Fearful, but not angry, expressions diffuse attention to peripheral targets in an attentional blink paradigm.

Abstract

We previously demonstrated that, within a passive viewing task, fearful facial expressions implicitly facilitate memory for contextual events, while angry facial expressions do not (Davis et al., 2011). The current study sought to more directly address the implicit effect of fearful expressions on attention for contextual events within a classic attentional paradigm (i.e., the attentional blink) where memory is tested on a trial-by-trial basis, thereby providing subjects with a clear explicit attentional strategy. Neutral faces of a single gender were presented via rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) while bordered by four gray pound signs. Participants were told to watch for a gender change within the sequence (T1). Critically, the T1 face displayed either a neutral, fearful, or angry expression. Subjects were also told to detect a color change (i.e., gray to green; T2) at one of the four pound sign locations appearing after T1. This T2 color change could appear at one of six temporal positions. Participants were told to respond via button press immediately when a T2 target was presented. We found that fearful, compared to the neutral T1 faces, significantly increased target detection ability at four of the six temporal locations (all p’s < .05) while angry expressions showed no such effects. The results of this study suggest that fearful facial expressions can uniquely and implicitly enhance environmental monitoring above and beyond explicit attentional effects related to task instructions.

Peering into the brain to predict behavior: Peer-reported, but not self-reported, conscientiousness links threat-related amygdala activity to future problem drinking

“…Therefore, examining amygdala activity separately for ambiguous (i.e., fearful facial expression with directed eye gaze) relative to overt (i.e., angry facial expression with directed eye gaze) threat may result in different associations with personality assessed by both self- and peer-report. Moreover, compared to angry facial expressions, fearful facial expressions have different effects on skin conductance response (Soussignan et al, 2013), the startle reflex (Springer, Rosas, McGetrick, & Bowers, 2007), attention (Taylor & Whalen, 2014), and memory (Davis et al, 2011). For example, fearful faces increase detection of changes in peripheral stimuli (Taylor & Whalen, 2014), and memory is enhanced for neutral words presented after fearful, but not angry, faces (Davis et al, 2011), potentially because the source of threat is ambiguous when viewing fearful faces, necessitating greater attention to the surrounding context to determine the source of threat.…”

“…Moreover, compared to angry facial expressions, fearful facial expressions have different effects on skin conductance response (Soussignan et al, 2013), the startle reflex (Springer, Rosas, McGetrick, & Bowers, 2007), attention (Taylor & Whalen, 2014), and memory (Davis et al, 2011). For example, fearful faces increase detection of changes in peripheral stimuli (Taylor & Whalen, 2014), and memory is enhanced for neutral words presented after fearful, but not angry, faces (Davis et al, 2011), potentially because the source of threat is ambiguous when viewing fearful faces, necessitating greater attention to the surrounding context to determine the source of threat. These differences in the physiological and cognitive consequences of processing fearful compared to angry facial expressions could all contribute to the pattern of results observed here.…”

Understanding amygdala responsiveness to fearful expressions through the lens of psychopathy and altruism

“…Whalen and colleagues surmised that fearful facial expressions convey an inherent ambiguity about the nature of the threat that serves to heighten vigilance in the perceiver. Supporting this theory, viewing fearful but not angry expressions increases perceivers' sensitivity to stimuli in the visual periphery, indicative of heightened vigilance (Becker, 2009;Taylor and Whalen, 2014).…”

Caution follows fear: Evidence from hierarchical drift diffusion modelling.

“…Beyond the results of experiments that have manipulated spatial frequency information it is not clear how the ASAP account might explain the effects of emotional stimuli on RT and accuracy in experiments that have neither controlled for nor manipulated the presence of spatial frequency information. For facial expressions specifically, experiments have reported a diverse set of findings including: 1) reductions in target detection accuracy following expressions presented in rapid sequence of images (de Jong, Koster, van Wees, & Martens, 2010;Maratos, 2011;Peers & Lawrence, 2009;Sigurjónsdóttir, Sigurðardóttir, Björnsson, & Kristjánsson, 2015;Stebbins & Vanous, 2015;Vermeulen, Godefroid, & Mermillod, 2009) 2) increased target detection accuracy following fearful compared to angry expressions (Taylor & Whalen, 2014) 3) faster visual search for complex images following the presentation of a fearful face (Becker, 2009;Quinlan & Johnson, 2011) 4) slower RTs when fearful and other expressions are presented as task-irrelevant distractors (Berggren, Richards, Taylor, & Derakshan, 2013;Fox et al, 2002;Georgiou et al, 2005;Gupta, Hur, & Lavie, 2016;Hodsoll et al, 2011;Van Dillen & Koole, 2009) and 5) faster RTs for neutral probes following in the same location as a threat-related expression (e.g., Bradley, Mogg, Falla, & Hamilton, 1998). Although it is difficult to summarize the interpretation for each result (for reviews see; Mogg & Bradley, 2016;Yiend, 2010) a common interpretation of both RT and accuracy effects in these studies is that emotion biases the competition for limited resourcesa competition that emotion stimuli are, as the result of evolutionary pressures, predisposed to win or influence.…”

“…Intuitively though they might do. For example, fearful expressions are thought to warn of potential threat -a warning signal (Davis et al, 2011;Taylor & Whalen, 2014;Whalen, 1998) -therefore, responding cautiously by slowing down to avoid a mistake (trading speed for accuracy) is an intuitively plausible response to fearful expressions. For other emotional stimuli a speed-accuracy trade-off might lead to a different pattern.…”