effects of emotional spoken words on exogenous attentional orienting

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Effects of emotional spoken words on exogenous attentional orientingJulie Bertelsab; Régine Kolinskyab; Aurélie Bernaertsb; José Moraisb

a Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium b Université Libre de Bruxelles(ULB), Brussels, Belgium

First published on: 18 March 2011

To cite this Article Bertels, Julie , Kolinsky, Régine , Bernaerts, Aurélie and Morais, José(2011) 'Effects of emotional spokenwords on exogenous attentional orienting', Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 23: 4, 435 — 452, First published on: 18March 2011 (iFirst)To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2011.535513URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2011.535513

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Effects of emotional spoken words on exogenousattentional orienting

Julie Bertels1,2, Regine Kolinsky1,2, Aurelie Bernaerts2, and Jose Morais2

1Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium2Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium

Attentional biases linked to emotional stimuli were investigated in healthy people using an auditoryadaptation of the cueing paradigm. Specifically, we investigated whether both validity effects elicited bypredictive, endogenous cues and the Inhibition of Return phenomenon (IOR; Posner & Cohen, 1984)elicited by unpredictive, exogenous cues are influenced by the emotional content of spoken words.Supporting the idea that exogenous orienting is not an encapsulated phenomenon (Stolz, 1996), we foundabolished IOR for negative words (Experiments 3 and 4). Thus, attention would not be prevented fromreturning to the previously explored location of a negative word. On the contrary, no emotionalmodulation of the validity effects was observed (Experiments 1 and 2), suggesting that the intervention ofresource-demanding orienting strategies increased cognitive load and thus prevented any emotionalmodulation. Still, facilitative, nonspatial effects of negative words were found when initial attentionalshifts elicited by the cue were both exogenous and endogenous (Experiment 1), but not when they wereexclusively endogenous (Experiment 2). These results highlight the importance of both the negativity ofa stimulus and the automaticity of attentional shifts in eliciting spatial and nonspatial attentional effects.

Keywords: Cueing; Emotional valence; Inhibition of return; Validity effects.

For about 30 years, the influence of the emotionalvalence of stimuli on attentional processes hasbeen a growing research domain. Different para-digms have been used to demonstrate this influ-ence in the visual domain, such as the emotionalStroop task (Mathews & MacLeod, 1985), theemotional cueing paradigm (Stormark, Nordby, &Hugdahl, 1995), and the dot probe task (MacLeod,Mathews, & Tata, 1986), and more recently in theauditory domain, using the beep probe task (i.e.,an auditory adaptation of the dot probe task, inwhich a pair of spoken words is presented on eachtrial; Bertels, Kolinsky, & Morais, 2010) and anauditory adaptation of the emotional Stroop task(Bertels, Kolinsky, Pietrons, & Morais, in press).

While so-called ‘‘attentional biases’’ were firstinvestigated as a characteristic of anxious people,more and more studies have recently showed thatthese biases are also observed in healthy partici-pants (e.g., Bertels et al., 2010; McKenna &Sharma, 1995, 2004; Stormark et al., 1995; Vogt,de Houwer, Koster, van Damme, & Crombez,2008), probably reflecting the involvement of ageneral mechanism of involuntary processing ofthe emotional content of stimuli.

The present study examines attentional biaseslinked to emotional spoken words in healthyparticipants unselected on the basis of theiranxiety level, using an auditory adaptation ofthe emotional cueing paradigm. Specifically, we

Correspondence should be addressed to Julie Bertels, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue F. D. Roosevelt, 50, CP 191, 1050

Brussels, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected]

JB was Research Fellow of the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS) and is presently Scientific Research Worker of

the FRS-FNRS. RK is Senior Research Associate of the FRS-FNRS. All authors were affiliated to the Research Unit in Cognitive

Neurosciences (UNESCOG), Universite Libre de Bruxelles. This work was also supported by an FRS-FNRS grant (1.5705.06).

JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, 2011, 23 (4), 435�452

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aimed at investigating how the emotional valenceof spoken words influences the spatial orientingof attention, as a function of the attentionalorienting modes involved in the task.

The emotional cueing paradigm is an adapta-tion of the original cueing paradigm (Posner,1980). In the original version, a neutral peripheralcue is presented before a target. In the emotionalversion, the cue may have an emotional valence.It is thus possible to investigate whether cuevalidity effects (i.e., a faster response to anemotionally neutral target when presented atthe same location as the cue than at the oppositeone) and the Inhibition of Return (IOR; Posner &Cohen, 1984) phenomenon (i.e., a slower responseto an emotionally neutral target when presentedat the same location as the cue than at theopposite one) are modulated by the emotionalvalence of the cue, thus reflecting an attentionalbias.

Interestingly, cue validity effects may take theform of different patterns of results that go toshow influences at the level of different atten-tional processes. Facilitation observed on validtrials, in which the cue and the target occur at thesame location, is assumed to result from atten-tional engagement processes. Conversely, inter-ference observed on invalid trials (in which thecue and the target occur in opposite locations) isconsidered to reflect attentional disengagementprocesses given that, unlike valid trials, attentionhas to be disengaged from the cued location inorder to process the target presented at theopposite location (Posner, 1980). A particularinterest of the emotional spatial cueing paradigmthus lies in the fact that it allows a preciseinvestigation of how emotional stimuli (comparedto neutral ones) influence the attentional shift(s)they elicit. However, conclusions from previousstudies are not straightforward: Some authorsobserved effects at the level of attentional en-gagement (e.g., de Pascalis & Speranza, 2000;Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, Vanvolsem, & deHouwer, 2007; Stormark et al., 1995), whereasothers showed influences on attentional disen-gagement (e.g., Fox, Russo, Bowles, & Dutton,2001, Exps. 1 and 2) or no influence at all (e.g.,Briggs & Martin, 2008).

IOR is typically observed instead of validityeffects when the stimulus�onset asynchrony(SOA; the time between the onset of the cue andthe onset of the target) is long and when the initialattentional shift is driven by the onset of anirrelevant (i.e., unpredictive of the location of the

target) peripherally presented cue. IOR is be-lieved to be an involuntary, reflexive effect thatreflects a mechanism biasing attentional scanningtowards novel rather than previously inspecteditems: After some time, attention directed to thelocation of a stimulus would be drawn back to thecentral location and inhibited from returning tothe initial location (Klein, 1988; Posner & Cohen,1984). Several studies reported abolished IOR foremotional cues with no significant differencebetween high- and low-trait anxious participants(Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002; Yiend & Mathews,2001). These results were interpreted as reflectingimpaired ability to disengage attention from thelocation of these stimuli, hence supporting conclu-sions from some studies investigating emotionalinfluences on validity effects (e.g., Fox et al., 2001).Nevertheless, some authors only reported modula-tion of the IOR phenomenon in anxious (Verkuil,Brosschot, Putman, & Thayer, 2009; Waters, Nitz,Craske, & Johnson, 2007) or depressed people(Dai & Feng, 2009), or no modulation at all(Lange, Heuer, Reinecke, Becker, & Rinck,2008; Stoyanova, Pratt, & Anderson, 2007). Re-cently, Rutherford and Raymond (2010) arguedthat the emotional context in place before atten-tional shifts are initiated by the cue onset would becrucial to observe emotional modulation of IOR.

