Peripheral Distractor Task for PsyToolkit

The PsyToolkit code and associated files in this repository were utilized in a research project investigating cognitive control of emotional distraction. The present experiment consists of a peripheral distractor task (adapted from Forster & Lavie, 2008; Grimshaw et al., 2018) with affective facial stimuli from the standardized KDEF set (Goeleven et al., 2008) serving as distractors.

This repository contains:

• Experimental code and associated files in two versions: low (25%) distractor frequency PDP_EXP_A and high (75%) distractor frequency PDP_EXP_B.
• Survey file, which randomly assigns participants to either a low or high frequency condition and collects basic demographic information.

KDEF stimuli must be downloaded separately and pasted into each of the main experimental directories. Codes of the KDEF images used in this study are listed under bitmaps in code.psy. Download KDEF at: https://www.ugent.be/pp/ekgp/en/research/research-groups/panlab/kdef

References

Forster, S., & Lavie, N. (2008). Failures to ignore entirely irrelevant distractors: The role of load. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(1), 73–83. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.14.1.73

Goeleven, E., De Raedt, R., Leyman, L., & Verschuere, B. (2008). The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces: A validation study. Cognition & Emotion, 22(6), 1094–1118. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930701626582

Grimshaw, G. M., Kranz, L. S., Carmel, D., Moody, R. E., & Devue, C. (2018). Contrasting reactive and proactive control of emotional distraction. Emotion, 18(1), 26–38. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000337