Exogenous Attention to Emotional Stimuli Presenting Realistic (3D) Looming Motion

Fernández‐Folgueiras, Uxía; Hernández‐Lorca, María; Méndez‐Bértolo, Constantino; Álvarez, Fátima; Giménez‐Fernández, Tamara; Carretié, Luis

doi:10.1007/s10548-022-00909-w

“…Together, these dots visualize biological motion (e.g. of a walking human or cat) without a explicitly visible body (Chang & Troje, 2008;Troje, 2002;Troje & Chang, 2023).To this day, the effect of biological motion on attention has been studied separately from the effects of emotional significance (Fernández-Folgueiras et al, 2022;Ogren et al, 2019;Shi et al, 2010), with no studies showing fear-relevant biological motion stimuli to individuals with specific phobia.…”

Section: The Role Of Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moving spiders do not boost early visual processing in spider fear

Becker,

Troje,

Schmidt

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Previous research on attention to fear-relevant stimuli has largely focused on static pictures or drawings, and thus did not consider the potential effect of natural motion. Here, we aimed to investigate the effect of motion on attentional capture in spider-fearful and non-fearful participants by using point-light stimuli and naturalistic videos. Point-light stimuli consist of moving dots representing joints and thereby visualizing biological motion (e.g. of a walking human or cat) without needing a visible body. Spider-fearful (n = 30) and non-spider-fearful (n = 31) participants completed a visual search task with moving targets (point-light/naturalistic videos) and static distractors (images), static targets and moving distractors, or static targets and static distractors. Participants searched for a specified animal type (snakes, spiders, cats, or doves) as quickly as possible. We replicated previous findings with static stimuli: snakes were detected faster and increased distraction, while spiders just increased distraction. However, contrary to our hypotheses, spider targets did not speed up responses, neither in the group of control nor in the group of spider-fearful participants. Interestingly, stimuli-specific effects were toned down, abolished, or even changed direction when motion was introduced. Also, we demonstrated that point-light stimuli were of similar efficiency as naturalistic videos, indicating that for testing effects of motion in visual search, “pure” motion stimuli might be sufficient. As we do show a substantial modulation of visual search phenomena by biological motion, we advocate for future studies to use moving stimuli, equivalent to our dynamic environment, to increase ecological validity.

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“…At the neural level, indexes of exogenous attention may also be found in event-related potentials (ERPs). Thus, enhanced amplitudes to emotional distractors (as compared to neutral), may be observed in several ERP components, particularly in P1 (e.g., Carretié & Ruiz-Padial, 2016;Carretié et al, 2004Carretié et al, , 2005Carretié et al, , 2009Carretié et al, , 2019Fernández-Folgueiras et al, 2022;Soares et al, 2017), the anterior P2 (e.g., Carretié et al, 2004Carretié et al, , 2011Feng et al, 2012;Trauer et al, 2012), and the family of N2 components -i.e., N2x-(e.g., Buodo et al, 2010;Carretié et al, 2004Carretié et al, , 2019Eimer & Kiss, 2007;López-Martín, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Distractors Capture Attention even at Very Low Contrast Levels: ERP evidence

Cipriani,

Kessel,

Álvarez

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Emotional visual stimuli, whether appealing or aversive, preferentially capture exogenous attention due to their evolutionary significance. This study assessed whether such capacity persists at low contrast levels, where stimuli are minimally perceived. To this end, we recorded behavioral and electrophysiological (event-related potentials, ERPs) indices of attentional capture from 38 participants who were exposed to negative, neutral, and positive scenes, each presented at four distinct contrast levels. These contrast levels had previously resulted in a correct recognition rate of up to 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% in a previous sample of 235 participants. Participants were presented with these scenes as distractors while simultaneously performing a perceptual task involving line orientation discrimination. The ERP results confirmed the expected emotional effect on exogenous attention and, critically, unveiled its persistence across all contrast levels. Specifically, occipito-parietal P1 (88-119 ms) was larger for negative than for positive distractors, while in a spreaded N2 component, positive distractors elicited larger amplitudes relative to both negative (213-354 ms) and neutral (213-525 ms) images. These findings reinforce the advantage of emotional distractors in accessing neural processing automatically and highlight the existence of a temporal negativity bias. Importantly, our novel findings emphasize the robustness of this exogenous attention pattern, present even under limited perceptual conditions.

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Moving spiders do not boost visual search in spider fear

Becker,

Troje,

Schmidt

et al. 2024

Sci Rep

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous research on attention to fear-relevant stimuli has largely focused on static pictures or drawings, and thus did not consider the potential effect of natural motion. Here, we aimed to investigate the effect of motion on attentional capture in spider-fearful and non-fearful participants by using point-light stimuli and naturalistic videos. Point-light stimuli consist of moving dots representing joints and thereby visualizing biological motion (e.g. of a walking human or cat) without needing a visible body. Spider-fearful (n = 30) and non-spider-fearful (n = 31) participants completed a visual search task with moving targets (point-light/naturalistic videos) and static distractors (images), static targets and moving distractors, or static targets and static distractors. Participants searched for a specified animal type (snakes, spiders, cats, or doves) as quickly as possible. We replicated previous findings with static stimuli: snakes were detected faster and increased distraction, while spiders just increased distraction. However, contrary to our hypotheses, spider targets did not speed up responses, neither in the group of control nor in the group of spider-fearful participants. Interestingly, stimuli-specific effects were toned down, abolished, or even changed direction when motion was introduced. Also, we demonstrated that point-light stimuli were of similar efficiency as naturalistic videos, indicating that for testing effects of motion in visual search, “pure” motion stimuli might be sufficient. As we do show a substantial modulation of visual search phenomena by biological motion, we advocate for future studies to use moving stimuli, equivalent to our dynamic environment, to increase ecological validity.

show abstract

Exogenous Attention to Emotional Stimuli Presenting Realistic (3D) Looming Motion

Cited by 3 publications

References 66 publications

Moving spiders do not boost early visual processing in spider fear

Moving spiders do not boost early visual processing in spider fear

Emotional Distractors Capture Attention even at Very Low Contrast Levels: ERP evidence

Moving spiders do not boost visual search in spider fear

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