The varying time courses of attentional and affective modulation of the startle eyeblink reflex

In previous research on modulation of the startle eyeblink reflex, emotional effects have been demonstrated only at late probe positions, whereas attentional effects have been found at both early and late positions but only when the prepulses were affectively neutral. In Experiment 1, participants viewed emotionally valenced pictures and were instructed to attend to the duration of half of the slides. Affective modulation of the startle eyeblink occurred at long lead intervals, but attentional modulation also occurred late. In Experiment 2, participants viewed the same slides used in Experiment I but were instructed to attend to the duration of only the positive or the negative slides. Affective modulation occurred at both early and late probe positions, whereas attentional effects occurred only following slide offset. Early (250 ms) affective modification of startle eyeblink has not been previously reported. These results suggest that the time courses of emotional and attentional modulation of startle are variable and can occur at both early and late startle probe positions, depending on task requirements.