Eye movement assessment of selective attentional capture by emotional pictures

The eye-tracking method was used to assess attentional orienting to and eneagement oil emotional visual scenes. In Experiment 1, unpleasant, neutral, of pleasant target pictures were presented siniultaneously With neutral control pictures in peripheral Vision Under instruction to compare pleasantness of the pictures. The probability of first fixating in emotional picture. and the fiequency of subsequent fixations, were greater than those for neutral Pictures. In Experiment 2, participants were instructed to avoid looking Lit the emotional Pictures. but these were still more likely to be fixated first and gazed longer during the first-pass viewing than neutral pictures. Low-level visual features cannot explain the results. It is concluded that overt Visual attention is captured by both Unpleasant and pleasant emotional content.