Results from studies that investigated atten-tional biases using the emotional cueing paradigmin the visual modality are thus far from beingconsistent. This is probably due to the hetero-geneity of the methodologies used. Specifically,the involvement of exogenous (i.e., automatic)and endogenous (i.e., more central, voluntary)attentional mechanisms may have differed fromstudy to study due to the variation of threeexperimental parameters: the predictability ofthe cues (namely the percentage of valid relativeto invalid trials), the SOA value, and the locationof the cue (in general, if it is peripherally orcentrally presented). Indeed, it is known thatperipheral cues elicit exogenous orienting ofattention, with attentional shifts being automati-cally driven by the spatial location of the stimulus(cf. Jonides, 1981; Yantis, 1996). However, pre-dictive cues, namely cues that may be used topredict the location of the following target, mayalso engage ulterior endogenous shifts of atten-tion, motivated by strategic considerations, espe-cially when SOAs are long (Muller & Findlay,1988). A long SOA may indeed leave moreopportunity for participants to recruit top-downprocesses and thus develop strategies to enhance

436 BERTELS ET AL.


their performance. Finally, when centrally pre-

sented predictive cues are used instead of periph-erally presented ones, endogenous attentionalmechanisms are exclusively involved, given thatany shift towards the peripherally presentedtarget should be intentional.

The cueing paradigm opens the possibility ofadjusting the involvement of endogenous andexogenous attentional mechanisms by manipulat-ing the relevant parameters reviewed previously.To our knowledge, the impact of the variation ofthese experimental parameters on the occurrenceof attentional biases (i.e., on the influence of theemotional content of the cue on spatial atten-tional orienting) has never been directly investi-gated. This is surprising, because the kind ofattentional shift elicited by the appearance ofthe cue (depending mostly on cue type: central vs.peripheral, predictive vs. unpredictive) may de-termine the occurrence of such biases.

One could expect emotional influences onattentional orienting to be observed only whenendogenous attentional shifts are elicited by thecue, and not at all if exclusively exogenousattentional shifts are involved. As a matter offact, exogenous orienting has been considered asan encapsulated process, immune to high-levelcognitive influences (e.g., Briand & Klein, 1987;Posner, 1980), driven by reflexive mechanisms,and insensitive to semantics, including the infor-mation conveyed by emotional words. In accor-dance with this idea, Taylor and Therrien (2005)showed that the IOR phenomenon (known to bea reflexive orienting effect) was unaffected by theoccurrence of biologically relevant stimuli such asfaces.

However, one could argue that this mechanismwould not be adaptive when emotional, threaten-ing stimuli automatically drive attention to theirspatial location. Moreover, Stolz (1996) showedthat exogenous spatial orienting can be influencedby task-irrelevant high-level (nonemotional) in-formation and therefore would not be totallyencapsulated. In addition, the intervention ofresource-demanding strategies increases cognitiveload and thus limits the available resources, whichseems to prevent any detectable emotional mod-ulation of attentional orienting (e.g., Okon-Singer,Tzelgov, & Henik, 2007; Smith Erthal et al., 2005).Hence, a strong and opposite view to the precedingone is that emotional influences would rather beobserved when the least endogenous mechanismsare involved.

THE PRESENT STUDY

We tried to shed light on these assumptions byinvestigating the effects of emotional words onthe spatial orienting of attention while controllingfor the nature of the attentional orienting modesinvolved. For this purpose, we manipulated bothcue predictivity and cue location, while the SOAwas kept constant across experiments. Specifi-cally, using an auditory adaptation of the emo-tional cueing paradigm, we contrasted effects ofnegative, positive, taboo, and neutral spokenword cues when these cues were predictive(80% valid trials; Experiments 1 and 2) vs.unpredictive (50% valid trials; Experiments 3and 4) of the location of a following nonverbalsound target (a beep) which was always eitherleft- or right-presented. The task was either tolocalise (Experiments 1�3) or to detect (Experi-ment 4) the beep. Crucially, given that SOA wasrelatively long in all experiments because itdepended on the duration of the spoken wordcues (which was 780 ms, on average, in allexperiments), emotional effects on both cuevalidity effects and IOR might be examined bymanipulating the predictability of the cues:Whereas predictive cues involve endogenousattentional shifts, leading to cue validity effectsin Experiments 1 and 2, unpredictive cues elicitexogenous attentional shifts, producing IOR inExperiments 3 and 4. In addition, we contrastedthe effects of emotional cues on validity effectswhen the initial attentional shift they elicit wasexogenous versus endogenous, using peripherally(Experiment 1) versus centrally presented cues(Experiment 2), respectively. In Experiment 1,peripherally presented predictive cues thus eli-cited both types of attentional shifts. Given thatIOR is known to be a reflexive effect (Posner &Cohen, 1984), we only used peripherally pre-sented unpredictive cues in Experiments 3 and 4,known to maximise the IOR phenomenon be-cause they elicit exogenous attentional shifts.Experiments 3 and 4 differed by the participants’task: Using a detection rather than a localisationtask, Experiment 4 was aimed at checkingwhether any modulation of the IOR by theemotionality of the cue reflects a genuine atten-tional phenomenon rather than the inhibition of amotor response primed by the cue (for a generalapproach and for an application to auditorystimulation, see Kornblum, Hasbroucq, & Os-man, 1990, and Tassinari, Campara, Benedetti, &

EMOTIONAL WORDS AND EXOGENOUS ATTENTION 437


Berlucchi, 2002, respectively). Table 1 displays an

overview of the four experiments.On the basis of the results from previous

studies investigating attentional biases to emo-

tional spoken words in healthy participants,

unselected on the basis of their anxiety levels

(Bertels et al., 2010, in press), we expected in

the present study negative and taboo spoken

word cues, but not positive word cues, to

influence the spatial orienting of attention.

More precisely, following the idea that the

type of attentional orienting modes involved in

the task is crucial in the occurrence of spatial

attentional biases, two opposite patterns of

results could be expected.The first pattern refers to the possibility that

no attentional bias would be observed if exclu-

sively exogenous, automatic attentional shifts are

involved, following the idea that exogenous

orienting is immune to high level cognitive

influences (Briand & Klein, 1987; Posner, 1980).

In that case, although no effect of negative and

taboo words would be observed when IOR is

expected, attentional biases linked to negative

and taboo words would be observed when cue

validity effects are expected, given that the use of

predictive cues combined with the long SOAs

imposed by the use of spoken word cues ensures

that endogenous attentional shifts are involved in

this situation.The second pattern of results refers to the

opposite view according to which the intervention

of endogenous processes, namely of resource-

demanding strategies, may increase cognitive

load, thus limiting the available resources and

preventing any emotional modulation of the

voluntary attentional shifts. In that case, we

predict to observe emotional influences mostly

in conditions in which exclusively exogenous

attentional shifts are involved, namely when the

IOR phenomenon is observed.

EXPERIMENT 1: AUDITORYEMOTIONAL CUEING WITHPERIPHERALLY PRESENTED

PREDICTIVE CUES

In this first experiment, spoken word cues wereperipherally presented and correctly predictedthe spatial location of a subsequent beep targetin 80% of the trials. Both exogenous and en-dogenous attentional shifts may thus occur(Muller & Findlay, 1988).

