Sie können Bookmarks mittels Listen verwalten, loggen Sie sich dafür bitte in Ihr SLUB Benutzerkonto ein.
Medientyp:
E-Artikel
Titel:
The traces of imagination: early attention bias toward positively imagined stimuli
Beteiligte:
Bär, Hannah E.;
Werthmann, Jessica;
Paetsch, Andreas;
Renner, Fritz
Erschienen:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2023
Erschienen in:
Psychological Research, 87 (2023) 5, Seite 1475-1483
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.1007/s00426-022-01737-0
ISSN:
1430-2772;
0340-0727
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Beschreibung:
AbstractPositively imagined activities may capture visual attention due to an increase in positive value. Increasing attention toward activities, in turn, may prove useful for clinical interventions aiming to motivate behavioral engagement. Employing a within-subject experimental design, we examined the effect of positive imagery on attention using a visual probe task with concurrent eye tracking. Adults from the general population (N = 54) imagined performing activities involving visually presented objects in a positive (focusing on the positive emotional impact) or neutral (focusing on a neutral circumstance) manner. They then completed a visual probe task using picture stimuli depicting one object per type of imagery. Positive compared to neutral imagery increased self-reported behavioral motivation and biased the direction, but not the duration, of gaze toward objects associated with the imagined activities. An exploratory analysis showed a positive association between the direction bias and depressive symptoms. Our findings build on existing literature on positive imagery as a motivational amplifier by highlighting early attention as an underlying cognitive mechanism.