Nick Berggren

Research Fellow

Room 401 Henry Wellcome
Telephone: 0207 631 6522
E-mail: nbergg01@mail.bbk.ac.uk

Research Interests

I am broadly interested in selective attention and cognitive control, as well as how emotional states and individual differences in personality affect these processes. Following initial research on theories of selective attention, my PhD examined how fearful affect and trait vulnerability to anxiety influence attentional control. I then worked as a postdoctoral RA with Prof Eimer as part of the international ESRC ORA grant, probing how top-down attentional templates influence attentional selection and visual working memory. My current project (funded by an ESRC New Investigator grant) examines how threat anticipation influences perceptual and attentional processes.

Google Scholar Page

Publications

Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (in press). Tuning in to anxiety-related differences in attentional control: Apprehension of threat improves template switching during visual search. Emotion.

Berggren, N. (in press). Rapid attentional biases to threat-associated visual features: The roles of anxiety and visual working memory access. Emotion.

Husain, L.*, Berggren, N.*, Remington, A., & Forster, S. (2021). Intact goal driven attentional capture in autistic adults. Journal of Cognition, 4, 1-12. (* = equal contribution).

Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2021). The role of trait anxiety in attention and memory-related biases to threat: An event-related potential study. Psychophysiology, 58, e13742.

Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2021). The guidance of attention by templates for rejection during visual search. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 83, 38-57.

Berggren, N. (2020). Anxiety and apprehension in visual working memory performance: No change to capacity, but poorer distractor filtering. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 33, 299-310.

Gutierrez, M., & Berggren, N. (2020). Anticipation of aversive threat potentiates task-irrelevant attentional capture. Cognition & Emotion, 34, 1036-1043.

Brown, C.R.H., Berggren, N., & Forster, S. (2020). Not looking for any trouble?: Goal-driven attentional capture does not generalise across affective categories. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 82, 1150-1165.
 
Brown, C. R., Berggren, N., & Forster, S. (2020). Testing a goal-driven account of involuntary attentional capture by threat. Emotion, 20(4), 572.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2020). Attentional access to multiple target objects in visual search. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 32, 283-300.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2020). Spatial filtering restricts the attentional window during both singleton and feature-based visual search. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 82, 2360-2378.
 
Berggren, N., Nako, R., & Eimer, M. (2020). Out with the old: New target templates impair the guidance of visual search by pre-existing task goals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149, 1156-1168.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2020). Attentional access to multiple target objects in visual search. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 32, 283-300.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2019). The roles of relevance and expectation for the control of attention in visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45, 1191-12-5.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2019). Visual working memory load disrupts the space-based attentional guidance of target selection. British Journal of Psychology, 110, 357-371.
 
Dolcos, F., Katsumi, Y., Moore, M., Berggren, N., de Gelder, B., Derakshan, N., Hamm, A.O., Koster, E.H., Ladouceur, C.D., Okon-Singer, H & Pegna, A. J. (2019). Neural correlates of emotion-attention interactions: From perception, learning and memory to individual differences and training interventions. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 108, 559-601.
 
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M (2018). Object-based target templates guide attention during visual search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44, 1368.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M (2018). Visual working memory load disrupts template-guided attentional selection during visual search. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30, 1902-1915.
 
McCants, C., Berggren, N., & Eimer, M (2018). The guidance of visual search by shape features and shape configurations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 44, 1072-1085.
 
Berggren, N., & Derakshan, N. (2018). Beyond the threat bias: Reciprocal links between emotion and cognition. In Fox, A.S., Lapgate, R.C., Shackman, A.J., & Davidson, R.J. (Eds.), The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions. New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M (2018). Feature-guided attentional capture cannot be prevented by spatial filtering. Biological Psychology,134,1-8.
 
Berggren, N., Jenkins, M., McCants, C.W., & Eimer, M. (2017). The spatially global control of attentional target selection in visual search. Visual Cognition, 25, 196-214.
 
Berggren, N., Curtis, H.m., & Derakshan, N. (2017). Interactions of emotion and anxiety in the filtering efficiency of visual working memory. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 24, 1274-1281.
 
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2016). The control of attentional target selection in a colour/colour conjunction task. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78, 2383-2396.
 
Berggren, N., & Eimer, M. (2016). The guidance of spatial attention during visual search for colour combinations and colour configurations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42, 1282-1296.
 
Berggren, N., Blonievsky, T., & Derakshan, N. (2015). Enhanced visual detection in trait anxiety. Emotion, 15, 477-483.
 
Berggren, N., & Derakshan, N. (2014). Inhibitory deficits in trait anxiety: Increased stimulus-based or response-based interference? Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 21, 1339-1345.
 
Berggren, N., & Derakshan, N. (2013). Blinded by fear? Prior exposure to fearful faces enhances attentional processing of task-irrelevant stimuli. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 2204-2218.
 
Berggren, N., & Derakshan, N. (2013). The role of consciousness in attentional control differences in trait anxiety. Cognition and Emotion, 27, 923-931.
 
Berggren, N., Richards, A., Taylor, J., & Derakshan, N. (2013). Affective attention under cognitive load: Reduced emotional biases but emergent anxiety-related costs to inhibitory control. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 188.
 
Berggren, N., & Derakshan, N. (2013). Trait anxiety reduces implicit expectancy during target spatial probability cueing. Emotion, 13, 345-349.
 
Berggren, N., & Derakshan, N. (2013). Attentional control deficits in trait anxiety: Why you see them and why you don’t. Biological Psychology, 92, 440-446.
 
Berggren, N., Koster, E.H.W., & Derakshan, N. (2012). The effect of cognitive load in emotional attention and trait anxiety: an eye-movement study. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 24, 79-91.
 
Berggren, N., Hutton, S.B., & Derakshan, N. (2011). The effects of self-report cognitive failures and cognitive load on antisaccade performance. Frontiers in Cognition, 2, 280-287.