Neither exogenous, nor endogenous: Evidence for a distinct role of negative emotion during attentional control.

ABSTRACT: Negative or threatening stimuli capture attention. However, it remains unclear whether this phenomenon is best conceived as bottom-up (i.e., salience-driven) or top-down (i.e., goal-directed) instead. To address this question, we conducted two experiments using a previously validated dot-probe task (DPT) where physical salience (i.e., abrupt luminance change) and negative emotion (i.e., fearful face) competed with one another for attention selection (Experiment 1, n = 40) or negative (but also positive) emotion could be used as an endogenous cue by the participants to guide this process (Experiment 2, n = 39). Eye-tracking was used to ascertain that both cue and target were processed with peripheral vision. In Experiment 1, we found that negative emotion and physical salience both drove sp

SUBMITTER: Xue X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12520368 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature