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Poster #7 - Emotional Stimuli Disrupt Inhibitory Control Performance in Children and Adults

Thu, March 21, 12:30 to 1:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Despite age-related improvements in the ability to regulate automatic responses (inhibitory control; IC), emotional information can disrupt this skill across the lifespan (Best & Miller, 2010; Pessoa, 2013). For example, Lagattuta et al. (2011) showed that 4- to 10-year-olds and adults performed worse on an emotional IC task, happy-sad (say “happy” to sad faces and “sad” to happy faces) than on a non-emotional variant, day-night (say “day” to moons and “night” to suns; Gerstadt et al., 1994). Kramer et al. (2015) replicated this result and provided evidence that emotional stimuli only degrades IC accuracy and reaction time when it is focal (i.e., must be processed), but not when it is peripheral to the task (i.e., present but irrelevant). Here, we test whether peripheral emotional information can impair IC when it pulls attention away from current goals. We also provide another replication test of the impact of focal emotional stimuli.

Four- to 10-year-olds and adults (N=191; N=183 after removing outliers) completed opposite games (24 trials each) on an eyetracker. Three variants exclusively featured focal stimuli centered on the screen: (1) Happy-Sad (emotion-focal); (2) Up-Down (emotion-absent); (3) Leaf-Basket (emotion-absent). Two versions featured additional emotional or neutral images which randomly appeared in one of the corners for each trial: (4) Up-Down[Happy-Sad] (emotion-peripheral); (5) Up-Down[Leaf-Basket] (emotion-absent; neutral-peripheral). For all games, participants were instructed to label the focal picture with the opposing name (e.g., “up” for down-pointing arrows, “leaf” for baskets). As an added challenge, no image (focal or peripheral) appeared more than twice (e.g., the model posing the happy face varied each trial). Responses were counted as correct if participants gave the opposite label as their first utterance for that trial (Kappas>.82). Response times were obtained from the eyetracker.

Two, separate 4 (age: 4/5, 6/7, 8/10, adults) x 5 (task: Happy-Sad, Up-Down, Leaf-Basket, Up-Down[Happy-Sad], Up-Down[Leaf-Basket]) repeated measures ANOVAs on (a) average reaction time for accurate trials and (b) number of errors, resulted in main effects for age (Figure 1) and task (Figure 2), Fs>22.10, ps<.001, np2s>.11. We used post-hoc comparisons (Tukey’s HSD) to examine main effects. Reaction times and errors decreased with age (RTs: ps<.001; Errors: 4/5<6/7
Aligning with past work, although IC improved with age, focal emotional information negatively influenced performance. Novel to the current study, we found that looming (peripheral) emotional, but not neutral stimuli, can also degrade IC speed and accuracy. The magnitude of this IC impairment, however, is weaker than that caused by focal emotional stimuli. Eye-tracking analyses will examine visual attention to the peripheral images (emotional versus neutral), including connections between the ability to ignore these irrelevant stimuli and task performance. Results will be discussed in relation to developmental changes and individual differences in the regulation of attention and behavior in emotional and non-emotional contexts.

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