Stimuli associated with first-hand traumatic events do not yield an emotional attentional blink

In the emotional attentional blink (EAB; also referred to as emotion-induced blindness), an emotionally salient distractor in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream can capture attention and hinder recall of a subsequent target. Recent research questions the strength of the EAB and whether emotional salience alone can capture temporal attention (e.g., in the absence of physical or categorical distinctiveness). However, emotional stimuli used in classic EAB studies are often generic (graphic images, taboo words, etc.). Therefore, the current study aimed to test whether stimuli derived from recent traumatic events with widespread impact could elicit a stronger EAB than generic emotional stimuli. Experiment 1 used a RSVP stream of words with fruit targets and critical distractors from three categories: taboo words, words related to the COVID-19 pandemic, or absent. While the taboo words yielded a significant EAB effect, the COVID-19 words did not. Experiment 2 used streams of images depicting objects with fruit targets and critical distractors from five categories: neutral humans, unpleasant gory humans, the city of Houston (where the study took place), matched photos of the same Houston locales during or immediately following the catastrophic Hurricane Harvey, or absent. As expected, unpleasant distractors yielded an EAB and the neutral distractors yielded a weaker EAB effect (a result of physical or categorical distinctiveness). However, the images of Houston did not affect target report accuracy and the Harvey images yielded a very weak EAB (smaller than that evoked by the physical or categorical distinctiveness of the neutral distractors). Both experiments show that stimuli related to personal traumatic events, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Harvey, do not yield an EAB.