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The importance of top-down factors such as goals and expectations is well-established in both visual perception and anxiety. However, researchers have attributed the perceptual prioritization of threatening stimuli in anxiety to bottom-up, automatic processing of these stimuli while neglecting the role of prestimulus, top-down factors. Furthermore, different kinds of anxiety (dispositional versus induced) impact cognitive functions differently, suggesting that top-down factors may have distinct effects on threat perception. In the present study, we examined whether prestimulus representations of threatening stimuli facilitate perception differently, depending on induced and trait anxiety. Two groups of participants completed a cued discrimination task using threatening or neutral cues to identify subsequently presented fearful and neutral faces, degraded to each participant's perceptual threshold. In Group 1, threat of shock induced anxiety (n = 22; 12 men), whereas in Group 2, no anxiety was induced (n = 29; 7 men). The impact of induced anxiety on perception interacted with trait anxiety. Following fear cues, higher trait anxiety was associated with improved perceptual sensitivity and faster reaction time under threat of shock, and worse perceptual sensitivity and slower reaction time in absence of shock. The present findings represent an important advance in the literature because they elucidate the role of previously ignored top-down factors in threat perception for individuals with varying levels of anxiety and highlight the distinct impact that different types of anxiety have on the perception of threatening stimuli. Furthermore, these findings underline the importance of including top-down factors in future conceptualizations of perceptual bias toward threat in anxiety.

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Research on the perceptual prioritization of threatening stimuli has focused primarily on the physical characteristics and evolutionary salience of these stimuli. However, perceptual decision-making is strongly influenced by prestimulus factors such as goals, expectations, and prior knowledge. Using both event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging, we test the hypothesis that prior threat-related information and related increases in prestimulus brain activity play a key role in subsequent threat-related perceptual decision-making. After viewing threatening and neutral cues, participants detected perceptually degraded threatening and neutral faces presented at individually predetermined perceptual thresholds in a perceptual decision-making task. Compared with neutral cues, threat cues resulted in (1) improved perceptual sensitivity and faster detection of target stimuli; (2) increased late positive potential (LPP) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) activity, both of which are measures of emotional face processing; and (3) increased amygdala activity for subsequently presented threatening versus and neutral faces. Importantly, threat cue-related LPP and STS activity predicted subsequent improvement in the speed and precision of perceptual decisions specifically for threatening faces. Present findings establish the importance of top-down factors and prestimulus neural processing in understanding how the perceptual system prioritizes threatening information.

Yearning is common in situations involving loss, and a hallmark of complicated grief. To study yearning empirically, the present study develops the Yearning in Situations of Loss scale (YSL), which measures yearning bereavement, romantic breakup, or homesickness. In Study 1, we identified shared characteristics across situations of loss, tested an initial version and removed items with the lowest item-scale reliability. In Study 2, the 21-item YSL was compared to scales of anxiety, depression, and loneliness, and existing scales, relevant to each loss situation. The YSL showed discriminant and convergent validity that applies to bereavement, romantic breakup, and homesickness.