No Evidence for an Awareness-Dependent Emotional Modulation of the Attentional Blink

Pictures of faces with emotional expressions presented before a temporal attention task have been reported to affect temporal attention in an awareness-dependent manner: Awareness of a fearful face was linked to an increased deficit in the temporal attention task, while preventing the face from reaching awareness was linked to a decreased deficit, both relative to neutral faces. Here we report the results of two temporal attention experiments which aimed to extend and conceptually replicate this basic finding. The temporal attention task was preceded by an unmasked or a masked fearful face on a trial-by-trial basis. In both experiments the finding of an awareness-dependent emotional modulation of temporal attention through fearful faces could not be replicated, even when data were pooled across experiments. Pooling of experiments indicated however that, independent of awareness level, fearful faces can be associated with slightly worse temporal attention performance than neutral faces, and suggested a lag-specific practice effect in terms of a reduced deficit in temporal attention in the second half of the experiment.