Abstract

Accumulating research has suggested that negative emotion affect spatial processing by modulating spatial attention. Also, recent studies using negative scene stimuli suggest that arousal is a key factor influencing spatial information processing. However, the results of studies using facial expression stimuli are inconsistent. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how negative facial expressions impact both spatial and visual (non-spatial) information processing, particularly focusing on the role of arousal within these expressions. In this study, participants were exposed to fearful, sad, and neutral facial expressions while performing tasks involving either remembering the location (Experiment 1) or the shape (Experiment 2). Results from Experiment 1 revealed that fearful faces, when presented during the task of remembering locations, improved spatial information recognition. However, there were no significant differences observed for sad or neutral faces. Moreover, when it came to remembering the shape in Experiment 2, no differences between facial expressions were observed. The results suggest that negative emotional stimuli affect tasks requiring spatial processing and do not have a significant effect on non-spatial processing. More importantly, these results demonstrate that arousal can affect task performance by modulating spatial attention and, in contrast to previous studies using scene stimuli, suggest that task-irrelevant facial expressions may facilitate perceptual processing by increasing arousal and vigilance.