ARTICLE UPDATE - Signals for threat modulate attentional capture and holding: Fear‐conditioning and extinction during the exogenous cueing task

Ernst H. W. Koster , Geert Crombez , Stefaan Van Damme , Bruno Verschuere , Jan De Houwer

Cognition & Emotion, 18, 771-780.

This experiment investigated whether acquired signals for threat capture and hold visual attention. Cues that were presented in an exogenous attentional cueing task were emotionally modulated using a fear‐conditioning paradigm. During acquisition, undergraduate students (55 women, 11 men) learned that one cue (CS+) of the attentional task was a signal for an aversive white noise burst (UCS, 100 dBA) and that another cue (CS−) signalled its nonoccurrence. In a subsequent extinction phase, no UCSs were presented anymore during the cueing task. Results indicated that during acquisition, the CS+ cues strongly captured and held visual attention in comparison with the CS− cues, and that these effects diminished during extinction.