| Sumario: | In a valence-detection task with emotional adjectives, 57 participants selectively responded to a predefined target level of valence (negative, positive, or neutral). Event-related potentials of ignored nontargets were examined for a novel type of emotion–attention interaction between a nontarget's valence and valence of the attentional set. Findings support an extension of the model of evaluative space [Cacioppo, J. T., Gardner, W. L., & Berntson, G. G. (1997). Beyond bipolar conceptualizations and measures: The case of attitudes and evaluative space. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1(1), 3–25. ], proposing associations of negative and positive stimuli/attentional sets with high and low arousal, respectively. Consistently, in the neutral attentional set involving low arousal, false alarms were more frequent and an average-referenced EPN-like posterior negativity (150–250 ms) was smaller for positive than negative nontarget words. The late positive potential was reduced for positive nontargets in the negative attentional set, but not the reverse, indicating conjoint effects of a negativity bias and distractor-target distance in terms of valence. Finally, data suggest a sensitivity of mastoid-referenced lateral-posterior N170 to inhibition of task-irrelevant affect.
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