Visual features drive attentional bias for threat

ABSTRACT

Past studies argued that the attentional capture by threats is hard to inhibit. When using threats as task-irrelevant stimuli, this effect can deteriorate performance on the primary task. Whether attentional capture is driven by affective information (threat) or visual features (shape) is still debated. Here we aimed to investigate the role of threat value and shape in modulating attentional resources by conducting two experiments (total N = 87). Participants engaged in a semantic vigilance task responding to masked words appearing at the centre of the screen while ignoring threat-relevant (threatening or visually similar but nonthreatening) and neutral control distractor images placed at different distances from the target word. We found no performance difference between participants exposed to threat-related stimuli via affective or shape features. Moreover, while performance decreased when a neutral distractor appeared close (compared to further away) to the target word, stimulus eccentricity had no effect when the distractor (irrespective of the conveying feature) was threat relevant. Our findings are in line with previous studies showing an initial capture of attention by threat-relevant information but that this negative effect is compensated by an increase in arousal. We conclude that even the visual features of a stimulus can modulate attention toward threats.

KEYWORDS:

• Signal suppression
• inhibition
• attentional bias towards threat
• general feature detection
• semantic vigilance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Author contribution

DTPS: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Visualization, Formal analysis, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing – Original draft, Reviewing and Editing; JB: Data curation, Visualization, Formal analysis, Writing – Reviewing and Editing; BK: Data curation, Visualization, Formal analysis, Writing – Reviewing and Editing; ANZS: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing – Original draft, Reviewing and Editing.

Notes

1 We thank Reviewer 2 for pointing this out and helping us to make this explicit.

Additional information

Funding

DTPS was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (Funding ID: 57588369) and the New National Excellence Program (ÚNKP-21-3) of the Ministry of Innovation and Technology. ANZS was supported by the ÚNKP-23-5 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, the OTKA PD 137588 and OTKA FK 146604 research grants, and the János Bolyai Research Scholarship provided by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. BLK and JB was supported by the OTKA K 143254 research grants of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office.