Expectancy and Attention Bias in Phylogenetic Vs. Ontogenetic Stimuli

Abado, Elinor; Aue, Tatjana; Houwer, Jan De; Okon‐Singer, Hadas

doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.02.330

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Thus, as the CNV reflects anticipatory attention, it can be concluded that attention was directed toward spiders from the cue level, as also reflected in the behavioral findings (i.e., congruency effects). Theoretically, these ERP results suggest that the faster detection of spider targets may be facilitated by pretarget preparation and endogenous attention, as participants prepare more for the encounter of spiders compared to the encounter of birds (for more on preferential processing of evolutionary‐relevant stimuli, see Abado et al., 2023; Öhman & Mineka, 2001; Seligman, 1971). Methodologically, one implication of these findings is that future studies should use topographical analyses for the CNV, rather than focus on a handful of electrodes, as it usually done (for more on the advantages of topographical analyses, see Pourtois et al., 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Expectancy and attention bias to spiders: Dissecting anticipation and allocation processes using ERPs

Abado,

Aue,

Pourtois

et al. 2024

Psychophysiology

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The current registered report focused on the temporal dynamics of the relationship between expectancy and attention toward threat, to better understand the mechanisms underlying the prioritization of threat detection over expectancy. In the current event‐related potentials experiment, a‐priori expectancy was manipulated, and attention bias was measured, using a well‐validated paradigm. A visual search array was presented, with one of two targets: spiders (threatening) or birds (neutral). A verbal cue stating the likelihood of encountering a target preceded the array, creating congruent and incongruent trials. Following cue presentation, preparatory processes were examined using the contingent negative variation (CNV) component. Following target presentation, two components were measured: early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP), reflecting early and late stages of natural selective attention toward emotional stimuli, respectively. Behaviorally, spiders were found faster than birds, and congruency effects emerged for both targets. For the CNV, a non‐significant trend of more negative amplitudes following spider cues emerged. As expected, EPN and LPP amplitudes were larger for spider targets compared to bird targets. Data‐driven, exploratory, topographical analyses revealed different patterns of activation for bird cues compared to spider cues. Furthermore, 400–500 ms post‐target, a congruency effect was revealed only for bird targets. Together, these results demonstrate that while expectancy for spider appearance is evident in differential neural preparation, the actual appearance of spider target overrides this expectancy effect and only in later stages of processing does the cueing effect come again into play.

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