The mystery remains: breadth of attention in Flanker and Navon tasks unaffected by affective states induced by an appraisal manipulation.

Affective effects on breadth of attention have been related to aspects of different components of affective states such as the arousal and valence of affective experience and the motivational intensity of action tendency. As none of these explanations fully aligns with existing evidence, we hypothesised that affective effects on breadth of attention may arise from the appraisal component of affective states. Based on this reconceptualisation, we tested the effects of conduciveness and power appraisals on two measures of breadth of attention. In two web-based experiments, we manipulated these appraisals in a 2 × 2 design using a game-like arithmetic task where participants could (1) gain or lose rewards (goal conducive vs. obstructive) based on (2) either their action or the actions of a "robot" (high vs. low power). Breadth of attention was assessed using the flanker task (Experiment 1; n = 236) and the Navon task (Experiment 2; n = 215). We found that appraisals did not directly influence breadth of attention even though high power appraisal significantly improved the overall performance in both experiments indicating successful appraisal manipulation. We discuss ways in which these findings inform future efforts to explain the origins of affective effects on attentional breadth.

Broadening of attention dilates the pupil.

Inconclusive evidence suggests that the pupil is more dilated when the breadth of attention is broad compared to narrow. To further investigate this relationship, we recorded pupil size from healthy volunteers while inducing trial-wise changes in breadth of attention using a shape-discrimination task where participants had to remember the location of a gap in a small or a large circle. A visual search task with targets presented at different distances from the centre of the screen was used to behaviourally assess the success of the manipulation of breadth of attention. Data were analysed using a generalised additive mixed model to test the experimental effects on pupil size after controlling for the effects of gaze location and eye vergence. The results showed that the pupil was more dilated in the broad-breadth-of-attention condition compared to the narrow-breadth-of-attention condition. However, the effect of attentional breadth on visual search performance was not mediated by pupil size, suggesting that more research is needed to understand the functional role of pupil dilation in relation to breadth of attention.

On the relationship between valence and arousal in samples across the globe.

Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neutral valence and increases with both positive and negative valence: a symmetric V-shaped relationship. In the study reported here of self-reported affect during a remembered moment (N = 8,590), we tested the valence-arousal relationship in 33 societies with 25 different languages. The two most common hypotheses in the literature-independence and a symmetric V-shaped relationship-were not supported. With data of all samples pooled, arousal increased with positive but not negative valence. Valence accounted for between 5% (Finland) and 43% (China Beijing) of the variance in arousal. Although there is evidence for a structural relationship between the two, there is also a large amount of variability in this relation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Does goal congruence dilate the pupil over and above goal relevance?

To better understand the mechanisms underlying preferential processing of affective stimuli (i.e., affective attention), it is useful to ask which appraisal dimensions characterize stimuli that capture affective attention. Viewed from such appraisal perspective, most accounts of affective attention predict that the appraisal of goal relevance (i.e. the overall relevance of a stimulus/event to one's current goals) should attract attention whereas some accounts also implicate the appraisal of goal congruence (i.e. the value of the stimulus with respect to these goals). We compared these accounts by investigating independent effects of goal relevance and goal congruence on attention capture operationalized through pupil dilation. Forty-seven participants completed a modified Monetary Incentive Delay task (MID) where they sought to maximize the amount of chocolate received at the end of the experiment, pupil data from forty-two participants were used in the final analysis. Implicating attention capture by goal relevance, we found that pupil size was increased by all win- and loss-related compared to neutral stimuli and by materialized wins and losses compared to non-materialized ones. By contrast, we did not find pupil dilation effects of goal congruence across three different operationalizations of this appraisal dimension. These findings suggest that goal congruence appraisal may not contribute to the aspects of affective attention reflected in pupil dilation over and above goal relevance appraisal.