A simple writer summary of: Kryklywy, J.H., Dudarev, V. & Todd, R.M. (2021). Sense and timing: Localizing objects during emotional distraction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
Written by the first author’s mother
Fire people, paid-to-play games people, and many others have to be good at finding things when they are in situations with lots of people who are scared, excited, or have other kinds of strong feelings. We wanted to know if those feelings help or hurt them in how well they find things. This paper tried to find out how things we see or hear, with different feelings happening at different times all around us, will change a how well a person can find sights or sounds.
In this study people saw a lot of faces or heard voices showing feelings all around them. The faces or voices showed fear, were happy, or showed no feelings. These faces or voices were shown/heard either before, at the same time, or right after a spot was shown, or a tone was heard. People had to say where the spot or the tone was in space. We asked how well people could find the spot or tone in space if the faces or voices with feelings happened before, during or after the looked-for spot or tone, and if it mattered what feelings the voices or faces showed (fear, happy, or no feeling). We also asked if how well people found the spot or tone changed if they were looking for a sight (spot) or a sound (tone) and if the feelings information was seen (faces) or heard (voices). 
We showed that feelings information that happened at the same time as the looked-for spot or tone could change the how well the spot/tone was found when the feelings and spots/tones were both sight or both sounds, but not one of each. The kind of feeling also changed how well people could find the spot or tone but not in the same way for voices and faces.
Also, sound feelings (voices) shown after the looked-for spots/tones changed how well people found spots (but not tones!) It seems the spot/tone is found best when the feelings information is from hearing and when there is a fear feeling. Seeing feeling faces or hearing feeling voices BEFORE the looked-for spot/tones did not change how well a spot/tone was found at all.
We think that this may show that the brain uses different parts to put together looked for things and feelings using sights and sounds and that this part of the brain changes with the timing of when the feelings happen when you are looking for something. We want to look at the inside of the brain next to see if we are right. This will help us know when having feelings all around helps or hurts front-line helpers (and other people) when they do their jobs.
