What accounts for the rapid detection of threat? Evidence for an advantage in perceptual and behavioral responding from eye movements.

LoBue, Vanessa; Matthews, Kaleigh; Harvey, Teresa; Stark, Siewli Lee

doi:10.1037/a0035869

Cited by 51 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…There are some additional factors that researchers should consider when using the paradigm. First, researchers should think carefully about the experimental set-up, as labeling the targets, the participant's emotional state, and the participant's emotional traits (e.g., phobias, anxiety) have all been shown to affect the results 1,11,[15][16] . Further, researchers should take caution in choosing appropriate target stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, it is worth noting that head-mounted or desk-mounted eye-tracking technology can be used in combination with the touch-screen visual detection paradigm to capture exact fixations as participants search for target stimuli. Eye-tracking produces more than just latency to touch the screen-it also produces data on latency to first fixate the target, total fixations and fixation time to each distracter before first fixating the target, and latency from the first fixation to making a behavioral response 11 . By differentiating between these measures, researchers can disambiguate the potential mechanisms that drive rapid detection.…”

Section: Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults

LoBue

2014

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Investigators have long been interested in the human propensity for the rapid detection of threatening stimuli. However, until recently, research in this domain has focused almost exclusively on adult participants, completely ignoring the topic of threat detection over the course of development. One of the biggest reasons for the lack of developmental work in this area is likely the absence of a reliable paradigm that can measure perceptual biases for threat in children. To address this issue, we recently designed a modified visual search paradigm similar to the standard adult paradigm that is appropriate for studying threat detection in preschool-aged participants. Here we describe this new procedure. In the general paradigm, we present participants with matrices of color photographs, and ask them to find and touch a target on the screen. Latency to touch the target is recorded. Using a touch-screen monitor makes the procedure simple and easy, allowing us to collect data in participants ranging from 3 years of age to adults. Thus far, the paradigm has consistently shown that both adults and children detect threatening stimuli (e.g., snakes, spiders, angry/fearful faces) more quickly than neutral stimuli (e.g., flowers, mushrooms, happy/neutral faces). Altogether, this procedure provides an important new tool for researchers interested in studying the development of attentional biases for threat.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults

LoBue

2014

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“…This could echo the subcortical pathway involving the pulvinar, the amygdala, and the striatum, which may lead to a coarse but fast visual information processing 40, 41. Indeed, because of its evolutionary relevance, this preserved route may induce a preattentive and autonomic bias toward threatening stimuli like angry faces 42, 43. However, experimental data failed to fully support this “angry faces advantage” (whereby angry faces are detected more quickly than others).…”

Section: Facial Emotion Recognition In Pdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease: A review and new hypotheses

et al. 2018

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Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder classically characterized by motor symptoms. Among them, hypomimia affects facial expressiveness and social communication and has a highly negative impact on patients' and relatives' quality of life. Patients also frequently experience nonmotor symptoms, including emotional‐processing impairments, leading to difficulty in recognizing emotions from faces. Aside from its theoretical importance, understanding the disruption of facial emotion recognition in PD is crucial for improving quality of life for both patients and caregivers, as this impairment is associated with heightened interpersonal difficulties. However, studies assessing abilities in recognizing facial emotions in PD still report contradictory outcomes. The origins of this inconsistency are unclear, and several questions (regarding the role of dopamine replacement therapy or the possible consequences of hypomimia) remain unanswered. We therefore undertook a fresh review of relevant articles focusing on facial emotion recognition in PD to deepen current understanding of this nonmotor feature, exploring multiple significant potential confounding factors, both clinical and methodological, and discussing probable pathophysiological mechanisms. This led us to examine recent proposals about the role of basal ganglia‐based circuits in emotion and to consider the involvement of facial mimicry in this deficit from the perspective of embodied simulation theory. We believe our findings will inform clinical practice and increase fundamental knowledge, particularly in relation to potential embodied emotion impairment in PD. © 2018 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

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“…A number of previous studies on emotional modulation of eye-movement behavior found evidence for faster detection of emotional stimuli (e.g., Bannerman, Milders, de Gelder, & Sahraie, 2009;Bannerman, Milders, & Sahraiem, 2009;Kissler & Keil, 2008;LoBue, Matthews, Harvey, & Stark, 2014). For example, Bannerman, Milders, de Gelder, & showed a decrease in saccade latency when a saccade is directed to the location of a threatening stimulus relative to a nonthreatening stimulus.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…However, similar to the covert attention studies discussed before, most eye movement studies presented emotional stimuli that were always to some extent task relevant. For example, observers were instructed to saccade toward or away from the emotional stimulus (e.g., Bannerman, Milders, de Gelder, & Sahraie, 2009;Kissler & Keil, 2008;Nummenmaa, Hyönä, & Calvo, 2006) or to assess the valence, category or memory of presented pictures (Calvo & Lang, 2004;Humphrey et al, 2012;Lang et al, 1993;LoBue et al, 2014). Therefore, observers had to process and attend to the emotional stimulus in order to perform the task.…”

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confidence: 99%

Distracted by danger: Temporal and spatial dynamics of visual selection in the presence of threat

Mulckhuyse

Dalmaijer

2015

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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Threatening stimuli are known to influence attentional and visual processes in order to prioritize selection. For example, previous research showed faster detection of threatening relative to nonthreatening stimuli. This has led to the proposal that threatening stimuli are prioritized automatically via a rapid subcortical route. However, in most studies, the threatening stimulus is always to some extent task relevant. Therefore, it is still unclear if threatening stimuli are automatically prioritized by the visual system. We used the additional singleton paradigm with task-irrelevant fear-conditioned distractors (CS+ and CS-) and indexed the time course of eye movement behavior. The results demonstrate automatic prioritization of threat. First, mean latency of saccades directed to the neutral target was increased in the presence of a threatening (CS+) relative to a nonthreatening distractor (CS-), indicating exogenous attentional capture and delayed disengagement of covert attention. Second, more error saccades were directed to the threatening than to the nonthreatening distractor, indicating a modulation of automatically driven saccades. Nevertheless, cumulative distributions of the saccade latencies showed no modulation of threat for the fastest goal-driven saccades, and threat did not affect the latency of the error saccades to the distractors. Together these results suggest that threatening stimuli are automatically prioritized in attentional and visual selection but not via faster processing. Rather, we suggest that prioritization results from an enhanced representation of the threatening stimulus in the oculomotor system, which drives attentional and visual selection. The current findings are interpreted in terms of a neurobiological model of saccade programming.

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What accounts for the rapid detection of threat? Evidence for an advantage in perceptual and behavioral responding from eye movements.

Cited by 51 publications

References 52 publications

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults

Facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease: A review and new hypotheses

Distracted by danger: Temporal and spatial dynamics of visual selection in the presence of threat

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