In:
British Journal of Psychology, Wiley, Vol. 105, No. 2 ( 2014-05), p. 162-172
Abstract:
Do sexual words have high attentional priority? How does the ability to ignore sexual distractors evolve with age? To answer these questions, two experiments using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation ( RSVP ) were conducted. Experiment 1 showed that both younger and older participants were better at identifying a target (the name of a colour) when it was preceded by 336 ms by a sexual word rather than by a musical word. Strikingly, the sexual‐word advantage was more pronounced for older adults than for younger adults. Experiment 2 showed that introducing a variable delay between the distractor and the target eliminated the sexual‐word advantage. This finding suggests that the sexual‐word advantage found in Experiment 1 was due to learning to utilize the sexual word as a temporal cue with a fixed duration between the distractor and the target. Contrary to previous research [Arnell et al ., 2007, Emotion, 7, 465), neither experiment showed that sexual words produce an attentional blink.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0007-1269
,
2044-8295
DOI:
10.1111/bjop.2014.105.issue-2
Language:
English
Publisher:
Wiley
Publication Date:
2014
detail.hit.zdb_id:
1493663-X
SSG:
5,2
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