JONATHAN P. DUNNING and GREG HAJCAK

The late positive potential (LPP) is larger for emotional than neutral  stimuli, and reflects increased attention to motivationally salient stimuli.  Recent studies have shown that the LPP can also be modulated by stimulus meaning  and task relevance. The present studies sought to determine whether the  magnitude of the LPP can be manipulated by directing attention to more or less  arousing aspectswi th in an emotional stimulus. To this end, trials included a  passive viewing and directed attention portion. In both Studies 1 and 2,  unpleasant compared to neutral images were associated with an increased LPP  during passive viewing; additionally, directing attention to non-arousing  compared to highly arousing areas of unpleasant images resulted in a decreased  LPP. Results are discussed in terms of the utility of using the LPP to  understand emotion–cognition interactions, especially with regard to directed  visual attention as an emotion regulation strategy.