Method

Participants. Twenty-eight first-year students ofthe Universite Libre de Bruxelles (four men; oneleft-handed), ranging from 18 to 31 years(mean �20.4), were given course credits orwere paid (eight of them) for their participation.All had spoken French for at least the last 10years. Responses to the STAI-Y (Spielberger,1983) filled in after the task showed that thesample was relatively homogenous in terms ofstate and trait anxiety levels (see Table 2).

Materials and apparatus. The stimuli used ascues consisted of 80 French words: 20 negative (e.g.,mort�death), 20 positive (e.g., amour�love), 20taboo (e.g., connasse�bitch), and 20 emotionallyneutral words (e.g., ampoule�bulb). These will bereferred to as negative, positive, taboo, and neutralcues, respectively. Twenty-four participants ratedthese words on a 7-point scale for emotionalvalence, ranging from 1 � ‘‘very negative, unplea-sant, disagreeable’’ to 7 � ‘‘very positive, pleasant,agreeable’’. The terms defining the extremes of thisscale were those used by Messina, Morais, andCantraine (1989); see also Bertels, Kolinsky, &Morais 2009). There was an effect of word type,F(3, 79) �616.431, MSE�76.388, pB.001: Nega-tive words were judged as more negative thantaboo, neutral, and positive words (1.821, 2.787,

TABLE 1

Overview of the experiments

Task

Predictability of the cues

(valid/invalid)

Type of expected

attentional effect Cue location Initial attentional shift

Localisation Yes (80/20) Validity effect Peripheral Exogenous (followed

by endogenous)

Localisation Yes (80/20) Validity effect Central Endogenous

Localisation No (50/50) IOR Peripheral Exogenous

Detection No (50/50) IOR Peripheral Exogenous

438 BERTELS ET AL.


4.071, and 6.34, respectively), all pB.001. Twenty-two other participants rated the arousal of the samewords, namely they were asked to rate theirstimulating nature on a scale ranging from1 � ‘‘very calm, soothing’’ to 7 � ‘‘very exciting’’.There was an effect of word type, F(3,79) �239.922, MSE�57.218, p B.001: Negativewords were judged as more arousing than taboo,neutral, and positive words (5.923, 5.132, 3.861, and2.211, respectively), all pB.01.

Words were presented orally. They were ut-tered by a French-speaking female theatre stu-dent in a neutral tone of voice,1 and digitallyrecorded on a Sony MiniDisc. Stimuli were thentransferred on a Macintosh Powerbook G3 via theinterface Digidesign DIGI 002 Rack and werecleaned and normalised with the Protools Digide-sign 6.2.2 software. Mean word duration was 780ms (standard deviation: 137 ms).

The 80 words were used as peripherally pre-sented spatial cues. Each word was monaurallypresented, either to the left or the right ear andwas immediately followed by a 100 ms targetbeep, presented in half of the trials to the left ear,and in the others to the right ear. On valid trials,the beep location was the same as the wordlocation (two-thirds of the trials). On invalidtrials, the beep was presented at the oppositelocation (one-sixth of the trials). There were alsono cue trials, during which no word was presentedbefore the beep (one-sixth of the trials); these no

cue trials were used to prevent participants fromdeveloping an automated response set, as theinterval between the offset of the cue and theonset of the target was fixed (e.g., Stormark et al.,1995).

Participants sat in front of a computer andwore headphones. Stimulus presentation andtiming as well as data recording were controlledusing the E-Prime button box and 1.1.4.1 software(Schneider, Eschman, & Zuccolotto, 2002) run-ning on a PC Packard Bell Aloh@ 4700C.

Procedure. Each session began with detailedinstructions. Participants were told that they wouldhear a word on most trials, either in the left or in theright ear. Immediately after the presentation of theword, if there were one, they would hear a beep,also presented either in the left or in the right ear,on each trial. They were informed that beeplocation was the same as word location in 80% ofthe trials. As they had to localise the beep asquickly and accurately as possible (by pressing theleft or the right key of a button box with the indexfingers of the left and right hand, respectively), itwas suggested that they take into account the wordlocation. The experimenter sat next to the partici-pant during the whole experiment. After theexperiment, participants were asked to completethe personality questionnaires listed earlier.

Each trial started with the presentation of a1000 ms fixation cross in the middle of the screen.Then, a word was presented. In no cue trials, theword was substituted by a silent period that lastedfor the average word duration. The 100 ms targetbeep was presented immediately after the offsetof the word cue, so that the SOA varied on eachtrial, depending on the word duration (as areminder, 780 ms on the average). The participanthad 3000 ms to answer. The interval between theresponse and the next trial was 1000 ms.

TABLE 2

Number of participants having very low, low, medium, high, or very high state and trait anxiety scores according to the STAI-Y

(Spielberger, 1983) in Experiments 1, 2, and 3

T scores Very low (535) Low (36�45) Medium (46�55) High (56�65) Very high (� 65)

Experiment 1 (n�28)

State anxiety 3 8 10 3 4

Trait anxiety 3 9 9 7 0







1For sake of homogeneity, a neutral instead of an

emotional tone of voice was used in the present study (see

Bertels et al., 2010, in press). Indeed, we wanted first to

compare emotional and neutral words according to one

dimension (i.e., their emotional content), without potentially

confounding this effect with the effect of another dimension,

namely the emotional prosody (see Bertels et al., 2009, for

data illustrating the importance of the latter).



The experiment started with a 24-trial practiceblock, during which participants received feed-back regarding their performance. Next, eachparticipant was presented with five 96-trial blocks(80 cue trials*64 valid and 16 invalid*and 16 nocue trials), without any feedback. Thus, a partici-pant was presented five times (once in eachblock) with each of the 80 words across differentpresentation conditions (valid beep left, validbeep right, invalid beep left, invalid beep right).Blocks differed by the combinations of the wordpresentation conditions (i.e., which words wereassigned to the same conditions in the sameblock). Trials were pseudorandomly presented:A word of the same emotional type was neverpresented more than three times in a row,whatever its presentation side, and invalid aswell as no cue trials were never presented morethan three times in a row, whatever the beeplocation. Four scripts were generated, differingaccording to the word presentation combinationsin each block.

Results

Errors were rare, 1.9% on the average. Therefore,the analyses focused on RTs to correct responses,whose average values are displayed in Table 3.

As in previous studies, we only considered RTson cued trials (Stormark et al., 1995; Yiend &Mathews, 2001). Given that the beep probe taskshowed attentional biases only when the emo-tional word of the pair was right-presented(Bertels et al., 2010), we took into account theword cue location. RTs were thus entered into a 4(word type: neutral/negative/positive/taboo)�2(trial type: valid/invalid)�2 (word location: left/right) repeated measures analysis of variance

(ANOVA). All variables were treated as within-subject factors.

The effect of trial type was significant, F(1,27) �66.57, MSE�308,183.931, pB.001, reflect-ing faster localisation of the beep when it waspresented at the same location as the word cue(282 ms) than when it was presented at theopposite location (334 ms). Also significant wasthe effect of word type, F(3, 81) �3.76,MSE�2146.54, pB.015. Bonferroni adjustedpost hoc comparisons revealed that negativecues led to significantly shorter RTs than positivecues, pB.05. The same trend was observed inrelation to taboo cues, p �.058, but no significantdifference was observed in relation to neutralcues, p�.10. Nevertheless, post hoc comparisonsrevealed that negative cues led to significantlyshorter RTs than the other word types takentogether (310 ms), p �.003. The interactionbetween trial type and word location was sig-nificant, F(1, 27) �7.26, MSE�9755.47, pB.015:invalid trials led to longer RTs than valid trialswhatever the word cue location, both pB.001(Bonferroni corrected), but the difference waslarger when the word was right- rather than left-presented (62 vs. 43 ms, respectively). Neither theinteraction between trial type and word type northe interaction between trial type, word type, andword location were significant, F(3, 81) �1.46,MSE�1.46, and F(3, 81) �1.13, MSE�1.13.

Interestingly, RTs were positively correlatedwith the emotional valence of the cues, r�.250,p�.025, but not with their arousal, r��.135,p�.20. Hence, more negative words were asso-ciated with shorter RTs.

Finally, no significant correlation was observedbetween state and trait anxiety scores obtained onthe STAI-Y (Spielberger, 1983; average T scores:50.5 and 47.107, respectively) and the differencebetween RTs on negative cues and RTs on the

TABLE 3

Mean correct localisation times observed in Experiment 1, separately for each word type and for valid and invalid trials

(standard errors in parentheses)

Word type

No cue Neutral Negative Positive Taboo Average

426 (11)

Valid trials 284 (5) 276 (6) 286 (5) 281 (5) 282 (5)

Invalid trials 332 (7) 328 (9) 336 (8) 342 (10) 334 (8)

Validity effect 48 (6) 52 (8) 50 (7) 61 (9) 53 (6)

Average 308 (5) 302 (6) 311 (6) 312 (6)

440 BERTELS ET AL.


other word types taken together (�8.109 ms); forSTAI-Y state: r��.214 and for STAI-Y trait:r�.032, both ps�.10.

Discussion

A validity effect was observed in this experi-ment, ensuring that participants’ attention waseffectively oriented by the predictive peripher-ally presented word cues. Also, when a negativecue was presented, whatever its location, parti-cipants were faster to localise the beep, prob-ably resulting from a nonspatial alerting effectof these threat-related cues (Bertels et al., 2010,Exp. 2; Pourtois, Schwartz, Seghier, Lazeyras, &Vuillemier, 2006; Rutherford & Raymond,2010). However, contrary to our prediction,these effects appear to be independent, sinceno interaction between trial type and word typewas found.

These effects were obtained in a situation inwhich both exogenous and endogenous atten-tional shifts could occur since predictive cueswere peripherally presented and the SOA wasrelatively long. Following the idea that exogenousprocesses might be immune to the influence ofthe emotional content of verbal stimuli, theirinvolvement in Experiment 1 might have pre-vented any emotional modulation of the validityeffects. Experiment 2 examined whether a differ-ent response pattern would be observed if atten-tional shifts were exclusively endogenous.

EXPERIMENT 2: AUDITORYEMOTIONAL CUEING WITHCENTRALLY PRESENTED

PREDICTIVE CUES

In order to only elicit endogenous attentionalshifts in the present experiment, the word cueswere centrally presented. The gender of thevoice in which the words were pronouncedserved as a predictive cue for the location ofthe target.

Method

Participants. Twenty-seven first-year students ofthe Universite Libre de Bruxelles (six men; fiveleft-handed), ranging from 18 to 29 years(mean �19.8), were given course credits for theirparticipation. The results of three participants

(three women; one left-handed) were discardedfrom further analyses because their RTs weresuperior to two standard deviations above themean. All had spoken French for at least the last10 years. Responses to the STAI-Y (Spielberger,1983) filled in after the task showed that thesample was relatively homogenous in terms ofstate and trait anxiety levels (see Table 2).

Materials and apparatus. The cues were thesame words as in Experiment 1, but they werepresented either as in Experiment 1, namelypronounced by a female voice, or pronouncedby a French-speaking male theatre student. Twofiles were thus created for each word, one foreach voice. Word duration for the male voicevaried from 485 to 1070 ms (mean �781 ms) anddid not significantly differ from word duration forthe female voice (FB1).

These words were used as centrally presentedspatial cues: Each word was presented binaurallythrough headphones, instead of monaurally as inExperiment 1. The word cue (or, for no cuetrials, a silent period of the same duration, as inExperiment 1) was immediately followed by a100 ms target beep, presented to either the leftear (in half of the trials) or the right ear (in theother trials). For each participant, the gender ofthe voice uttering the word cue was associatedwith a more likely beep location. The preciseassociation between the gender of the voice andthe most likely beep location was counterba-lanced between participants. On valid trials, thegender of the voice correctly cued the location ofthe subsequent beep. As in Experiment 1, two-thirds of the trials were valid, one-sixth ‘‘inva-lid’’, and one-sixth were no cue trials.

Procedure. The procedure was the same as inExperiment 1, except that words were binaurallypresented. Participants were informed that thegender of the voice would correctly specify, in80% of the trials, the location of the beep. As theyhad to localise the beep as quickly and accuratelyas possible, it was suggested that they take intoaccount the gender of the voice.

Results

As in Experiment 1, errors were rare, 1.35% onaverage. Therefore, the analyses focused on RTsto correct responses, whose average values aredisplayed in Table 4.



A 2 (instruction: male voice left/female voiceleft)�4 (word type: neutral/negative/positive/taboo)�2 (trial type: valid/invalid) repeatedmeasures ANOVA design was applied onresponse latencies. Instruction was a between-subjects factor, the word type and trial type werewithin-subject factors.

Neither the effect of instruction, FB1, northe interactions involving this factor were sig-nificant, all ps�.05. The effect of trial type wassignificant, F(1, 22) �54, MSE�58,622.13,pB.01, reflecting that faster localisation of thebeep when its location was correctly predictedby the gender of the voice (282 ms) than when itwas incorrectly predicted (317 ms). Neither theeffect of word type nor the interaction betweenword type and trial type were significant, bothFs B1.

Discussion

As in Experiment 1, a validity effect wasobserved. Thus, participants oriented their at-tention voluntarily to the most probable spatiallocation of the target. However, no effect of theemotional content of the word cues on atten-tional orienting was observed. Moreover, incontrast to Experiment 1, negative cues didnot lead to faster responses to subsequentbeeps.

EXPERIMENT 3: AUDITORYEMOTIONAL CUEING WITHPERIPHERALLY PRESENTED

UNPREDICTIVE CUES

Results from previous studies in which endogen-ous attentional shifts were elicited by the cue(together with exogenous shifts, as in Experiment

1, or alone, as in Experiment 2) did not reveal any

specific influence of the emotional content of the

cues on attentional orienting. The present experi-

ment thus tested the opposite idea according to

which the involvement of endogenous, voluntary

processes might have prevented any influence of

the emotional content of the cues on spatial

orienting by limiting the available resources. As

in Experiment 1, we used peripheral cues. How-ever, contrary to Experiments 1 and 2, here these

cues were unpredictive of the location of the

target, thus eliciting exclusively exogenous atten-

tional shifts at the moment of their appearance.

Hence, given the length of the SOA imposed in all

experiments by the mean duration of the word

cues, we expected to observe an IOR phenomen-

on rather than validity effects. Any effect of the

emotional content of words on attentional orient-

ing would thus be observed on the IOR (Fox

et al., 2002, Exp. 2).In addition, we manipulated the presentation

mode of the stimuli: Depending on the partici-pants, they were presented through either head-

phones or loudspeakers. Indeed, in Experiments 1

and 2, we did not replicate the attentional effects

that we observed for taboo words in the beep

probe task (Bertels et al., 2010). This may have

been due to the fact that stimuli were presented

through headphones in Experiments 1 and 2 of

the present study, but through loudspeakers in the

beep probe task. Indeed, it may be the case that

taboo words elicit attentional effects only when

the individual is reacting emotionally to a situa-

tion in which they listen to such words at the same

time as and in front of the experimenter. If thiswere the case in the present cueing situation as

well, taboo words would elicit attentional effects

only when they are presented through loudspea-

kers, not when they are presented through head-

phones.

TABLE 4

Mean correct localisation times observed in Experiment 2, separately for each word type and for valid and invalid trials (standard

errors in parentheses)

Word type

No cue Neutral Negative Positive Taboo Average

404 (13)

Valid trials 283 (8) 279 (9) 287 (9) 282 (9) 282 (9)

Invalid trials 315 (11) 319 (8) 320 (10) 318 (9) 317 (9)

Validity effect 33 (9) 40 (6) 32 (6) 35 (5) 35 (5)

Average 299 (9) 299 (8) 303 (9) 300 (9)

442 BERTELS ET AL.


Method

Participants. Twenty-four first-year students ofthe Universite Libre de Bruxelles (eight men;three left-handed), ranging from 17 to 38 years(mean �21.2), were given course credits or werepaid (11 of them) for their participation. Theresults of two participants (one man; one left-handed) were discarded from further analyses,because their error rate or RTs were superior totwo standard deviations above the mean. All hadspoken French for at least the last 10 years.Responses to the STAI-Y (Spielberger, 1983)filled in after the task showed that the samplewas relatively homogenous in terms of state andtrait anxiety levels (see Table 2).

Materials, apparatus, and procedure. Materialsand procedure were the same as in Experiment 1,except for the following facts. Trials were valid (orinvalid) in 50% of the trials (the proportion of nocue trials remained one-sixth), so that participantswere told nothing about cue predictability. There-fore, the terms ‘‘valid’’ and ‘‘invalid’’ will be put inquotation marks from this point on, since they onlyindicate if word and beep locations are the same ornot. Also, only four blocks of 96 trials werepresented to each participant, each word beingpresented once in each presentation condition toeach participant. Block order was counterbalancedacross participants using a Latin square design.

For half of the participants, cues and targetswere presented through headphones, as in theprevious experiments. For the others, they werepresented through two loudspeakers located at45 cm on their left and right, with an anterior

deviation of 30 degrees in relation to the frontalplane.

Results

As in Experiments 1 and 2, errors were rare,0.92% on average. Therefore, the analyses fo-cused on RTs to correct responses, the averagevalues of which are displayed in Table 5.

A 2 (presentation mode: headphones/loud-speakers)�4 (word type: neutral/positive/nega-tive/taboo)�2 (trial type: ‘‘valid’’/‘‘invalid’’)�2(word location: left/right) repeated measuresANOVA design was applied on response laten-cies. Presentation mode was a between-subjectsfactor; word type, trial type, and word locationwere within-subject factors.

Neither the effect of presentation mode, F(1,20) �1.36, MSE�14,681.88, nor the interactionsinvolving this factor, all ps�.05, were significant.The effect of trial type was significant, F(1,20) �10.76, MSE�19,820.06, pB.005, reflectingslower localisation of the beep when it waspresented at the same location as the word (345ms) than when it was presented at the oppositelocation (330 ms). Also significant was the effectof word type, F(3, 60) �3.98, MSE�980.82,pB.015: Negative cues led to significantly shorterRTs than positive and taboo cues, pB.005 andpB.05, respectively (Bonferroni corrected). TheRT difference between negative and neutral cuesdid not reach significance, p�.10. The interactionbetween trial type and word location was signifi-cant, F(1, 20) �12.38, MSE�17,318.057, p�.002.

TABLE 5

Mean correct localisation times observed in Experiment 3, separately for each word type and for valid and invalid trials, and for

each presentation mode (standard errors in parentheses)

Word type

Presentation mode No cue Neutral Negative Positive Taboo Average

Headphones 429 (17)

Valid trials 343 (8) 330 (9) 341 (8) 347 (10) 340 (8)

Invalid trials 323 (9) 320 (10) 322 (10) 320 (8) 321 (9)

Loudspeakers 451 (19)

Valid trials 348 (8) 342 (9) 355 (8) 352 (10) 349 (8)

Invalid trials 336 (9) 338 (10) 341 (10) 337 (8) 338 (9)

Average 440 (12)

Valid trials 346 (6) 336 (6) 348 (5) 349 (7) 345 (6)

Invalid trials 330 (6) 329 (7) 331 (7) 329 (6) 330 (6)

IOR effect 16 (5) 7 (5) 17 (5) 21 (6) 15 (5)

Average 338 (6) 332 (5) 340 (6) 339 (6)



Indeed, Bonferroni adjusted post hoc tests showedthat ‘‘valid’’ trials led to longer RTs than ‘‘invalid’’trials when the word cue was left-presented (351vs. 321 ms), pB.001, not when it was right-presented (339 vs. 338 ms), p�.10. Crucially,the predicted interaction between trial typeand word type, illustrated in Figure 1, was alsosignificant, F(3, 60) �2.85, MSE�753.25,pB.05.2 This reflected the fact that the effect ofword valence was significant for ‘‘valid’’ trials, F(3,60) �5.14, MSE�1,679.38, p�.003, but not for‘‘invalid’’ ones, FB1. More precisely, negative‘‘valid’’ trials led to shorter RTs than neutral‘‘valid’’ trials, F(1, 20) �6.31, MSE�8604.22,pB.025, whereas no difference was observedbetween positive or taboo ‘‘valid’’ trials andneutral ‘‘valid’’ trials, F(1, 20) �1.015,MSE �572.628, and FB1. The interaction be-tween trial type, word valence, and word locationwas not significant, FB1.

As illustrated in Figure 1, one-sample t-testsagainst zero revealed that, as predicted, IOR(estimated as the RT difference between ‘‘valid’’and ‘‘invalid’’ trials) occurred with neutral (16ms), positive (17 ms), and taboo cues (20 ms),t(21) �2.9, 3.6 and 3.45, all psB.01, 95% CI[4.501, 27.159], [7.207, 26.813], and [8.15, 32.942]respectively, but not with negative cues (7 ms),

t(21) �1.25, p�.10, 95% CI [�4.503, 18.146].In addition, the IOR with neutral cues wassignificantly larger than with negative cues,t(21) �2.095, pB.05, but not than with positiveor taboo cues, tB1, and t(21) �1.08, p�.10,respectively.

Given our predictions regarding the modula-tion of the IOR not only by negative but also bytaboo cues compared to neutral cues, we madecorrelation analyses between the size of the IOReffect and both the emotional valence and thearousal for these two types of words. A sig-nificant correlation was observed between theIOR effect and the emotional valence of thenegative and taboo words, r�.309, p�.05,reflecting that more negative words led to lessIOR (i.e., to a closer than zero IOR value). Nocorrelation was observed with the arousal value,p�.10.

