The Effects of Arousing Negative and Neutral Picture Stimuli on Target Detection in a Vigilance Task

Objectives: The present study was designed to explore whether target detection in a vigilance task is influenced by task-irrelevant negative emotional and neutral picture stimuli and to test predictions derived from the boredom-mindlessness versus resource depletion accounts of vigilance performance.

Background: Previous research indicates that emotional stimuli can capture spatial attention. Research on the effect of negative emotional and neutral visual stimuli on temporal aspects of attention has not, however, been researched in detail.

Method: For this study, 51 participants (15 men and 36 women) were assigned at random to one of three vigilance conditions: a visual vigil with task-irrelevant negative-arousing pictures, a visual vigil with task-irrelevant neutral pictures, or a no-picture visual vigil control. Vigilance performance was assessed in all conditions.

Results: Overall performance efficiency was negatively influenced by the negative-arousing pictures and was interpreted to favor resource depletion to boredom-mindlessness accounts of vigilance performance.

Conclusion: Task-unrelated negative emotional stimuli appear to impair absolute levels of target detections in a vigilance task.

Application: In monitoring settings where negative emotional stimuli are present, the intrusion of negative emotional stimuli should be mitigated via alterations in the system design, or if this is implausible, the monitors may need additional stress coping and emotional resilience training.