Fig. 2

The procedure of the dual task. After fixation, a letter string and four faces were presented at the same time. Participants were required to discriminate the color of the string (low attentional load) or whether there was an X in the string (high attentional load) during the presentation of the stimuli or at the response screen. Then, a blank screen was shown, followed by a cue indicating the four faces or the single face to be judged. Next, participants estimated to (mean) emotion of the cued face(s) on the VAS. The next trial began (randomly varying between) 1000 ms– 1500 ms after participants responded