Interestingly, no significant correlation wasobserved between, on the one hand, the differ-ence between RTs on negative and neutral‘‘valid’’ trials (�10 ms) and, on the other hand,the trait and state anxiety levels obtained with theSTAI-Y (Spielberger, 1983); for state anxiety:average T scores �47.636, r�.312, p�.10, andfor trait anxiety: average T scores �49.091,r�.324, p�.10.

As in Experiment 1, no significant correlationwas observed between state and trait anxietyscores and the difference between RTs on nega-tive cues and RTs on the other word types taken

Figure 1. Target localisation latencies observed in Experiment 3 on ‘‘valid’’ and ‘‘invalid’’ trials after neutral, negative, positive,

and taboo word cues.

2When trait-and state-anxiety T scores as covariates, this

interaction remained significant, F(3, 54) �7.048,

MSE�1277.1, pB.001.

444 BERTELS ET AL.


together (�6.5 ms); for STAI-Y state: r�.231and for STAI-Y trait: r�.189, both ps�.10.

Discussion

In conditions ensuring that only exogenous atten-tional shifts were initiated by the onset of the cue,attention to the previously stimulated locationwas inhibited (i.e., IOR occurred), at least whenthe cue was left-presented. Interestingly, thisinhibition depended on the emotional content ofthe word cues. More precisely, when negativeword cues were presented, no IOR was observed.Notwithstanding, taboo cues did not elicit thesame effect, whatever the presentation mode.

Since the overall RT difference between neu-tral and negative trials did not reach significance,the effect of negative cues on RTs on ‘‘valid’’trials presumably does not depend only on ageneral nonspatial effect of these cues (Mogg,Holmes, Garner, & Bradley, 2008).

However, given that we used a localisationtask, we cannot attribute unequivocally the IORphenomenon and the interaction between IORand word type to attentional factors. When boththe cue and the target are presented either to theleft or to the right side, the IOR might reflectinhibition of the motor response primed by thecue rather than inhibition of attention (Kornblumet al., 1990; Tassinari et al., 2002). Similarly, theinteraction between IOR and word type could bedue to the fact that negative words impeded theinhibition of this primed motor response (namely,a movement of the right or left hand, triggered bythe presentation of a right or left cue, respec-tively) rather than the inhibition of attention.Similar discussion on the involvement of motorcomponents as regards the cue validity effect hasled Fox et al. (2001) and Koster et al. (2007) touse a detection rather than a localisation task inorder to avoid this confound. This is what we didin the next experiment.

EXPERIMENT 4: AUDITORYEMOTIONAL CUEING WITHPERIPHERALLY PRESENTEDUNPREDICTIVE CUES IN A

DETECTION TASK

In this experiment, we checked whether we couldreplicate in a detection task the absence of IORobserved in Experiment 3 for negative cues. In

this task a single key has to be pressed in responseto the presence of the target, regardless of itslocation. Therefore, in such a situation, in whichall responses are to be made with the same hand,the occurrence of the IOR phenomenon and/or itsmodulation by word type cannot be explained byinhibition of a primed motor response.

Method

Participants. Thirteen first-year students of theUniversite Libre de Bruxelles (five men; oneleft-handed), ranging from 20 to 27 years(mean �22.7), were paid for their participation.The results of one participant (one right-handedwoman) were discarded from further analysesbecause her RTs were superior to two standarddeviations above the mean. All had spokenFrench for at least the last 10 years.3

Materials, apparatus, and procedure. Materialsand procedure were the same as in Experiment 3,except for the following aspects. The task was todetect the presence of the beep, so we used catchtrials in which a cue was presented, but no target,instead of the no cue trials (one-sixth of thetrials). Participants were told to react only to thepresence of the beep by pressing the right key of abutton box with their preferred hand and werewarned that there were trials in which no beepwas presented. Stimuli were presented throughheadphones for all participants.

Results

As in previous experiments, errors were rare(0.91% on average). Therefore, the analysesfocused on RTs to correct responses, whoseaverage values are displayed in Table 6.

A 4 (word type: neutral/positive/negative/taboo)�2 (trial type: ‘‘valid’’/‘‘invalid’’)�2(word location: left/right) repeated measuresANOVA design was applied on response laten-cies. All variables were within-subject factors.

The effect of word location was significant, F(1,11) �5.38, MSE�1692.71, pB.05: Participantsdetected the beep faster when the word was right-than left-presented (253 vs. 259 ms). Neither the

3Unfortunately, the anxiety questionnaires administered to

the participants of Experiment 4 were lost. We are thus unable

to provide the anxiety scores relative to these subjects as well

as to include these data in a correlation analysis.



effect of word type nor the effect of trial type weresignificant, F(3, 33) �2.03, MSE�780.44, andF(1, 11)�3.004, MSE�2060.76, respectively.Nonetheless, the predicted interaction betweentrial type and word type, illustrated in Figure 2,was significant, F(3, 33) �4.35, MSE�1157.39,pB.015. As a matter of fact, the effect of wordvalence was significant for ‘‘valid’’ trials, F(3,33) �5.803, MSE�1678.33, p�.003, but not for‘‘invalid’’ ones, FB1. More precisely, as in Ex-periment 3, negative ‘‘valid’’ trials led to shorterRTs than neutral ‘‘valid’’ trials (247 vs. 266 ms),F(1, 11) �14.47, MSE�17,958.82, p�.003,whereas no difference was observed betweenpositive or taboo ‘‘valid’’ trials (262 and 260 ms,respectively) and neutral ‘‘valid’’ trials, FB1, andF(1, 11) �1.406, MSE�1852.49. The interactionbetween trial type, word valence, and word loca-tion was not significant, FB1.

As illustrated in Figure 2, one-sample t-testsagainst zero revealed that a significant IOR effect

occurred with neutral cues (17 ms), t(11) �3.03,pB.05, 95% CI [4.708, 29.787], but not withnegative cues (�7 ms), t(11) �1.211, p�.10,95% CI [�18.365, 5.328]. In addition, the IOReffect with neutral cues was significantly largerthan with negative cues, t(11) �3.579, pB.005,but not than with positive (6 ms) and taboo cues(10 ms), t(11) �1.882, p�.08, and tB1.

Discussion

In Experiment 4, the interaction between trial typeand word type previously observed in Experiment3 was replicated. Like in the previous experiment,this interaction reflected the fact that no IOR wasobserved when negative cues were presented,and that, coherently, RTs on ‘‘valid’’ trials cuedby negative words were shorter than RTs on‘‘valid’’ trials cued by other word types. Hence,it appears that attention is not automatically

TABLE 6

Mean correct detection times observed in Experiment 4, separately for each word type and for valid and invalid trials (standard

errors in parentheses)

Word type

Neutral Negative Positive Taboo Average

Valid trials 266 (14) 247 (13) 262 (13) 260 (15) 259 (13)

Invalid trials 249 (14) 254 (13) 257 (15) 251 (15) 253 (14)

IOR effect 17 (6) �7 (5) 6 (5) 10 (6) 6 (4)

Average 258 (13) 250 (13) 260 (14) 255 (15)

Figure 2. Target detection latencies observed in Experiment 4 on ‘‘valid’’ and ‘‘invalid’’ trials after neutral, negative, positive, and

taboo word cues.

446 BERTELS ET AL.


prevented from returning to a previously explored

location when a negative stimulus had just been

presented at that location, and that this attentional

phenomenon cannot be explained in terms of

inhibited motor responses.In Experiments 3 and 4, the observed atten-

tional effects could only result from the initial

involvement of an exogenous attentional mechan-

ism at the cue appearance. We therefore compared

them with those obtained in Experiments 1 and 2,

in which endogenous attentional mechanisms were

involved due to the predictive nature of the cue.

