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Look–don’t look! How emotional pictures affect pro- and anti-saccades

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Abstract

We investigated the effect of emotional target content on the generation of pro- and anti-saccades. Subjects had to generate saccades towards (pro-saccade) or away from (anti-saccade) peripherally presented pleasant, unpleasant or neutral pictures. Two different SOAs were used, either with simultaneous fixation offset and target onset (no gap) or with fixation offset preceding target onset by 200 ms (gap). In the pro-saccade task participants were faster to respond to emotional pictures in the left visual field. In the right visual field facilitation occurred only for pleasant pictures and saccadic reaction times towards unpleasant pictures were slowed. In the anti-saccade task more anti-saccade errors towards emotional pictures (pleasant and unpleasant) were made in the gap condition. On the whole, endogenous saccade generation appears facilitated by emotional target content, probably via increased input from extra-striate and parietal brain areas to the superior colliculus. Moderating factors such as the SOA or the visual field of presentation are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Andrea Feichtenschlager, Melanie Zell and Niklas Ihssen for help with data acquisition and analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Box D 25, 78457, Konstanz, Germany

    Johanna Kissler

  2. Department of Psychology, NIMH Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Andreas Keil

Authors
  1. Johanna Kissler
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  2. Andreas Keil
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johanna Kissler.

Appendix

Appendix

IAPS numbers of stimuli used in the present study:

Pleasant pictures: 2050, 2070, 2080, 2160, 2165, 2170, 2311, 2340, 2341, 2360, 4650, 4651, 4652, 4658, 4659, 4660, 4664, 4670, 4680, 4690.

Neutral pictures: 2190, 2200, 221,0 2230, 2381, 2440, 2480, 2570, 2850, 7002, 7009, 7010, 7020, 7030, 7040, 7080, 7175, 7233, 7235, 9070.

Unpleasant pictures: 1050, 1120, 1201, 1300, 1930, 3000, 3010, 3050, 3060, 3071, 3080, 3102, 3110, 3130, 3530, 6260, 6350, 6510, 6540, 9405.

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Kissler, J., Keil, A. Look–don’t look! How emotional pictures affect pro- and anti-saccades. Exp Brain Res 188, 215–222 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1358-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1358-0

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