5.3.1.3. Discussion

The results of Experiment 1 indicated that normal individuals reacted very differently to emotional faces. Participants exhibited faster colour-naming latencies after negative face priming and slower RTs after positive face priming, regardless of Stroop congruency condition. Processing negative information modified subsequent attention, thus enhancing target processing efficiency, and positive information priming decreased it. Priming with an emotional face generally served as a distractor, regardless of emotional valence in Block 1, but different bias effects across emotional valence developed more clearly in Block 2. A positive face had a strong impact on attention, as compared to neutral or negative faces. One possible interpretation is that participants became less defensive and more attentive with this information, which was then processed more deeply, because positive information more readily provokes approach behavior, as compared with negative or neutral stimuli. However, in comparison with an emotional Stroop task in which normal participants showed no specific emotional effect, Experiment 1 provided a clear attentional pattern in these normal individuals. Attentional resources for processing targets increased after processing negative information and decreased after processing positive information. Normal individuals are thus likely to allocate more attention to processing targets while avoiding and/or inhibiting processing negative information, and will also allocate less attention to processing targets while attending more readily to positive information.