Habituation to Emotional Distractors Attenuates Emotion-Induced Blindness

Recent research has shown that emotion-induced blindness (EIB) can be attenuated by strengthening the attentional prioritization of perceptual targets in the rapid serial visual presentation stream and/or proactively inhibiting emotional distractors. However, whether EIB can be attenuated by reducing the attentional prioritization of emotional distractors through passive habituation remains unknown. To address this question, the present experiment utilized a novel three-session paradigm including a pre- and post-EIB measurement session and an intermediate multiblock free-view habituation session. In order to examine the effectivity and specificity of the habituation effect on EIB, four groups of participants underwent the same pre- and post-EIB measurement session but completed the habituation session with different kinds of pictures: (a) repeated negative pictures, which were seen in pre-EIB; (b) repeated neutral pictures, which were seen in pre-EIB; (c) novel negative pictures, which were never seen in pre-EIB; and (d) novel neutral pictures, which were never seen in pre-EIB. The results showed that the EIB effect was only significantly attenuated after habituation to repeated negative pictures. This finding indicates that emotional interference in EIB can be attenuated by reducing the attentional prioritization of emotional distractors through habituation. Furthermore, similar EIB attenuation after habituation to repeated neutral pictures suggests that the habituation-induced attenuation might be context specific. These results provide a potentially new and important approach to reduce EIB effects.