Zeitliche Aspekte der Verarbeitung affektiver visueller Reize

The present dissertation describes different ways to investigate the temporal characteristics of affective perception. With a series of behavioural studies employing an Attentional Blink design we touched upon the interaction of attention and emotion and demonstrated the importance of the temporal dynamic in affective processing. Emphasis was placed on the output dimension under perceptual overload conditions. We were able to show that response time and response accuracy are modulated by different design variations, thus are likely mirroring different processing dimensions. Rather than showing a general processing facilitation for highly arousing affective stimuli, we observed specific influence of valence depending on the kind and the time of the different output measures. The electrophysiological conditioning study, presented in the second half of this dissertation, provided evidence for a learning dependent sensory plasticity in affective meaning acquisition and emphasized the importance of the timing and the perceptual context for the attainment of affective connotation. The behavioural and electrophysiological results of all five studies presented here, accentuate the significance of timing and dimension for the perception and processing of and the response to affective stimuli. As stated earlier in the introduction, three theoretical approaches make different predictions with regard to the preferential attention allocation to affective stimuli, suggesting arousal dependent modulations, specific preference for pleasant material, or processing facilitation for unpleasant threatening stimuli. The present data do not allow for an ultimate decision in favour of one of the introduced models. Rather, they support the assumption that different stages and dimensions of affective processing are influenced by distinct characteristics of the affective stimuli. Below, an attempt is made to pinpoint some of the phases of affective processing selectively susceptible to different characteristics of emotional stimuli, and to suggest directions for future research