Attentional suppression is delayed for threatening distractors

Burra, Nicolas; Pittet, Coralie; Barras, Caroline; Kerzel, Dirk

doi:10.1080/13506285.2019.1593272

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 73 publications

(96 reference statements)

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“…Finally, the lack of attentional bias to angry faces in the pixel task is also inconsistent with evidence of an early attentional bias to threatening faces or objects when the threatening stimulus was task-irrelevant (Burra et al, 2016(Burra et al, , 2017(Burra et al, , 2019. However, faces in the pixel task of the current experiment were irrelevant and entirely outside the focus of attention, whereas in previous studies, the targets were faces competing for selection with irrelevant facial expressions that were within the attentional focus.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 88%

Task demands modulate effects of threatening faces on early perceptual encoding

Burra¹,

Kerzel²

2019

Preprint

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The threat capture hypothesis states that threatening stimuli are automatically processed with higher priority than non-threatening stimuli, irrespective of the task. We evaluated the threat capture hypothesis with respect to the early perceptual stages of face processing. We focused on an electrophysiological marker of face processing (the lateralized N170) in response to neutral, happy, and angry facial expressions displayed in competition with a non-face stimulus (a house). We evaluated how effects of facial expression on the lateralized N170 were modulated by task demands. In one task, participants were required to identify the gender of the face, which made the face task-relevant and entailed structural encoding of the face stimulus. In another task, participants identified the location of a missing pixel in the fixation cross, which made the face task-irrelevant and placed it outside the focus of attention. When faces were relevant, the lateralized N170 to angry faces was enhanced compared to happy and neutral faces. When faces were irrelevant, facial expression had no effect. These results reveal the critical role of task demands on the preference for threatening faces, indicating that top-down, voluntary processing modulates the prioritization of threat.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 88%

Task demands modulate effects of threatening faces on early perceptual encoding

Burra¹,

Kerzel²

2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Finally, the lack of attentional bias to angry faces in the pixel task is also inconsistent with evidence of an early attentional bias to threatening faces or objects when the threatening stimulus was task-irrelevant (Burra et al, 2016, 2017, 2019). However, faces in the pixel task of the current experiment were irrelevant and entirely outside the focus of attention, whereas in previous studies, the targets were faces competing for selection with irrelevant facial expressions that were within the attentional focus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Task Demands Modulate Effects of Threatening Faces on Early Perceptual Encoding

Burra

Kerzel

2019

Front. Psychol.

Self Cite

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The threat capture hypothesis states that threatening stimuli are automatically processed with higher priority than non-threatening stimuli, irrespective of observer intentions or focus of attention. We evaluated the threat capture hypothesis with respect to the early perceptual stages of face processing. We focused on an electrophysiological marker of face processing (the lateralized N170) in response to neutral, happy, and angry facial expressions displayed in competition with a non-face stimulus (a house). We evaluated how effects of facial expression on the lateralized N170 were modulated by task demands. In the pixel task, participants were required to identify the gender of the face, which made the face task-relevant and entailed structural encoding of the face stimulus. In the pixel task, participants identified the location of a missing pixel in the fixation cross, which made the face task-irrelevant and placed it outside the focus of attention. When faces were relevant, the lateralized N170 to angry faces was enhanced compared to happy and neutral faces. When faces were irrelevant, facial expression had no effect. These results reveal the critical role of task demands on the preference for threatening faces, indicating that top-down, voluntary processing modulates the prioritization of threat.

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“…This seems to be in accordance with the pattern that the attentional biases toward threat framework suggests; specifically, that an attentional capture by the threat is followed by a delayed disengagement, ultimately resulting in a hypervigilance-avoidance behavior. Although the hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis had been initially proposed for phobic populations (Mogg et al, 2004), it has also been shown in nonfearful participants (Berdica et al, 2018; Burra et al, 2019; Trujillo et al, 2021). A recent study (Liesefeld et al, 2017) using salient task-irrelevant distractors (although not emotionally charged ones) proposed a chain of attentional enhancement and suppression mechanisms based on EEG data.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Task-irrelevant threatening information is harder to ignore than other valences.

Zsidó¹,

Bali²,

Kocsor³

et al. 2023

Emotion

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Emotionally salient objects activate the survival circuits of the brain and are given priority in cognitive processing, even at the cost of inhibiting ongoing activities. These circuits arouse and prepare the organism to take swift action when needed. Previous studies have suggested, however, that not all emotional dimensions are equally prioritized. Threatening stimuli may have greater prominence than other emotional categories. Thus, we sought to compare the effects that stimuli of varying emotions would have on orienting and executive attentional processing. We performed two experiments to broaden our understanding of the attentional consequences of threats through the monitoring of participants' eye movements. Participants were exposed to emotionally charged (threatening, nonthreatening negative, positive) and neutral pictures as task-irrelevant distractors while performing a primary visual search task (under conditions of varying cognitive load). Behavioural results showed that participants found the first target number more slowly when the distractor image was threatening, but overall task completion times were actually speeded in this condition (relative to other valences). Further, participants fixated on threatening distractor images earlier and observed them longer than other valences. Results were more pronounced when the primary task was harder. These biases were not evident for positive and nonthreatening images, presumably because participants were able to ignore them, providing further support to the contention that threatening stimuli hold greater prominence than other emotional categories. Together, our results are in line with previous studies suggesting that the processing of threatening stimuli is speeded, potentially because of differences in the brain circuits involved.

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Attentional suppression is delayed for threatening distractors

Cited by 15 publications

References 73 publications

Task demands modulate effects of threatening faces on early perceptual encoding

Task demands modulate effects of threatening faces on early perceptual encoding

Task Demands Modulate Effects of Threatening Faces on Early Perceptual Encoding

Task-irrelevant threatening information is harder to ignore than other valences.

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