Potential threat attracts attention and interferes with voluntary saccades.
Abstract
Several studies have shown that threatening stimuli are prioritized by the visual system. In the present study we investigated whether a stimulus associated with a threat of electrical shock attracts attention and accordingly interferes with the execution of voluntary eye movements to other locations. In 2 experiments, we showed that when a fear-conditioned and a neutral stimulus were presented simultaneously, voluntary saccades were initiated faster toward fear-conditioned compared with neutral stimuli. Moreover, saccades often erroneously went to the location of threat even when a saccade to a different location was required. This implies an automatic shift of attention to a fear-conditioned stimulus that interferes with saccade execution. The same pattern of results was found for a neutral stimulus that was always presented together with the fear-conditioned stimulus and consequently itself became associated with threat. The current results indicate that threatening stimuli attract visual attention and subsequently bias saccade target selection in a reflexive fashion.
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The threat-signaling stimulus may have been attended because its physical salience was not carefully controlled or because it was not associated with any costs for task performance or any influence on the aversive experience.
“Similarly, the threat-signaling stimulus may have been attended because its physical salience was not carefully controlled (e.g., Öhman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001; Schmidt et al., 2015a) or because it was not associated with any costs for task performance or any influence on the aversive experience (e.g., Schmidt et al., 2015b).”
From Selection history: How reward modulates selectivity of visual attention. (2018) · cites this paper as Schmidt et al., 2015b
Both reward and negative valence may influence attentional selection via an at least partially overlapping mechanism.
“The similarities between the studies concerned with reward and those concerned with negative valence suggest that both factors may influence attentional selection via an, at least partially, overlapping mechanism (for a similar claim, see Belopolsky, 2015; Schmidt et al., 2015b).”
From Selection history: How reward modulates selectivity of visual attention. (2018) · cites this paper as Schmidt et al., 2015b
Cites
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BackgroundOur Eyes do Not Always Go Where we Want Them to Go: Capture of the Eyes by New Objects
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Selection history: How reward modulates selectivity of visual attention.
Failing, M., & Theeuwes, J. (2018) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-017-1380-y · Cited by 345 · see citing works
Self-citationPeople look at the object they fear: oculomotor capture by stimuli that signal threat
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Self-citationDistracted by danger: Temporal and spatial dynamics of visual selection in the presence of threat
Mulckhuyse, M., & Dalmaijer, E. S. (2016) · Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience · doi:10.3758/s13415-015-0391-2 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
- Authors
- Schmidt, L. J., Belopolsky, A. V., & Theeuwes, J.
- Venue
- Emotion
- Published
- 2015
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 329-338
- ISSN
- 1528-3542 (ISSN-L)
- 1931-1516
- OpenAlex
- W2103242011
- Cited by
- 63
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 2.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Emotion (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- VU Research Portal (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- ERC (ERC-2012-AdG-323413)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- fear conditioning, voluntary saccades, eye movements, attentional bias, threat detection, saccade target selection, electric shock
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Conditioning, Classical, Fear, Female, Humans, Male, Psychomotor Performance, Saccades, Young Adult
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