CONDITIONED EMOTIONAL CUEING OF SPATIAL ATTENTIONAL SHIFTS IN A GO NO-GO RT TASK/

The influence of conditioned emotional arousal on selective attention was evaluated in a go/no-go version of Posner's covert attention spati al orienting task (Posner et al., 1982). Ten males and 10 females part icipated in the study, which consisted of two phases; an initial condi tioning phase and a subsequent attention phase. In the conditioning ph ase, the Conditioning group received a 90-dB white noise unconditioned stimulus (UCS) contingent with presentations of a frame-lit rectangle , which thus became a conditioned stimulus (CS +), while a completely- lit rectangle was never paired with the noise and became a CS -. The C ontrol group received non-contingent presentations of the noise and th e two rectangles. In the attention phase, both groups participated in a go/no-go version of the attention orienting task, where targets were cued by both the CS + and the CS -. Half of the subjects in both the Conditioning and the Control group were instructed to respond only to targets cued by the CS + (go cue) and ignore targets cued by the CS -( no-go cue). The other half of the subjects responded to targets cued b y the CS - and ignored targets cued by CS +. The Conditioning group id entified targets at the opposite location of the CS + significantly fa ster than targets at the same location. The emotional salience of the cue thus reversed the typical cost of shifting attention to targets ou tside the cued location. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.