The statistical analyses revealed significant differ-

ences between the attentional effects of negative

and neutral cues in experiments involving endo-

genous shifts (Exps. 1 and 2) versus in experiments

involving exclusively exogenous shifts (Exps. 3 and

4), t(84) ��2.862, p�.005 (see Table 7). This

result supports the idea that the endogenous versus

exogenous nature of the initial attentional shifts

(linked to the predictive or unpredictive nature of

the cue) plays a crucial role in the observation of

attentional effects of negative words.4

GENERAL DISCUSSION

While the influence of the emotional content ofstimuli on attentional processes was first investi-gated in anxious people, more and more studiesreported the occurrence of so-called ‘‘attentionalbiases’’ in healthy participants (e.g., Bertels et al.,2010; McKenna & Sharma, 1995, 2004), supportingthe existence of a general mechanism of involun-tary processing of the emotional content of stimuli.

The emotional cueing paradigm is one of themost often used in this research domain. Indeed, itnot only allows studying emotional influences onvalidity effects and on the IOR phenomenon, butalso offers the possibility of adjusting the involve-ment of exogenous (i.e., automatic, reflexive) andendogenous (i.e., more voluntary) attentionalprocesses in the task by manipulating parameterssuch as predictability and location of the cues.

Nevertheless, this major advantage has notbeen fully exploited in previous studies, leadingto heterogeneous results. In the present study,using an auditory adaptation of the emotionalcueing paradigm, we investigated systematicallyhow the emotional content of spoken wordsinfluences the spatial orienting of attention inhealthy participants, as a function of the atten-tional orienting modes involved in the task.Specifically, by manipulating the predictabilityof the cues, we examined the influence of theemotional valence of spoken words on cuevalidity effects (predictive cues; Experiments 1and 2) and on the IOR phenomenon (unpredic-tive cues; Experiments 3 and 4), known to be amore reflexive, exogenous effect. Moreover, wecontrolled the involvement of endogenous atten-tional shifts leading to validity effects by manip-ulating the exogenous versus endogenous natureof the initial attentional shift initiated by thepresentation of peripherally (Experiment 1) ver-sus centrally (Experiment 2) presented predictivecues, respectively.

In Experiments 1 and 2, cue validity effects wereobserved, but were not modulated by the emo-tional content of the cues. Nevertheless, whenexogenous attentional shifts preceded endogenousones (Experiment 1), facilitative effects of negativeword cues on RTs were observed, whatever theirpresentation side. In Experiment 3, the expectedexogenous IOR effect (elicited by unpredictivecues) was observed for neutral, positive, and taboocues, but was abolished when a negative cue waspresented. Experiment 4 showed that this effect

TABLE 7

Mean correct response times, attentional effects, and their

differences observed for negative and neutral word types, in

Experiments 1 and 2 vs. 3 and 4 (standard errors in

parentheses)

Exps. 1 and 2 Exps. 3 and 4

Type of expected

attentional effect

Validity effect

(RTs invalid �RTs valid)

IOR (RTS

valid � RTs

invalid)

Negative cues

Valid 277 (6) 304 (8)

Invalid 324 (7) 302 (8)

Attentional effect 47 (5) 2 (6)

Neutral cues

Valid 283 (6) 318 (7)

Invalid 324 (7) 301 (8)

Attentional effect 41 (5) 16 (6)

Difference between

attentional effects for

negative and neutral

cues

6 (5) �14 (4)

4Coherently, comparing across experiments the attentional

effects obtained for each word type revealed an interaction

between word type and experiment that approached the

conventional significance level, F(9, 246) �1.839,

MSE�852.917, p�.062. This interaction reflects the fact that

the effect of word type was significant in Experiments 3 and 4

(pB.05 and p�.01, respectively), but not in Experiments 1

and 2 (both ps�.10).



reflects an attentional phenomenon rather than theinhibition of a primed motor response.

We will first discuss the effects of negativeunpredictive cues on spatial attentional orienting.We will then briefly consider the general, non-spatial effects of negative predictive cues. Finally,we will suggest potential reasons to explain whytaboo words did not have any effect, and willargue that valence rather than arousal of thestimuli was responsible for the observed effects.

No IOR effect for negative cues

In Experiments 3 and 4, peripherally presentedunpredictive cues elicited purely exogenous, auto-matic attentional shifts. Given that SOAs werelong, due to the mean duration of the word cues,these conditions enabled us to study the influenceof the emotional content of words on the IORphenomenon rather than on cue validity effects.IOR effects did indeed occur: participants tooklonger to localise a target presented at the samelocation as the one previously occupied by the cuethan to localise a target presented at the oppositelocation. Interestingly, although the IOR effectwas observed with neutral, positive, and tabooword cues, it was abolished by the presentation ofa negative word cue. Coherently with previousstudies using emotional spoken words (Bertelset al., 2010, Bertels et al., in press), we thusobserved attentional biases in healthy participants,unselected on the basis of their anxiety level.

As such, our result is consistent with previousstudies (Fox et al., 2002, Exp. 2; Yiend & Mathews,2001; but see Verkuil et al., 2009, and Waters et al.,2007): While using negative spoken words ratherthan angry faces or threatening pictures, we tooobserved emotional modulation of the IOR innonanxious participants. Our results are thus atodds with the claim that the IOR is a ‘‘blindphenomenon’’ (Taylor & Therrien, 2005), an ideabased on the fact that in some visual studies noinfluence of emotional stimuli was observed onthis phenomenon (Lange et al., 2008; Stoyanovaet al., 2007). Hence, the fact that the IORphenomenon is linked to the occurrence of exo-genous attentional shifts and is therefore consid-ered as being a reflexive mechanism does notprevent it to be modulated by factors such as theemotional valence of spoken words (for a similarclaim, see Rutherford & Raymond, 2010).

Our finding is, however, difficult to reconcilewith the suggestion that difficulties to disengage

attention from negative words are responsible forthe null IOR observed with these stimuli (Foxet al., 2002; Lange et al., 2008; Perez-Duenas,Acosta, & Lupianez, 2009; Yiend & Mathews,2001). If difficulties to disengage attention fromthe spatial location of a negative stimulus wereresponsible for the lack of IOR, when such anegative word is presented, attention would bestuck in its location and prevented from driftingback to a central, intermediate location. There-fore, on ‘‘invalid’’ trials one would expect longerresponse latencies to a target appearing at thelocation opposite to the one of the cue when thelatter is a negative word than when it is a neutralword. Contrary to this idea, in Experiments 3 and4, the lack of IOR with negative word cues wasentirely due to shorter RTs elicited on ‘‘valid’’trials by negative words compared to neutralwords, with no difference being observed for‘‘invalid’’ trials. Moreover, no RT differencebetween ‘‘valid’’ and ‘‘invalid’’ negative trialswas found. Thus, our results pattern is coherentwith the idea that whereas attention automaticallydisengages from the location of the cue and driftsback to a central location for all stimulus types,favouring detection of new information, it is notinhibited from returning to the previously exam-ined location if a negative stimulus had beenpresented there. In other words, a disengagedlocation only becomes inhibited relative to otherlocations if the information that was previouslypresented at that location was not threatening.This makes sense from an evolutionary point ofview: It would not be adaptive for healthy subjectsto prevent attention from returning to the locationin which a threatening stimulus appeared.

