The effect of emotion and time interval manipulations on attentional blink in the group with obsessive compulsive symptom and the control group

The main objective of this research is to investigate the effects of Emotional Facial Expressions and Lag manipulations on attentional blink (AB) in the Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Group and Control Group by using rapid serial visual paradigm. The study was completed with a total of 103 people between the ages 18-30 (X ̅=21.17; SS=3.64), 82 of whom were female. The Padua Inventory-Washington State University Revision (PI–WSUR) was used to determine obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) level in the study. Symptom and Control groups formed according to the total score, Cleaning subscale score and Control Compulsion subscale score. Stimulus and duration of the stimuli were determined by pilot studies. The first target (T1) is one of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and the second target (T2) is emotional and neutral facial expressions. The distractors are the reverse neutral facial expressions. The number of stimuli between the two targets changed to lag 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, and stimuli were presented at 83.33 ms. The study was examined with dependent variable of the number of correct identifications of the T2 (in which the T1 must be also correctly identified) 2(Group: OCD Symptoms, Control) x 7(Emotional Facial Expression: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Neutral) x 5(Lag: G1, G2, G3, G4, G5) Mixed ANOVA. The AB was enhanced on trials in which the T2 was an fear face, and it was reduced happy face. Attentional bias was not observed against threat-related facial expressions. Participants who showed OCD Symptoms recognized disgust faces with less accuracy in lag1 compared to the participants in the control group, and AB occurred. In the context of the multiple-channel hypothesis, it is argued that AB does not occur due to the difference between the processing channels of digits and facial expressions, that is featural versus configural, respectively. Key Words Attention, attentional bias, attentional blink, rapid serial visual paradigm, emotion, emotional facial expressions, obsessive-compulsive disorder.