情绪信息对返回抑制的影响及其理论解释

The effect of emotional information on the inhibition of return and its theoretical explanation

返回抑制作为视觉搜索效率的体现,具有一定的灵活性及适应性,在空间视觉搜索过程中,会受情绪性信息(如负性信息)的影响。情绪信息对返回抑制作用的研究结果并不一致。文献回顾发现,有四种因素影响情绪信息对返回抑制的作用:刺激材料性质、刺激呈现位置、实验任务类型以及被试特质。本文用注意抑制理论和检测代价理论对情绪信息影响返回抑制的机制进行了分析。未来研究需要运用多线索法考察情绪信息对返回抑制空间特征的影响,并进一步完善与整合现有理论,以提高相关理论的解释力。

Inhibition of return(IOR)has been argued to reflect a bias against returning attention to previously explored locations.It would operate to encourage orienting towards novel objects and events and make visual search more efficient.Emotional information,especially negative emotional information,is particularly salient stimuli,and due to their biological and social significance,emotional information may enjoy aprivileged processing status.Whether the IOR could be affected by nature(the meaning,the emotional content)of the cue and/or the target remains controversial.In the present article,we reviewed the related studies on emotional information and IOR.There were four factors that could regulate the effect of emotional information on IOR:the nature of stimulus,the location of the stimulus,the types of task and the traits of subjects.The theoretical explanations of the effect of emotional information on IOR:Attentional inhibition theory and detection cost theory were used to analyze the mechanism of emotional information affecting IOR.Based on the review of the prior research,some advice have been put forward for the future.The future research should use the multi-cues method to examine the effect of emotional information on IOR and focus on further extending the mechanism of emotional information on IOR in an integrated manner so as to perfect and integrate present theory and improve the explanations of related theories.