Pêcher, C. & Lemercier, C.
CLLE-LTC, University of Toulouse 2. Toulouse, France
In the present study, we further evaluated the impact of sadness on orienting, questioning the benefits and the costs of directing attention to an expected or unexpected location. In our experiment, participants were first induced either in a neutral state or sadness, with a combined vignettes and music procedure. Then, they performed the exogenous version of Posner’s orienting task, with or without a sad musical reinforcement. Analyses confirmed first that sadness was efficiently induced in participants, before performing the orienting task. In regard with RTs to Posner’s task, we observed deleterious effect of sadness on orienting. The major finding was a reduction of benefits related to the presentation of valid cues, for sad participants who listened to sad music during the task, compared to controls and sad participants (without music reinforcement). Costs due to the presentation of invalid cues remained similar in the three groups. Results are discussed with regard to the literature on emotion and cognition and specific sadness-related biases that operate on attention.