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Dual process models posit that combinations of impulsive and reflective processes drive behaviour, and that the capacity to engage in effortful cognitive processing moderates the relation between measures of impulsive or reflective processes and actual behaviour. When cognitive resources are low, impulsive processes are more likely to drive behaviour, while when cognitive resources are high, reflective processes will drive behaviour. In our current study, we directly addressed this hypothesis by comparing the capacity of implicit and explicit measures to predict fear and anxiety, either with or without additional cognitive load. In Experiment 1 ( N  = 83), only explicit measures of spider fear were predictive of spider avoidance, and manipulating cognitive load did not affect these relations. Experiment 2 ( N  = 70) confirmed these findings, as the capacity of explicit and implicit measures to predict self-reported and physiological responses to a social stressor was not moderated by cognitive load. In two experiments, we thus found no empirical support for the central dual process model assumption that cognitive control moderates the predictive value of implicit and explicit measures. While implicit measures and dual process accounts may still be valuable, we show that results in this field are not necessarily replicable and inconsistent.

In a widely cited paper, Jefferies et al. (2008) report a study in which they manipulated participants' mood and examined the effects of this manipulation on their performance on the Attentional Blink task. Their results revealed an interaction between emotional valence and arousal: attentional control of participants who experienced a negative mood with low arousal (i.e. sadness) was best, whereas it was worst for participants who experienced a negative mood with high arousal (i.e. anxiety). Performance for participants who were in a positive mood, either with low arousal (i.e. calmness) or high arousal (i.e. happiness) had intermediate scores. In this study, I examined the replicability of this effect and performed additional analyses to investigate the extent to which this effect is due to perceptual or attentional processes and to examine the role of distraction on AB performance. Importantly, the results showed that the crucial interaction between emotional valence and arousal did not reach significance. This could be due a diversity of factors that are addressed in the discussion.

Several studies have shown that the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992) is diminished for highly arousing T2 stimuli (e.g., Anderson, 2005). Whereas this effect is most often interpreted as evidence for a more efficient processing of arousing information, it could be due also to a bias to report more arousing stimuli than neutral stimuli. We introduce a paradigm that allows one to control for such a response bias. Using this paradigm, we obtained evidence that the diminished AB for taboo words cannot be explained by a response bias. This supports the idea that the emotional modulation of the AB is caused by attentional processes.