How the emotional state of the observer impacts basic visual attention mechanisms

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My research program is aimed at understanding the basic mechanisms of human visual attention. Attention is a fundamental aspect of human cognition that enables coherent and adaptive behaviour. It prioritizes the information that our brain processes, favouring the processing of goal-relevant and salient information. More specifically, I investigate how emotion and attention processes are coordinated and combined to influence behaviour. I have recently begun to study how the emotional disposition and the cognitive strategy of a person influence the extent to which such stimuli attract attention. Here, I aim to build on these critical advances. The proposed research program will examine the effect of the internal emotional and motivational state of a person on their attention processes. In particular, I will investigate how the current state of an observer affects their ability to allocate attention to both emotionally neutral and emotionally significant stimuli. This comprehensive and systematic investigation will shed new light on precisely how emotion and attention are intertwined and how they influence human perception and cognition.