Attention, Emotion, and Enumeration: The influence of emotional valence and arousal on subitizing and counting
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Abstract
Emotional valence (un/pleasantness) has been found to alter attention in a number of paradigms. Despite this, valence effects have not been detected during simple enumeration (quantification theorized to require attention) for both subitizing, the “with-a-glance” enumeration of small quan-tities (~1-4), and counting, the effortful enumeration of larger quantities (5+). To investigate this puzzling finding, Experiment 1 participants saw positive, negative, or neutral images before enu-merating 1-9 dots. No valence effects were detected. Consequently, Experiment 2 used a more accurate image categorization procedure and presented positive and negative images of high and low arousal before enumeration of 1-9 dots dispersed within a small or large display breadth. Negative trials were slower than positive trials for both subitizing and counting. For subitizing alone high arousal trials were enumerated faster than low arousal trials, and small displays were enumerated faster than large. No significant interaction effects between valence and display breadth were detected.