Figure 1.

An outline of anticipated results. In the typical EAB paradigm, an impairment in target performance is observed when an emotional distractor is presented close in time to the target (A). If this impairment is the result of an overinvestment of limited attentional resources toward the emotional distractor, similar to that observed in the AB, then the induction of a diffuse attentional state via the introduction of a peripheral monitoring task should alleviate the EAB (B). However, given that the EAB is the result of involuntary attentional capture prior to a target rather than voluntary attention allocation as in the AB, is also possible that the introduction of a concurrent task will have no effect (C) or may even worsen task performance by increasing demands (D).