Peripheral vision and preferential emotion processing

This study investigated the preferential processing of emotional scenes, which were presented in the periphery of the visual field. Building on well-established affective modulations of event-related potentials, which were observed for foveal stimuli, emotional and neutral images were presented at several locations in the visual field, while participants either viewed the pictures or were engaged by a distractor task. The findings clearly show that emotional processing varied with picture eccentricity, with emotional effects being maximal in the center and absent in the far periphery. Moreover, near-peripheral emotional stimuli modulated event-related potentials only when participants were passively viewing them. These results suggest that perceptual processing resources are needed for identification and emotional processing of peripheral stimuli