A Behavioral and Electrophysiological Study of Children's Selective Attention Under Neutral and Affective Conditions

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Abstract
Seven-year-olds completed a Posner cued attention task, under both neutral and affectively charged conditions. Compared to the traditional (affect-neutral) Posner task, performance in the affective Posner task was marked by dramatic decreases in reaction times (RTs), an increase in errors, an increased validity effect (difference in RTs to the cued vs. uncued trials), and increased electrocortical activity. Tempera- mentally shy children in the study differed from their non-shy peers within the affec- tive Posner task only, exhibiting larger event-related potentials amplitudes and right electroencephalogram asymmetry. In addition, shy children preferentially attended to the negative cues presented during the task. These data reinforce the notion that the functional balance between cognition and affect is sensitive to both contextual and individual characteristics. From the moment of birth, individuals are bombarded with an unrelenting array of sensory stimuli. To function, we must quickly learn to select those aspects of the environment that are worthy of further exploration. For example, emotional appraisals of the environment can reveal the presence of threat or reward, signal- ing the need to either withdraw or approach (Gray, 1987). These appraisals are, in turn, often reliant on cognitive or regulatory mechanisms that bring a stimulus to attention, instigate an evaluation, and maintain the process. As such, our abil- ity to move about our environment in a manner that is both efficient and adaptive requires a balance between affective and cognitive processes that work together to shape behavior. Recent work has examined the relations between cognition and affect by sys- tematically varying cognitive load (Keinan, Friedland, Kahneman, & Roth, 1999),