Dataset Information

Prejudice drives exogenous attention to outgroups.

ABSTRACT: Exogenous attention allows the automatic detection of relevant stimuli and the reorientation of our current focus of attention towards them. Faces from an ethnic outgroup tend to capture exogenous attention to a greater extent than faces from an ethnic ingroup. We explored whether prejudice toward the outgroup, rather than lack of familiarity, is driving this effect. Participants (N = 76) performed a digit categorization task while distractor faces were presented. Faces belonged to (i) a prejudiced outgroup, (ii) a non-prejudiced outgroup and (iii) their ingroup. Half of the faces were previously habituated in order to increase their familiarity. Reaction times, accuracy and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to index exogenous attention to distractor faces. Additionally, different indexes of explicit and implicit prejudice were measured, the latter being significantly greater towards prejudiced outgroup. N170 amplitude was greater to prejudiced outgroup-regardless of their habituation status-than to both non-prejudiced outgroup and ingroup faces and was associated with implicit prejudice measures. No effects were observed at the behavioral level. Our results show that implicit prejudice, rather than familiarity, is under the observed attention-related N170 effects and that this ERP component may be more sensitive to prejudice than behavioral measures under certain circumstances.

SUBMITTER: Gimenez-Fernandez T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7393312 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Prejudice drives exogenous attention to outgroups.

Giménez-Fernández Tamara T Kessel Dominique D Fernández-Folgueiras Uxía U Fondevila Sabela S Méndez-Bértolo Constantino C Aceves Nayamin N García-Rubio María José MJ Carretié Luis L

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience 20200701 6

Exogenous attention allows the automatic detection of relevant stimuli and the reorientation of our current focus of attention towards them. Faces from an ethnic outgroup tend to capture exogenous attention to a greater extent than faces from an ethnic ingroup. We explored whether prejudice toward the outgroup, rather than lack of familiarity, is driving this effect. Participants (N = 76) performed a digit categorization task while distractor faces were presented. Faces belonged to (i) a prejudi ...[more]

PMID: 32588901

Similar Datasets

Project description:Current theories of attention differentiate exogenous from endogenous orienting of visuospatial attention. While both forms of attention orienting engage different functional systems, endogenous and exogenous attention are thought to share resources, as shown by empirical evidence of their functional interactions. The present study aims to uncover the neurobiological basis of how salient events that drive exogenous attention disrupts endogenous attention processes. We hypothesize that interference from exogenous attention over endogenous attention involves alpha-band activity, a neural marker of visuospatial attention. To test this hypothesis, we contrast the effects of endogenous attention across two experimental tasks while we recorded electroencephalography (n = 32, both sexes): a single cueing task where endogenous attention is engaged in isolation, and a double cueing task where endogenous attention is concurrently engaged with exogenous attention. Our results confirm that the concurrent engagement of exogenous attention interferes with endogenous attention processes. We also found that changes in alpha-band activity mediate the relationship between endogenous attention and its effect on task performance, and that the interference of exogenous attention on endogenous attention occurs via the moderation of this indirect effect. Altogether, our results substantiate a model of attention, whereby endogenous and exogenous attentional processes involve the same neurophysiological resources.Significance statementScientists differentiate top-down from bottom-up visuospatial attention processes. While bottom-up attention is rapidly engaged by emerging demands from the environment, top-down attention in contrast reflects slow voluntary shifts of spatial attention. Several lines of research substantiate the idea that top-down and bottom-up attentional processes involve distinct functional systems. An increasing number of studies, however, argue that both attention systems share brain processing resources. The current study examines how salient visual events that engage bottom-up processes interfere with top-down attentional processes. Using neurophysiological recordings and multivariate pattern classification techniques, the authors show that these patterns of interference occur within the alpha-band of neural activity (8-12 Hz), which implies that bottom-up and top-down attention processes share this narrow-band frequency brain resource. The results further demonstrate that patterns of alpha-band activity explains, in part, the interference between top-down and bottom-up attention at the behavioral level.

Dataset Information

Prejudice drives exogenous attention to outgroups.

Publications

Prejudice drives exogenous attention to outgroups.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets