Preferential Processing and Perception of Emotional Visual and Auditory Stimuli

Abstract:

This project is examining emotional-impulsive processing of stimuli referring to the RIM (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), by investigating (impulsive) influences of affective stimuli on perceptional and neuronal processes.

Most (emotional) events outside the laboratory consist of a multitude of information of different modalities. If, for example, a person is threatened by a dog, he or she sees the dog and hears its barking at the same time. Only by the entity of the information the degree of threat/menace can be realized and classified. Existing studies indicate that emotional pictures attract enhanced attention and are preferentially processed in emotion-processing as well as in visual areas. Only few studies also investigated processing of emotional auditory information, but a privileged processing of emotional relevant cues can be assumed here as well. However, it is still unclear if or how a preferred processing of emotional stimuli can affect perception processes and how multimodal emotional information interact.

The aim of this research project is to study the influence of emotion on conscious perceptional and neuronal processes. The focus is on perception and processing of emotional visual and auditory information and possible interactions of the modalities.

The project can therefore help to better unterstand the interaction of emotional und cognitive processes. Influence of emotional information on (basic) perceptional processes may modulate and influence subsequent impulsive and reflective processes in terms of the RIM-model as well. The psychological mechanisms of impulsive and reflective processes acting together and against each other are to be clarified.