Proactive inhibitory control of emotional distractors: Evidence for the benefit of precuing emotional distractors

The present study investigated the role of proactive inhibitory control in processing emotional distractors by examining the benefit of precuing the following emotional distractor. In Experiments 1A and 1B, an emotional flanker task was used while schematic emotional faces were presented as targets and distractors. We found the benefit of precuing the emotional distractor. In Experiment 2, the precue could not predict the following emotional distractor. The benefit of precuing the emotional distractor diminished, suggesting that the benefit was not due to reactive inhibition of the precued distractor. In Experiments 3A and 3B, an emotional Stroop task was used while schematic emotional faces were presented as distractors. The benefit of precuing the emotional distractors was observed when these distractors were emotional faces but not observed when the distractors were scrambled faces. These findings suggested that the benefit of precuing the emotional distractors operates at the emotional level.