: An integrative review of ERP findings , 2008, Biological Psychology.

[53]  Philip A. Gable,et al.  The Blues Broaden, but the Nasty Narrows , 2010, Psychological science.

[54]  Dan J. Graham,et al.  Personality, physical fitness, and affective response to exercise among adolescents. , 2009, Medicine and science in sports and exercise.

[55]  I. Franken,et al.  Event-related potentials indicate motivational relevance of cocaine cues in abstinent cocaine addicts , 2004, Psychopharmacology.