The time course of attentional bias to cues of threat and safety

Schmidt, Lisette J.; Belopolsky, Artem V.; Theeuwes, Jan

doi:10.1080/02699931.2016.1169998

Cited by 35 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Similar results have been reported by Schmidt, Belopolsky and Theeuwes (2016) using eye tracking. They showed that people are faster to make a saccade to a location that previously contained a stimulus signaling threat than to a control location not signaling a threat even when they had to postpone making the saccade for 1000ms.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Was that a threat? Attentional biases by signals of threat.

Preciado¹,

Munneke²,

Theeuwes³

2017

Emotion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present study rigorously tests whether an arbitrary stimulus that signals threat affects attentional selection and perception. Thirty-four volunteers completed a spatial-emotional cueing paradigm to examine how perceptual sensitivity (d') and response times (RTs) were affected by a threatening stimulus. On each side of fixation, 2 colored circles were presented as cues, followed by 2 Gabor patches, 1 of which was tilted and served as target. The color of 1 of the cues was paired with an electric shock, while others remained neutral. The target could be presented at the location of the threat-associated cue (Valid), at the opposite side (Invalid), or following neutral cues. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between cue and target was either 100 ms or 1,000 ms. Results showed increased perceptual sensitivity (d') and faster RTs for targets appearing at the Valid location relative to the Invalidly cued location, suggesting that immediately after cue presentation, attention was captured by the threat-associated cue. Crucially, following this initial exogenous capture, there was also enhanced perceptual sensitivity at the long SOA, suggesting that attention lingered volitionally at the location that previously contained the threat-associated stimulus. The current results show an effect of threatening stimuli on perceptual sensitivity, providing unequivocal evidence that threatening stimuli modulate the efficacy of sensory processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Was that a threat? Attentional biases by signals of threat.

Preciado¹,

Munneke²,

Theeuwes³

2017

Emotion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The authors suggested that attention remained allocated at the location previously cued with the threatening stimulus, thereby decreasing saccade latency to that location. In addition, saccades directed toward the opposite location of the threatening cue were slower than to a neutrally cued location when SOAwas short (Schmidt et al, 2015(Schmidt et al, , 2017. These findings, facilitation at longer SOAs and interference at the short SOAwere interpreted as consistent with the delayed disengagement theory, which states that emotional stimuli hold attention longer (Fox, Russo, Bowles, & Dutton, 2001;Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002).…”

Section: Saccade Latency In Spatial Cueingsupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Despite the irrelevance of the emotional expression, saccade latency was increased when the emotional expression was angry, suggesting that it held attention longer. Likewise, in the study by Schmidt et al (2017), attention lingered longer on the location previously cued with a threatening rather than a neutral stimulus, as indicated by a facilitation of saccades even at longer SOAs.…”

Section: Saccade Latency In Spatial Cueingmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…The cues consisted either of a pair of a fear-conditioned colored diamond (CS+) and a different colored diamond (CS−), or of a pair of two differently colored diamonds (neutral condition). Subsequently, after 50 ms (Schmidt et al, 2015), or after longer SOAs of 600 ms and 1,000 ms (Schmidt et al, 2017), an endogenous cue, an arrow at fixation, indicated the target location. Results from these studies showed that with a short SOA, saccades directed to the location previously occupied by a threatening cue were faster than were saccades directed to a neutrally cued location (Schmidt et al, 2015.…”

Section: Saccade Latency In Spatial Cueingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The influence of emotional stimuli on the oculomotor system: A review of the literature

Mulckhuyse

2018

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the past decade, more and more research has been investigating oculomotor behavior in relation to attentional selection of emotional stimuli. Whereas previous research on covert emotional attention demonstrates contradictory results, research on overt attention clearly shows the influence of emotional stimuli on attentional selection. The current review highlights studies that have used eye-movement behavior as the primary outcome measure in healthy populations and focusses on the evidence that emotional stimuli-in particular, threatening stimuli-affect temporal and spatial dynamics of oculomotor programming. The most prominent results from these studies indicate that attentional selection of threatening stimuli is under bottom-up control. Moreover, threatening stimuli seem to have the greatest impact on oculomotor behavior through biased processing via the magnocellular pathway. This is consistent with an evolutionary account of threat processing, which claims a pivotal role for a subcortical network including pulvinar, superior colliculus, and amygdala. Additionally, I suggest a neurobiological model that considers possible mechanisms by which emotional stimuli could affect oculomotor behavior. The present review confirms the relevance of eye-movement measurements in relation to researching emotion in order to elucidate processes involved in emotional modulation of visual and attentional selection.

show abstract

“…Compared to other types of exteroceptive pain, visceral pain is considered to be characterized by a unique biological salience, as supported by greater visceral pain-related fear and enhanced pain-related learning (12,13), making this a suitable preclinical model to study pain-related attentional biases. While numerous studies addressed attentional biases toward threat only, safety cues signaling the absence of an aversive event were also found to induce attentional biases (14) and are prioritized under threatening conditions (15). Specifically in visceral pain, patients (16,17) and healthy individuals (18) demonstrated enhanced awareness of safety cues suggesting that attentional biases may also pertain to safety cues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Differences Linking Pain-Related Fear and Interoceptive Hypervigilance: Attentional Biases to Conditioned Threat and Safety Signals in a Visceral Pain Model

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although the broad role of fear and hypervigilance in conditions of the gut-brain axis like irritable bowel syndrome is supported by converging evidence, the underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Even in healthy individuals, it remains unclear how pain-related fear may contribute to pain-related attentional biases for acute visceral pain. Building on our classical fear conditioning work in a clinically relevant model of visceral pain, we herein elucidated pain-related attentional biases shaped by associative learning in healthy women and men, aiming to elucidate possible sex differences and the role of psychological traits. To this end, we compared the impact of differentially conditioned pain-predictive cues on attentional biases in healthy women and men. Sixty-four volunteers accomplished a visual dot-probe task and subsequently underwent pain-related fear conditioning where one visual cue (CS + ) was contingently paired with a painful rectal distention (US) while another cue remained unpaired (CS − ). During the following test phase, the dot-probe task was repeated to investigate changes in attentional biases in response to differentially valenced cues. While pain-related learning was comparable between groups, men revealed more pronounced attentional engagement with the CS + and CS − whereas women demonstrated stronger difficulties to disengage from the CS + when presented with a neutral cue. However, when both CS + and CS − were presented together, women revealed stronger difficulties to disengage from the CS − . Regression analyses revealed an interaction of sex, with negative affect predicting stronger avoidance of the CS + and stronger difficulties to disengage attention from the CS − in men. These results provide first evidence that pain-related fear conditioning may induce attentional biases differentially in healthy women and men. Hence, sex differences may play a role in attentional mechanisms underlying hypervigilance, and may be modulated by psychological vulnerability factors relevant to chronic visceral pain.

show abstract

The time course of attentional bias to cues of threat and safety

Cited by 35 publications

References 60 publications

Was that a threat? Attentional biases by signals of threat.

Was that a threat? Attentional biases by signals of threat.

The influence of emotional stimuli on the oculomotor system: A review of the literature

Sex Differences Linking Pain-Related Fear and Interoceptive Hypervigilance: Attentional Biases to Conditioned Threat and Safety Signals in a Visceral Pain Model

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About