Are emotional stimuli prioritised in visual awareness

Bibliographic Data

ID7149873
AuthorsMike Doswell (University of British Columbia), Abbie N Abe (University of British Columbia), AS Abe (University of British Columbia), Christy Oi Ting Kwok (0009-0003-6716-3015, University of British Columbia), Lawrence M Ward (0000-0003-4431-5015, University of British Columbia, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume40
Issue1
Pages100-118
Publication date2026-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCognition & Emotion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-9931 • E-ISSN: 1464-0600
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02699931.2025.2483288
PMID40179221
OpenAlexW4409149679
LanguageEN
References cited41

Although various features of visual stimuli have been shown to affect access to awareness, it is still unclear whether and to what extent emotional stimuli have privileged access to visual awareness. We conducted three online experiments, using a breaking Repeated Masked Suppression (bRMS) paradigm, to assess whether positively and negatively valenced/high-arousal photographs would emerge from masking (break out of forward/backward masking by image-unique masks) faster than would neutral/low-arousal photographs. Experiment 1 found that positively-valenced high-arousal pictures were faster to break out of repeated masked suppression. Experiment 2 showed that this was not because such pictures were substantially more memorable. Experiment 3 used a verbal rather than pictorial method to check for accuracy of breakout, and found similar results to Experiment 1. We also found that various pictorial qualities had either no effect, or only a minor effect, on our results. Importantly, images of people and animals consistently showed the shortest breakout times, indicating that such stimuli might be especially available to conscious access. However, a difference in the distribution of images of people (fastest) and scenes (slowest) images across the valence categories may have also contributed to the overall shorter breakout times of positively-valenced images

Cognitive psychology · Face Recognition and Perception · Memory and Neural Mechanisms · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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