The spider does not always win the fight for attention: Disengagement from threat is modulated by goal set

Abstract

Stimulus-driven preferential attention to threat can be modulated by goal-driven attention. However, it remains unclear how this goal-driven modulation affects specific attentional components implied in threat interference. We hypothesise that goal-driven modulation most strongly impacts delayed disengagement from threat. A spatial cueing task was used that disentangles delayed disengagement from attentional capture by tightly manipulating the locus of attention at the time of target onset. Different top-down goals were induced by instructing participants to identify bird/fish targets (Experiment 1) or spider/cat targets (Experiment 2) among animal non-targets. Delayed disengagement from a non-target spider was observed only when the spider was part of the target set, not when it was task-irrelevant. This corroborates evidence that threat stimuli do not necessarily override goal-driven attentional control and that extended processing of threatening distractors is not obligatory.

Keywords:

• Threat
• Fear
• Attention
• Goal-driven
• Stimulus-driven

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DP110100460]

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DP110100460]

Notes

¹ We obtained similar results in subsequent studies with more detailed threat stimuli. Detailed statistical results are available from the first author. Slowed attentional disengagement from the cued spider distracter was not correlated with SPQ score (r(20) = .227, p = .336) or spider pictures’ fear and arousal ratings (fear: r(20) = .05, p = .836; arousal: r(20) = .156, p = .512).