Cargando…
Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search
Exposure to affective stimuli could enhance perception and facilitate attention via increasing alertness, vigilance, and by decreasing attentional thresholds. However, evidence on the impact of affective sounds on perception and attention is scant. Here, a novel aspect of affective facilitation of a...
Autores principales: | , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5583323/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28871100 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09975-8 |
_version_ | 1783261299053953024 |
---|---|
author | Asutay, Erkin Västfjäll, Daniel |
author_facet | Asutay, Erkin Västfjäll, Daniel |
author_sort | Asutay, Erkin |
collection | PubMed |
description | Exposure to affective stimuli could enhance perception and facilitate attention via increasing alertness, vigilance, and by decreasing attentional thresholds. However, evidence on the impact of affective sounds on perception and attention is scant. Here, a novel aspect of affective facilitation of attention is studied: whether arousal induced by task-irrelevant auditory stimuli could modulate attention in a visual search. In two experiments, participants performed a visual search task with and without auditory-cues that preceded the search. Participants were faster in locating high-salient targets compared to low-salient targets. Critically, search times and search slopes decreased with increasing auditory-induced arousal while searching for low-salient targets. Taken together, these findings suggest that arousal induced by sounds can facilitate attention in a subsequent visual search. This novel finding provides support for the alerting function of the auditory system by showing an auditory-phasic alerting effect in visual attention. The results also indicate that stimulus arousal modulates the alerting effect. Attention and perception are our everyday tools to navigate our surrounding world and the current findings showing that affective sounds could influence visual attention provide evidence that we make use of affective information during perceptual processing. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5583323 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-55833232017-09-06 Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search Asutay, Erkin Västfjäll, Daniel Sci Rep Article Exposure to affective stimuli could enhance perception and facilitate attention via increasing alertness, vigilance, and by decreasing attentional thresholds. However, evidence on the impact of affective sounds on perception and attention is scant. Here, a novel aspect of affective facilitation of attention is studied: whether arousal induced by task-irrelevant auditory stimuli could modulate attention in a visual search. In two experiments, participants performed a visual search task with and without auditory-cues that preceded the search. Participants were faster in locating high-salient targets compared to low-salient targets. Critically, search times and search slopes decreased with increasing auditory-induced arousal while searching for low-salient targets. Taken together, these findings suggest that arousal induced by sounds can facilitate attention in a subsequent visual search. This novel finding provides support for the alerting function of the auditory system by showing an auditory-phasic alerting effect in visual attention. The results also indicate that stimulus arousal modulates the alerting effect. Attention and perception are our everyday tools to navigate our surrounding world and the current findings showing that affective sounds could influence visual attention provide evidence that we make use of affective information during perceptual processing. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5583323/ /pubmed/28871100 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09975-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Asutay, Erkin Västfjäll, Daniel Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search |
title | Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search |
title_full | Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search |
title_fullStr | Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search |
title_full_unstemmed | Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search |
title_short | Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search |
title_sort | exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5583323/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28871100 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09975-8 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT asutayerkin exposuretoarousalinducingsoundsfacilitatesvisualsearch AT vastfjalldaniel exposuretoarousalinducingsoundsfacilitatesvisualsearch |