Orienting of Attention to Threatening Facial Expressions Presented under Conditions of Restricted Awareness
Abstract
Three studies investigated whether individuals preferentially allocate attention to the spatial location of threatening faces presented outside awareness. Pairs of face stimuli were briefly displayed and masked in a modified version of the dot-probe task. Each face pair consisted of an emotional (threat or happy) and neutral face. The hypothesis that preattentive processing of threat results in attention being oriented towards its location was supported in Experiments 1 and 3. In both studies, this effect was most apparent in the left visual field, suggestive of right hemisphere involvement. However, in Experiment 2 where awareness of the faces was less restricted (i.e. marginal threshold conditions), preattentive capture of attention by threat was not evident. There was evidence from Experiment 3 that the tendency to orient attention towards masked threat faces was greater in high than low trait anxious individuals.
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The threshold for detection of backwardly masked stimuli is dependent on a number of factors, including the particular discrimination task used and individual differences.
“The threshold for the detection of backwardly masked stimuli has been shown to be dependent on a number of factors, including the particular discrimination task used and individual differences.”
From Short-term serotonergic but not noradrenergic antidepressant administration reduces attentional vigilance to threat in healthy volunteers (2009) · cites this paper as Mogg and Bradley (1999)
If stimuli are presented very close to awareness thresholds, the pre-attentive effects of masked stimuli may be reduced.
“Mogg and Bradley (1999) note that if stimuli are presented very close to awareness thresholds, the pre-attentive effects of masked stimuli may be reduced.”
From Short-term serotonergic but not noradrenergic antidepressant administration reduces attentional vigilance to threat in healthy volunteers (2009) · cites this paper as Mogg and Bradley (1999)
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“Our preliminary findings are of interest and highlight the need to replicate the study, possibly using alternative methods to measure avoidance, such as the Visual Probe Task (Mogg & Bradley, 1999) a visual probe paradigm assessing attentional bias (to reduce the problems of share method variance).”
ResultThe current state-of-the-art in pharmacotherapy for pediatric generalized anxiety disorder
Castagna, P. J., Farahdel, E., Potenza, M. N., & Crowley, M. J. (2023) · Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy · doi:10.1080/14656566.2023.2199921 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mogg, K., & Bradley, B. P.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Venue
- Cognition & Emotion
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1999-10
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 713-740
- ISSN
- 0269-9931 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0600
- OpenAlex
- W2126079704
- Cited by
- 458
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 17 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 3.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cognition & Emotion (publishedVersion)
- ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- attentional orienting, preattentive processing, attentional capture, masked stimuli, dot-probe task, right hemisphere, hemispheric lateralization, trait anxiety, facial expression perception
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