Emotional word processing in attention networks investigated with ERPs

A processing advantage for emotional words when compared to neutral words has been found with different tasks, with different materials and in different populations. This may result from an interaction of emotional and attentional processes. Emotional stimuli automatically attract attention (see data from visual search, attentional blink, orienting and emotional Stroop tasks). However, the question remains how exactly emotion and attention interact? Posner & Petersen (1990) proposed a model of attention involving alerting, orienting and executive attention which can be studied with the Attention Network Test (ANT, Fan et al., 2002). Here we presented emotional words in a task similar to the ANT. To investigate interactions of emotion with alerting and orienting, emotional words were presented as cues in a cue-target design either predicting the spatial position of the target, or being non informative, but alerting. To test for a possible interaction of emotion and executive attention the "Ericson flanker task" was adapted. Emotional and neutral words were presented at fixation flanked by the same word above and below the target word. Participants had to judge the color of the target word which was either congruent or incongruent with the flanker words. Effects of attention and emotion were found in the ERP, such as a congruency effect that was modulated by emotional word status in the N2. We discuss the results in regard to the theoretical implications of the attentional networks