Across the four experiments, the influence ofthe negative emotional valence of spoken words onspatial orienting was observed only when unpre-dictive peripherally presented cues elicited IOR,namely in conditions in which a strictly exogenousattentional shift was initiated by the abrupt onsetof the cue (Experiments 3 and 4). When endogen-ous attentional shifts were possible thanks to thepredictive nature of the cues, which led to cuevalidity effects (Experiments 1 and 2), such influ-ence of emotional words on attentional shifts wasnot observed. Hence, the present ensemble ofresults suggests that modulations of spatial atten-tional orienting by the emotional content of stimuliare observed when the least endogenous mech-anisms are involved, namely when attentionalorienting towards the spatial location of a stimulusis the most automatic, reflexive.

448 BERTELS ET AL.


Most probably, the intervention of resource-demanding strategies linked to endogenousattentional shifts were responsible for the absenceof a detectable emotional modulation of atten-tional orienting, by increasing cognitive load andthus limiting the available resources. Indeed,various studies have shown that interferenceeffects of negative stimuli on target processingonly occur when sufficient resources are available(e.g., Okon-Singer et al., 2007; Smith Erthal et al.,2005). This does not imply that the emotionalinfluence is in itself exogenous, automatic. Rather,it could be at least partly under voluntary control:When no strategy regarding the predictability ofthe cue dominates the task, participants may beparticularly attentive to the emotional content ofthe words and develop strategies based on theiremotional valence in order to counteract theautomatic inhibition of the spatial location of thecue when a negative stimulus has been detected.

Nonspatial effects of negative cues

In Experiment 1, a general, nonspatial effect ofnegative words occurred: Time to localise thetarget was shorter when a negative cue waspresented beforehand, whatever its presentationside, as compared to a nonnegative emotional cue.

Such an overall facilitative effect of negativestimuli has been reported in other studies. Forexample, a nonspatial effect of threatening pic-tures has been obtained using the dot probe task(Pourtois et al., 2006) and the emotional cueingparadigm (Rutherford & Raymond, 2010), andwe recently observed the same phenomenonusing spoken words in the beep probe task(Bertels et al., 2010, Exp. 2).

Since this effect occurs whatever the presenta-tion side of the negative cue, it cannot beaccounted for by spatial priming of a motorresponse. It probably reflects preparation foraction in response to threat (Flykt, 2006). Moreprecisely, it may be an alerting effect arising fromthe detection of threat-related cues and leading tofaster responses to the ensuing target. Similarly,Buodo, Sarlo, and Palomba (2002) argued that, asthreat cues require fast preparation for action,fewer attentional resources would be allocated tothem relative to nonthreat cues, leaving atten-tional resources available for the fast processingof extraneous stimuli. Such a mechanism wouldoperate for automatic attentional shifts but notfor voluntary ones. The fact that a facilitative

effect of negative words was only observed inExperiment 1, not in Experiment 2, is coherentwith this view. Indeed, in Experiment 2, onlytop-down processes could intervene to orientattention according to the centrally presentedpredictive cue, whereas the abrupt onset of theperipherally presented cues elicited exogenousinitial attentional shifts (followed by endogenousones) in Experiment 1. Nevertheless, although thecomparison between facilitative effects for nega-tive words in Experiments 1 and 2 tended to reachsignificance, F(1, 50) �3.693, p�.06, this differ-ence was small (6 ms). Hence, the interpretationof the nonspatial effects of negative words interms of preparation for action remains specula-tive and should be further investigated.

No effect of taboo words

No modulation of spatial orienting by taboo wordswas found in the present study. This is surprising,given that taboo words consistently elicited atten-tional effects in the beep probe task (Bertels et al.,2010), as well as in the visual and auditory versionsof the emotional Stroop task (Bertels et al., inpress; MacKay & Ahmetzanov, 2005; MacKay etal., 2004; Siegrist, 1995), even under conditions inwhich no effect of negative words was observed(Bertels et al., 2010, Bertels et al., in press). Theemotional Stroop task is quite different from thespatial cueing paradigm, because it does notinvolve any spatial attentional shift. But one couldexpect similar attentional biases to occur in thebeep probe and the cueing tasks, because thestimuli are laterally presented in both situations.

The fact that taboo words elicited a spatialattentional bias in the beep probe but not in thecueing task might indicate that these situations tapdifferent attentional processes. The orienting ofattention is actually not the same in the twosituations. In the version of the cueing paradigmused in Experiments 3 and 4, attention is auto-matically directed towards the spatial, peripherallocation of an exogenous cue, whereas in the beepprobe task it is divided between both sides of thespace, namely between the spatial locations whereeach word of the pair was presented. Hence,whereas in the cueing paradigm spatial attentionalorienting towards one side of space is determinedby the abrupt onset of the cue and might beinfluenced by its emotional content, in the beepprobe task, spatial attentional orienting is actuallydetermined by the presence of an emotional



stimulus within the pair. So-called ‘‘attentionalbiases’’ thus reflect different phenomena in thetwo situations.

Valence . . . or arousal?

A further issue is to evaluate whether the observedeffects are linked to the emotional valence of thestimuli or to their arousal. Actually, both factorsmay have contributed to the effects, given thatnegative words were rated as more negative andmore arousing than taboo words. Nevertheless,negativity seems to be crucial: In Experiment 1, inwhich nonspatial facilitative effects of negative(but not taboo) cues were observed, the mostnegative words were associated with the fastestRTs. Similarly, in Experiment 3, where no IOR wasobserved when negative cues were presented, themost negative words were associated with thesmallest IOR effect. No correlation at all wasobserved with the arousal of the cues. This supportsthe idea of a negativity bias in attention (e.g., Rozin& Royzman, 2001): More attention seems to bedevoted to negative stimuli. Our data suggest thatthis bias would become stronger when the level ofunpleasantness increases.

One might wonder to what extent this negativitybias would not be linked to the participants’anxiety trait or state, as previous authors suggested(e.g., Beck, 1976). Correlational analyses revealedthat neither the spatial nor the nonspatial effects ofnegative words were linked with the trait and stateanxiety levels of the participants. This supports theidea that attentional biases are not a specificcharacteristic of anxious people but rather maybe observed in healthy participants. Nevertheless,no strong conclusion may be drawn from theseresults given that, as our study did not address thisquestion specifically, we used unbalanced samplesacross the experiments. Further studies shouldcontrol this variable more carefully.5

CONCLUSION

Taking together the results of our four experi-

ments, it seems that negative spoken words

influence the spatial allocation of attention only

when attentional shifts elicited by the cue are

exclusively automatic, as was the case in Experi-

ments 3 and 4. Still, nonspatial facilitative effects

of negative words would be observed even when

top-down attentional processes are involved, as in

Experiment 1. Our study thus stresses the im-

portance of taking into account the involvement

of top-down versus bottom-up orienting of atten-

tion in further studies on the emotional modula-

tion of attention. Moreover, it supports the

pervasiveness as well as the precocious impact

of emotional negativity on the deployment of

auditory attention.

Original manuscript received March 2010

Revised manuscript received September 2010

First published online March 2011

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5Similarly, the participant’s gender should be balanced in

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