Trait anxiety and perceptual load as determinants of emotion processing in a fear conditioning paradigm.

Abstract

The impact of trait anxiety and perceptual load on selective attention was examined in a fear conditioning paradigm. A fear-conditioned angry face (CS+), an unconditioned angry face (CS−), or an unconditioned face with a neutral or happy expression were used in distractor interference and attentional probe tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants classified centrally presented letters under two conditions of perceptual load. When perceptual load was high, distractors had no effect on selective attention, even with aversive conditioning. However, when perceptual load was low, strong response interference effects for CS+ face distractors were found for low trait-anxious participants. Across both experiments, this enhanced distractor interference reversed to strong facilitation effects for those reporting high trait anxiety. Thus, high trait-anxious participants were faster, rather than slower, when ignoring CS+ distractors. Using an attentional probe task in Experiment 3, it was found that fear conditioning resulted in strong attentional avoidance in a high trait-anxious group, which contrasted with enhanced vigilance in a low trait-anxious group. These results demonstrate that the impact of fear conditioning on attention is modulated by individual variation in trait anxiety when perceptual load is low. Fear conditioning elicits an avoidance of threat-relevant stimuli in high trait-anxious participants.

Personality, Stress, and Intuition: Emotion Regulation Abilities Moderate the Effect of Stress-Dependent Cortisol Increase on Coherence Judgments

“…For example, it has been found that social exclusion is not equally painful and inclusion not equally pleasant for different individuals (Seidel et al, 2013). Furthermore, it has been shown that affective manipulations such as fear conditioning do not necessarily show adverse effects on cognitive performance but that trait anxiety plays a pivotal role (Fox et al, 2012). Our finding along with these findings clearly demonstrate the relevance of individual differences in whether situational affordances or stressors influence performance and in which way.…”

Can automaticity be verified utilizing a perceptual load manipulation?

“…Many studies have manipulated load to test whether the perception of unique stimuli like emotional and threatrelated stimuli (e.g., Bishop et al, 2007;Fox et al, 2012;Norberg, Peira, & Wiens, 2010;Okon-Singer et al, 2007) or objects belonging to a person's field of expertise (e.g., Ro et al, 2009) require attention. These studies have utilized typical load manipulations but have used unique stimuli as distractors.…”

“…After all, in contrast to several findings that support the idea that perceptual load manipulation may modulate attentional capture by motion and other types of dynamic discontinuity (i.e., abrupt onsets) (e.g., Cosman & Vecera, 2009Rees, Frith, & Lavie, 1997), there is a growing body of literature that proposes that perceptual load cannot modulate salient distractors (e.g., Biggs & Gibson, 2010;Cosman & Vecera, 2010b;Eltiti et al, 2005), and a large variety of studies that generally propose that dynamic discontinuity (i.e., motion) elicits involuntary shifts of attention (e.g., Al-Aidroos, Guo, & Pratt, 2010;Müller & Rabbitt, 1989;Von Mühlenen & Lleras, 2007). In similar vein, in the study of Ro et al (2009), peripheral musical instruments may capture more attention from musician than from non-musician participants, and in a variety of studies (e.g., Bishop et al, 2007;Fox et al, 2012;Norberg et al, 2010;Okon-Singer et al, 2007), emotional stimuli and faces may attract more attention than letter stimuli.…”

“…Currently, there is a growing body of research which manipulates perceptual load, not to test the predictions of load theory but rather to test whether specific processing is Bautomatic^(i.e., occurs without attention; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977) (e.g., Bishop, Jenkins, & Lawrence, 2007;Catmur, 2016;Fox, Yates, & Ashwin, 2012;Lavie, Ro, & Russell, 2003;Okon-Singer, Tzelgov, & Henik, 2007;Ro, Friggel, & Lavie, 2009). The premise of these studies is that in high-load conditions attention is exhausted by the search for the target among neutral items, thus any interference by the distractor is an indication of automatic processing.…”

Conceptual and methodological concerns in the theory of perceptual load

“…Several studies have manipulated load, not in order to test the predictions of load theory, but rather to test whether perception of faces (e.g., Lavie et al, 2003; Reddy and Wilken, 2004) or emotional stimuli (e.g., Bishop et al, 2007; Okon-Singer et al, 2007; Fox et al, 2012) requires attention. These studies have utilized typical load manipulations, but with faces or emotional stimuli used as distractors.…”