Abstract
Successful allocation of attentional resources is crucial to daily activities. One influential model focuses on three critical sub-processes of attentional control (alerting, orienting, and distractor filtering) measured using the Attention Network Test (ANT; Fan et al., 2002). These attentional processes are known to vary over time both between, as well as within, individuals. However, the impact of emotion on this variability has not been fully explored. Here, we aimed to identify state and trait personality factors that influence visuospatial attention fluctuations. Participants were loaned an iPad containing our ANT app to track attentional fluctuations across 42 sessions over a 12-day period. On the initial and final days of the study, participants completed an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) of emotional state, baseline ANT session, and an assessment of trait characteristics. On the intervening days, participants were notified four times each day (morning, mid-day, evening, and night) to complete both an EMA and ANT session. Univariate regression analyses revealed trends between average emotional states and average attention orienting performance over the two-week period, whereby increased positively valenced emotions were associated with worse performance and increased negatively valenced emotions were associated with better performance. Average orienting performance was significantly related to average ratings for sad, stressed, frustrated, and irritable (all p’s < 0.05, uncorrected). Additionally, the regression analyses revealed trends between average emotional state and changes in baseline distractor filtering performance, whereby lower averages for positive valence emotions and higher averages for negative valence emotions were associated with greater overall improvement. Specifically, change in distractor filtering performance was significantly related to average ratings for happy, relaxed, cheerful, confident, sad, frustrated, and irritable (all p’s < 0.05, uncorrected). Thus, important links may exist between attentional fluctuation and emotional factors that may influence moment-by-moment processing of visual stimuli in the environment.