How Emotional Distractions Impact Sustained Attention and Memory

Esterman et al. recently published a study in Behaviour Research Methods. The study examined how emotional background images affect sustained attention and memory. In this work, they introduced the emotional gradual onset continuous performance task (emogradCPT) to measure these effects. Their findings revealed that negative emotional distractors both impair attention and enhance memory for those images. This new, validated tool will allow researchers to explore how emotion disrupts cognitive focus over time. 

Maintaining focus on a task feels simple enough until we face emotional distractions. Images that evoke fear, sadness, or anger can pull our attention away from ongoing activities, even when they are irrelevant to them. 

While research has shown that emotional stimuli can grab attention in the short term, not much is known about how they affect the ability to sustain attention over longer periods. Sustained attention is critical for daily functioning. Moreover, cognitive performance is especially vulnerable to disruption. And yet emotional distractions have not been systematically studied in this context. To address this gap, the researchers developed the emotional gradual onset continuous performance task (EMOGAD-CPT). The Emograd CPT offers a new method to investigate how emotional background stimuli influence sustained attention and memory. 

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Objectives of the Research 

The primary objective of the study was to create and validate a paradigm that reliably measures how emotional distractors (particularly negatively valenced and arousing images) impair sustained attention. In addition to quantifying performance changes, the researchers aimed to explore how emotional distractions affect subjective experiences of focus and mood. They were further interested in whether these distractions are encoded into memory despite being irrelevant to the task at hand. By developing a strong, replicable tool, the researchers aimed to aid in future studies on emotion and attention, including applications in clinical research. 

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The Study Design 

The EmogradCPT 

The Emograd CPT is a new task that the researchers developed to study how emotional distractions affect attention. It’s based on an existing task called the gradCPT, which measures how well people can stay focused over time. In this task, participants saw a series of digits from 1 to 9. They were asked to press a button for every number except for the target digit, “3” (which is a typical go/no-go task).

The digits changed smoothly, one after the other, every 800 milliseconds.  At the same time, background images, which were either negative, neutral, or positive, gradually changed every 3,200 milliseconds. Participants were told to focus only on the digits and ignore the images. In addition to the main task, the study used a few extra measures. These were: 

1. Thought Probes: After each block of images, participants were asked how focused they felt and whether the images made them feel good or bad. 

2. Incidental Memory Test: After completing the task, participants took a surprise memory test to see how well they remembered the background images. 

3. Valence and Arousal Ratings: Participants also rated the emotional content and intensity of the images to make sure they were categorised correctly. 

Once the task was established, the researchers conducted two experiments. 

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Overview of the Experiments 

Experiment 1 

Experiment 1 involved testing emotional backgrounds. The researchers hypothesised that negative images would both impair performance and be remembered more vividly than neutral or positive images. 

The experiment involved 66 participants. Each person completed two 9.6-minute runs of the EMOGRADE CPT. In one run, brief “thought probes” asked participants after each block how well they stayed focused and how the images made them feel. The other run proceeded without interruption. 

The researchers measured accuracy (how often participants correctly withheld responses to “3”), reaction times and self-reported distraction and mood. After both runs, they also did a surprise memory test for some of the background images. 

Experiment 2 

This experiment was done to replicate and strengthen the findings by making some changes to the previous experiment. 

Experiment 2 involved 54 participants. To rule out mere visual change, neutral pictures were replaced by blank white screens. To increase cognitive load, participants now responded only to even digits (“odds task”) rather than simply avoiding “3.” 

The surprise memory test also expanded to include every positive and negative image, each paired with a similar image. 

The goal here was to confirm that it was the emotional distractions, not the visual distractions, that impair attention and to replicate the better memory for negative images.

Findings of the Study 

Across both experiments, some consistent results were observed: 

1. Participants were less accurate and slower to respond during negative emotional blocks compared to positive, neutral, or blank background conditions. 

2. The thought probes showed that participants felt more distracted and reported more negative emotions after seeing negative images. 

3. Participants remembered negative images better than positive, neutral, or blank images in the surprise memory test. 

4. These effects were consistent across different task versions. The results were also reliable, with strong consistency in accuracy and reaction times. 

Furthermore, a follow-up fMRI session confirmed that the emogradCPT task could reliably replicate these findings even in different experimental environments. 

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What the Study’s Findings Mean 

The findings show that negative emotional distractions have a significant and lasting impact on sustained attention. Even when participants were instructed to ignore emotional stimuli, their focus declined, and their memory for the distracting images improved. This suggests that emotional distractions, especially negative and arousing images, automatically grab attention and are encoded better in our memory. 

These findings highlight the strong connection between emotion and attention. The emogradCPT provides a reliable tool for studying this relationship. This tool’s sensitivity to emotional distractions makes it ideal for clinical research, especially for conditions like PTSD, anxiety, and depression, where emotional regulation is often impaired. 

Beyond clinical settings, this research also offers valuable insights into how emotional distractions affect focus in everyday environments like classrooms, workplaces, and online spaces. Thus, the emogradCPT can be very beneficial for future research and clinical innovation in managing emotional interference with cognitive tasks. 

FAQs 

1. What is the EMORAD CPT? 

The Emograd CPT (emotional gradual onset continuous performance task) is a new task that was designed to study how emotional background images affect sustained attention and memory. 

2. What are emotional distractions? 

Emotional distractions are stimuli such as images or sounds that result in strong emotional responses, diverting attention from the task at hand. 

3. What is sustained attention? 

Sustained attention is the ability to stay focused on a task over time without getting distracted.