The Effect Of Positive Affect On Space-based And Object-based Attention

Attention, an important aspect of human cognition, is the foundation of normal mental activity. Attention research is also the basis of cognitive function research. Because of the limitedness of the brain information processing capacity, only some of the information can gain access to the information processing system through attention filter and be further processed. Moreover, attention can select the most relevant information to behavioral targets while ignoring irrelevant one. This is called selectiveness of attention. Researchers did a large number of experiments on the characterization of visual selective attention and cognitive mechanisms and found two forms of attention selection:spatial-based attention and object-based attention. However, there have always been heated debates on whether selective attention is based on space or object in the field of attention research. "Spatial-based" theory is based on physiological characteristics of visual information processing and the limitedness of human brain simultaneous information processing. This theory holds that visual selection is based on the operation of vision's pure spatial representation and human brain cannot effectively process all the stimuli within the scope of vision simultaneously. Visual attention first selects specific space, and then effectively process the objects fall into the selected space. "Object-based" theory holds that visual attention selects perceptual objects and is based on the object itself, regardless of the spatial position of the object. Attention processing is based on the well-organized objects in the previous stage. Both theories have been supported by a large amount of experimental evidence.In recent years driven by positive psychology, the relationship between positive affect and visual attention has become a hot topic in psychology. Both life experiences and scientific research have found that affect plays an important regulatory role in attention. Experimental studies have shown that affect regulates attention processing and then leads to fundamental changes of perception, thinking and other cognitive processing. Previous studies found that not only did positive affect extend attention span and increase attention flexibility, but also people in positive affect showed a significant attentional bias towards positive valence stimuli. Previous studies proposed positive affect expansion and construction theory and affect information equivalent theory to explain the phenomenon that positive affect regulates attention. However, previous researches have focused on the relationship between positive affect and spatial attention. In view of this, existing researches on the phenomenon and its relations to the study and interpretation of the applicability and generalization to be a lot of restrictions. In order to reveal the whole picture of affect regulation on attention, it is necessary to carry out study regarding positive affect and attention, especially the correlation between positive affect and object attention.This study consists of three large experiments using two different experimental paradigms: one is Egly et al (1994) classic paradigm, the other is emotional face Flanker task. Experiment 1 used standardized way of continuously presenting images to induce affect. Experiment 2 used emotional face to induce affect. Experiment 3 used scale to test subjects themselves temperament affect. In the first experiment, we found that positive affect played a significant regulatory role to spatial-based and object-based attentions, that is, compared with negative and neutral affects positive affect reduced spatial-based and object-based attention effects; when using different experimental paradigm in Experiment 2, although we found positive affect had more conflicts in a positive affect in the face Flanker task, but we did not find any effect of positive affect on object-based attentions. In Experiment 3, we found that PA scores predicted a smaller magnitude of spatial-based and object-based attention effects, while NA predicted a larger magnitude of spatial-based and object-based attention effects.Through the analysis of experimental results, we can draw the following conclusions:first, positive affect can regulate the size of the spatial-based and object-based effects; second, dispositional positive affect can regulate the size of the spatial-based and object-based; third, positive affect has an robust influence on space-based attention, while the influence of positive affect on object-based attention is dependent on the experimental paradigm which is related to attention shift; fourth, the regulation of positive emotions on attention may be through the regulation effect of Dopamine system on attention system.