The Effect of Threatening Stimuli on Attentional Blink

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to identify the effect of momentary Attentional Blink (AB) in temporarily stressful situations to reveal the relationship between emotion and attention after a traumatic experience. Methods: Participants were 57 college students randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n=30) that watched news videos depicting disasters or a control group (n=27) that did not watch them. This was followed by the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task for both groups. AB appeared when T1 was a news threat stimulus for the experimental and control group; the shorter the presentation interval between T1 and T2, the stronger the AB. On the other hand, when news-neutral stimuli were presented in T1, the AB pattern between the groups changed. The AB pattern appeared regardless of the type of word presented to the control group in T1; however, in the experimental group, the AB pattern appeared only when the news-neutral word was presented in T1. Results: The results suggest that AB appears when T1 is a traumatic stimulus. However, when T1 is a conditioned traumatic stimulus, the AB pattern varies depending on whether the participant watched the disaster video. Conclusions: Our results expand on existing studies by confirming the AB effect in trauma-related neutral stimuli and trauma stimuli.