Emotion and Attention Interactions: Behavioural and Psychophysiological Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, which focuses on the dynamic interplay between emotion and attention across the lifespan and in neurodiverse populations. Understanding how emotional processes shape attentional mechanisms is central to cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and applied clinical research. This Special Issue aims to bring together theoretical and empirical contributions that advance our understanding of how emotional arousal and valence influence attentional selection, allocation, and control, using behavioural, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging approaches.

Emotion and attention are tightly interconnected cognitive systems that jointly shape perception, decision-making, and goal-driven behaviour. Emotional stimuli can capture attention, bias attentional priorities, and modulate executive control, with effects varying as a function of emotional arousal, valence, and individual differences. Across the lifespan, changes in affective processing influence how emotional information is selected and regulated to shape perception, attention and goal-driven behaviour. In neurodevelopmental conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), atypical emotional regulation and attentional control may interact to produce distinct cognitive and behavioural profiles. Recent advances in behavioural paradigms, eye-tracking, pupillometry, psychophysiology, and neuroimaging enable increasingly fine-grained investigations of these interactions, yet findings remain fragmented across populations and methodologies.

This Special Issue welcomes original research articles and reviews and aims to foster an integrative overview of how emotional processes, particularly arousal and valence, modulate attentional mechanisms in healthy adults, ageing populations, and individuals with ADHD. By integrating behavioural methods with eye-tracking, pupillometry, psychophysiology, and neuroimaging approaches, this Special Issue aligns closely with the Journal’s mission to promote interdisciplinary perspectives on cognition.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Jorge Oliveira
Guest Editor

Dr. José Bourbon-Teles
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Cognitive Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• emotion–attention interaction
• emotional arousal and valence
• attentional control
• pupillometry
• psychophysiology
• ageing
• ADHD
• neuroimaging