In this project, we examine the bi-directional interplay between emotion and attention. We are using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to better understand the timecourse and mechanisms involved in this interplay. Ultimately, we hope to clarify the significance of emotion-attention interactions for understanding emotion regulation and symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders.

Attention is powerfully influenced by emotional perceptions and states, just as attention promotes the ability to control and modulate emotions. Research has documented these processes both in terms of facilitation and interference effects. In our research, we are using ERPs to examine several questions about the interplay between emotion and attention in adults and young children. First, we are testing whether processing of emotional faces influences attention performance, and whether these links between emotion and attention differ depending on affective individual differences (trait anxiety, depressed mood, and approach/avoidance affective style). In the case of anxiety, signs of disorder include difficulty disengaging attention from threats. Yet, normative levels of anxiety may actually bolster attention. Our understanding of links between emotion and attention and of patterns that mark vulnerabilities for disorder is compromised by contradictory and inconclusive findings in the literature.

We are using a range of tools to examine these questions. In addition to using EEG and ERP measures of attention and emotion, we are using the Attention Network Test (ANT), which measures three functionally and anatomically distinct components of attention: alerting, orienting, and conflict resolution (Fan et al., 2002). Find out more about the ANT here.

This project is being conducted in collaboration with Bruce McCandliss at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology and Doug Mennin at the Yale University Department of Psychology.

This research is supported by NIH Grant 5S06GM060654-04.

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