Does Threat Have an Advantage After All? – Proposing a Novel Experimental Design to Investigate the Advantages of Threat-Relevant Cues in Visual Processing

Abstract

The automatic visual attentional procession of threatening stimuli over non-threatening cues has long been a question. The so-called classical visual search task (VST) has quickly become the go-to paradigm to investigate this. However, the latest results showed that the confounding results could originate from the shortcomings of the VST. Thus, here we propose a novel approach to the behavioral testing of the threat superiority effect. We conducted two experiments using evolutionary relevant and modern real-life scenes (e.g., forest or street, respectively) as a background to improve ecological validity. Participants had to find different targets in different spatial positions (close to fovea or periphery) using a touch-screen monitor. In Experiment 1 participants had to find the two most often used exemplar of the evolutionary and modern threatening categories (snake and gun, respectively), or neutral objects of the same category. In Experiment 2 we used more exemplars of each category. All images used were controlled for possible confounding low-level visual features such as contrast, frequency, brightness, and image complexity. In Experiment 1, threatening targets were found faster compared to neutral cues irrespective of the evolutionary relevance. However, in Experiment 2, we did not find an advantage for threatening targets over neutral ones. In contrast, the type of background, and spatial position of the target only affected the detection of neutral targets. Our results might indicate that some stimuli indeed have an advantage in visual processing, however, they are not highlighted based on evolutionary relevance of negative valence alone, but rather through different associational mechanisms.

Preferential snake detection in a simulated ecological experiment

“…Isbell and Etting (2016) recorded reactions of free‐ranging monkeys ( Chlorocebus pygerythrus ) as they came across small portions of snake skin, but studies that investigate snake detection have mostly used paradigms in which a subject was tasked with identifying a target stimulus on a computer screen. Zsido et al (2019) summarized the experimental shortcomings of visual search paradigms in the threat detection literature. Coelho et al (2019) expressed skepticism that the SDT has been validated by this research, given the lack of ecological validity in such studies.…”

Age Effects on Distraction in a Visual Task Requiring Fast Reactions: An Event-Related Potential Study

“…As the ERP results showed, the distractors in Experiment 1a elicited qualitatively similar results as the facial distractors in Experiment 1, but the magnitude of the differences was smaller (the evidence for the difference was moderate with BF incl larger than 3 but smaller than 10). Accordingly, even if the distractors of Experiment 1a were considered as threatening objects (e.g., Zsido et al, 2019), they were less salient than the emoticons of Experiment 1. However, we do not discard the possibility that face-specific activity (N170) contributed to the effects on the posterior locations.…”

“…Furthermore, the much larger effect in the older group may correspond to results showing larger face-specific posterior activity in elderly (e.g., Daniel and Bentin, 2012). In Experiment 1a we used the same method as in Experiment 1, but instead of facial distractors we utilized other objects: line drawings of a spider, a fist, and a pistol, i.e., potentially salient objects (Zsido et al, 2019) (see Figure 1). Another difference was that the stimuli were presented on a 24 monitor (ASUS VG245HE, 60 Hz refresh rate, 1920 × 1080 px screen resolution).…”

Super-natural fears

“…Such supernatural agents certainly play a prominent role in entertainment designed to frighten the audience, such as horror movies (Clasen, 2018). In some ways, these fears seem to have a similar developmental trajectory to other common fears such as blood, fire, strangers, separation, heights, social scrutiny, storms, thunder/lightning, or darkness, which are also especially common in childhood, and which we generally learn to overcome by adulthood (Coelho & Purkis, 2009;McNally, 1987;Zsido et al, 2019). They are considered to be biologically prepared or "hardwired" by evolution, in such a way that they only require a small extent of direct or indirect (vicarious/information-based) experience to be learned, cf.…”