The Impact of Visually Presented Distractor Taboo Words During a Bilateral Attention Task

Attention is a limited resource. Some events are able to capture one’s attention more efficiently than others, such as swear or sexual words. These events have preferential access to attentional resources and increase our arousal levels due to the activity of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine. We investigate how well swear/sexual words capture peoples’ attention and interpret these effects in terms of norepinephrine activity. Participants performed a visual task where they responded to different shapes presented while ignoring neutral or swear/sexual words presented on opposing sides of the computer screen. Participants were significantly more inaccurate in identifying the shape present when a swear/sexual word was presented in the unattended visual field than when a neutral word was presented. Regardless of what type of word was presented, participants were significantly more inaccurate when the ignored words were presented to the left compared to right hemisphere within the brain. Participants were not significantly slower at reporting which shape was presented when ignored swear/sexual words were present compared to neutral. However, participants were significantly slower at reporting which shape was presented when the ignored words were presented to the left compared to right hemisphere. Analysis of event-related potentials and pupil size showed that participants had significantly larger late positive potential (LPP; 600-1200ms), P3 (250-350ms), pupil size when swear/sexual words were presented compared to neutral, associated with emotional responses and norepinephrine activity, respectively. Participants did demonstrate larger P3 when words were presented to the left compared to the right hemisphere, though not significantly. Participants had significantly larger LPP and pupil size when any type of word was presented to the LH compared to the right. We are the first to demonstrate the attention capturing effect of swear/sexual words when presented as ignored events in an unattended visual field. The event-related potential and pupil size data suggest a role of norepinephrine activity in the attention capture. Taken together, the data suggest that swear/sexual events provoke norepinephrine activity that highlights the inherent salience of the events. Additionally, the results reveal the efficiency in the left hemisphere for processing linguistic stimuli without initiating language processing.