Superior detection of threat‐relevant stimuli in infancy

LoBue, Vanessa; DeLoache, Judy S.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00872.x

Cited by 193 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…These results are consistent with previous studies showing that humans (including infants, children, and adults) are quicker to detect dangerous compared with nondangerous animals (Blanchette, 2006;Brosch and Sharma, 2005;Flykt, 2005;DeLoache, 2008, 2010;Öhman et al, 2001;Penkunas and Coss, 2013a,b;Rosa et al, 2011;Waters et al, 2004). Unlike these previous studies (but see LoBue and DeLoache, 2010;Rosa et al, 2011), we quantified detection based on eye movements as well as manual responses (a key press). Eye movements are a more ecologically valid method of assessing attention than manual responses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dangerous Animals Capture and Maintain Attention in Humans

et al. 2014

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Predation is a major source of natural selection on primates and may have shaped attentional processes that allow primates to rapidly detect dangerous animals. Because ancestral humans were subjected to predation, a process that continues at very low frequencies, we examined the visual processes by which men and women detect dangerous animals (snakes and lions). We recorded the eye movements of participants as they detected images of a dangerous animal (target) among arrays of nondangerous animals (distractors) as well as detected images of a nondangerous animal (target) among arrays of dangerous animals (distractors). We found that participants were quicker to locate targets when the targets were dangerous animals compared with nondangerous animals, even when spatial frequency and luminance were controlled. The participants were slower to locate nondangerous targets because they spent more time looking at dangerous distractors, a process known as delayed disengagement, and looked at a larger number of dangerous distractors. These results indicate that dangerous animals capture and maintain attention in humans, suggesting that historical predation has shaped some facets of visual orienting and its underlying neural architecture in modern humans.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dangerous Animals Capture and Maintain Attention in Humans

et al. 2014

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“…The position of primates as prey of snakes has, in fact, been argued to have constituted strong selection favoring the evolution of the ability to detect snakes quickly as a means of avoiding them, beginning with the earliest primates (2,5). Across primate species, ages, and (human) cultures, snakes are indeed detected visually more quickly than innocuous stimuli, even in cluttered scenes (6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11). Physiological responses reveal that humans are also able to detect snakes visually even before becoming consciously aware of them (12).…”

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confidence: 99%

Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes

Isbell

Matsumoto

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

218

157

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Snakes and their relationships with humans and other primates have attracted broad attention from multiple fields of study, but not, surprisingly, from neuroscience, despite the involvement of the visual system and strong behavioral and physiological evidence that humans and other primates can detect snakes faster than innocuous objects. Here, we report the existence of neurons in the primate medial and dorsolateral pulvinar that respond selectively to visual images of snakes. Compared with three other categories of stimuli (monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometrical shapes), snakes elicited the strongest, fastest responses, and the responses were not reduced by low spatial filtering. These findings integrate neuroscience with evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, herpetology, and primatology by identifying a neurobiological basis for primates' heightened visual sensitivity to snakes, and adding a crucial component to the growing evolutionary perspective that snakes have long shaped our primate lineage.evolution | Snake Detection Theory | visual responses | low-pass filtered images S nakes have long been of interest to us above and beyond the attention we give to other wild animals. The attributes of snakes and our relationships with them have been topics of discussion in fields as disparate as religion, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, primatology, and herpetology (1, 2). Ochre and eggshells dated to as early as 75,000 y ago and found with cross-hatched and ladder-shaped lines (3, 4) resemble the dorsal and ventral scale patterns of snakes. As the only natural objects with those characteristics, snakes may have been among the first models used in representational imagery created by modern humans. Our interest in snakes may have originated much further back in time; our primate lineage has had a long and complex evolutionary history with snakes as competitors, predators, and prey (1). The position of primates as prey of snakes has, in fact, been argued to have constituted strong selection favoring the evolution of the ability to detect snakes quickly as a means of avoiding them, beginning with the earliest primates (2, 5). Across primate species, ages, and (human) cultures, snakes are indeed detected visually more quickly than innocuous stimuli, even in cluttered scenes (6-11). Physiological responses reveal that humans are also able to detect snakes visually even before becoming consciously aware of them (12). Although the visual system must be involved in the preferential ability to detect snakes rapidly and preconsciously or automatically, the neurological basis for this ability has not yet been elucidated, perhaps because an evolutionary perspective is rarely incorporated in neuroscientific studies. Our study helps to fill this interdisciplinary gap by investigating the responses of neurons to snakes and other natural stimuli that may have acted as selective pressures on primates in the past.Here, we identify a mechanism for the visual system's involvement in rapid snake detection by measurin...

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“…This can be seen in research and theorizing in social-cognitive development [e.g., Tomasello, 2016], brain development [e.g., Giedd, 2012], tool use [e.g., Bjorklund & Gardiner, 2011], development of emotions [LoBue & DeLoache, 2010], object representation [e.g., Spelke & Kinzler, 2007], sex differences [e.g., Geary, 2010], and research into the role of early experience on later development [e.g., Ellis et al, 2012], among others. Rather than reflecting a misrepresentation of true DS theory, EDP is a coherent, integrative discipline that is on its way to providing for developmental psychology a metatheory -a common set of broad, overarching assumptions and principles -that, if adopted, can unite and guide research in developmental psychology and better integrate developmental psychology with the life sciences [Bjorklund, 1997;Ploeger, van der Maas, & Raijmakers, 2008].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prepared Is Not Preformed: Commentary on Witherington and Lickliter

Bjorklund¹

2016

Human Development

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Superior detection of threat‐relevant stimuli in infancy

Cited by 193 publications

References 41 publications

Dangerous Animals Capture and Maintain Attention in Humans

Dangerous Animals Capture and Maintain Attention in Humans

Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes

Prepared Is Not Preformed: Commentary on Witherington and Lickliter

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