The Processing Mechanism Of Different Biologically Significant Emotional Stimuli - Automatic Or Control Coding Processing

The processing mechanism of emotional stimuli includes automatic processing and control processing.If the processing mechanism of emotional stimuli is automatic two requirements are supposed to be met:firstly,even if the emotional stimulus is irrelevant to target task they still can be processed;secondly,even if the target task consumes a lot of attention resource they can still be processed.Therefore,when some kind of emotional stimuli is interference stimuli,if the emotional stimuli impair individual's performance on the target task no matter the individual's attention resources are rich or not,that means the processing mechanism of this kind of emotional stimuli is automatic processing.On the contrary,if the emotional stimuli would not impair individual's performance on the target task when the individual's attention resources are scarce,that means the processing mechanism of this kind of emotional stimuli is control processing.A great number of prior researches focused attention on the valence and arousal.The motivational dimensional model of affect advocates that motivation is an independent dimension of affect.This theory distinguishes low-high withdrawal-motivated negative stimuli,low-high approach-motivated positive stimuli and neutral stim,uli in terms of motivational intensity.From the perspective of essential meaning of emotion to human's evolution,the stimuli which are critical for human's survival or reproduction can be priority processing.Based on the motivational dimensional model of affect and from the point of the meaning of emotion to human's survival and reproduction,this research explored the processing mechanism of different biologically significant emotional stimuli.In this research we think both high-withdraw motivated negative stimuli and high-approach motivated positive stimuli belong to high biologically significant stimuli.And both low-withdraw motivated negative stimuli and low-approach motivated positive stimuli belong to low biologically significant stimuli.We manipulated the task load to adjust the individual's attention resource.Experiment 1 used 3×2 two factors within-subject design to explore the processing mechanism of different biologically significant negative stimuli.The experiment materials were selected from the International affective picture system and Chinese affective picture system.These pictures were used after evaluation.The visual search task was used to adjust attention.There were 64 students participant this experiment(50 female,14 male).Results indicated that when the task load was high,individual's attention resource is scarce,only high biologically significant negative stimuli impair individual's performance.But when the task load was low,individual's attention resource is rich,both high and low biologically significant negative stimuli impair individual's performance.Experiment 2 used 3×2 two factors within-subject design to explore the processing mechanism of different biologically significant positive stimuli.The experiment materials were selected from the International affective picture system and Chinese affective picture system.These pictures were used after evaluation.The visual search task was used to adjust attention.There were 67 students participant this experiment(51 female,16 male).Results indicated that when the task load was high,individual's attention resource is scarce,only high biologically significant positive stimuli impair individual's performance.But when the task load was low,individual's attention resource is rich,both high and low biologically significant positive stimuli impair individual's performance.In summary,this research drew some conclusions as follows:(1)The processing mechanism of high biologically significant emotional stimuli(no matter high-withdraw negative stimuli or high-approach positive stimuli)is automatic processing.Because this kind of emotional stimuli was critical to individual's survival.(2)The processing mechanism of low biologically significant emotional stimuli(no matter low-withdraw negative stimuli or low-approach positive stimuli)is control processing.Because this kind of emotional stimuli is less relevant with individual's survival.