The Effect Of Memory Encoding On Emotionally Induced Blindness

Emotion-induced blindness(EIB)is an attentional phenomenon in which detection accuracy of a neutral target is significantly reduced when it is preceded by a taskirrelevant emotional picture(distractor)in a rapid serial visual presentation(RSVP)of images.According to the biased perceptual competition(BPC)model,the EIB effect is usually ascribed to multi-stage perceptual competitions between target and emotional distractor,compared with the target stimulu,Emotional distractor stimuli are more competitive due to their attentional priority,resulting in impaired ability to recognize target stimuli.Recently research has shown that the proactive deprioritization of emotional distractors through prior providing information about the distractors,or passive habituation of emotional distractors,attenuates emotion-induced blindness(EIB)in the rapid serial visual presentation stream.However,whether prior memory encoding of emotional distractors could bias the EIB effect remains unknown,Direct evidence is still lacking.this study employed an item-method direct forgetting(DF)procedure with a classic EIB procedure to investigate the effect of intentional memory encoding on EIB effect.This study consists of two experiments.In the experiment 1,normal subjects were used to investigate whether the EIB effect was weakened by the directed forgetting task.In the second experiment,on the basis of the experiment 1,the sample of depressive tendency was further increased to test whether the conclusion of experiment1 was applicable to the high-risk group of depression.In experiment 1,a single factor between-subject design was used.This study employed a three-phase paradigm integrating an item-method direct forgetting(DF)procedure with a classic EIB procedure.Participants firstly completed a memory coding phase to either remember or forget negative pictures,then performed an intermediate phase of the EIB test,and finally finished a recognition test.The experimental results found that:(1)the results replicated the typical DF effect by showing higher recognition accuracies for TBR pictures compared to those for TBF pictures.(2)the TBF negative distractors attenuated the EIB effect compared to the TBR negative distractors,but showed comparable EIB effect as the novel negative distractors.These findings indicate that prior memory encoding manipulations of negative distractors could bias the following EIB effect,providing an important approach to modulate EIB effect.In experiment 2,the EIB effect of normal individuals and individuals with depressive tendencies were further compared under the task of directed forgetting.According to Beck’s cognitive model of depression,the memory of depressed individuals has a significant negative bias.Previous studies have found that individuals with depressive tendencies have defects in memory inhibition function,and directed forgetting is inefficient.So in experiment 2,we want to explore whether emotional memory encoding in individuals with depressive tendencies can modulate EIB effect.Experiment 2 recruited individuals with depressive tendencies to complete the experiment.The results were compared with those of the normal sample in experiment 1.And the opposite effect was seen when compared to the normal group in experiment 1.The results of experiment 2 suggest that the EIB effect is modulated by the encoding of emotional memory induced by the directed forgetting task in individuals with depressive tendencies,But they perform differently in EIB tasks than normal individuals.In summary,the results of this study suggest that that prior memory encoding manipulations of negative distractors could bias the following EIB effect in normal individuals,However,there was directed forgetting effect in depressed individuals.in the EIB task,the EIB effect induced by the prior memory encoding manipulations,But they perform differently in EIB tasks than normal individuals.The EIB test is an important tool to reflect the negative emotional attention bias of individuals.Therefore,the results of this study suggest that the encoding strategy of intentional emotional memory represented by directed forgetting is also suitable for the intervention of emotional attention bias of individuals with depressive tendencies.