ARTICLE UPDATE - Visual search is not blind to emotion.

Gerritsen C, Frischen A, Blake A, Smilek D, Eastwood JD.

Perception and Psychophysics, 70, 1047-1059

A series of three visual search tasks revealed more efficient search for hostile than for peaceful faces among neutral face distractors. Given that this effect has been observed inconsistently in prior literature, meta-analytic methods were employed for evaluating data across three experiments in order to develop a more valid estimate of the potentially small effect size. Furthermore, in the present experiments, different emotional meanings were conditioned to identical faces across observers, thus eliminating confounds between the physical characteristics and the emotional valences of the face stimuli. On the basis of the present findings, we argue that the visual system is capable of determining a face's emotional valence before the face becomes the focus of attention, and that emotional valence can be used by the visual system to determine subsequent attention allocation. However, meta-analytic results indicate that emotional valence makes a relatively small contribution to search efficiency in the present search context.

ARTICLE UPDATE - Emotional priming of pop-out in visual search.

Lamy D, Amunts L, Bar-Haim Y.

Emotion, 8, 151-161

When searching for a discrepant target along a simple dimension such as color or shape, repetition of the target feature substantially speeds search, an effect known as feature priming of pop-out (V. Maljkovic and K. Nakayama, 1994). The authors present the first report of emotional priming of pop-out. Participants had to detect the face displaying a discrepant expression of emotion in an array of four face photographs. On each trial, the target when present was either a neutral face among emotional faces (angry in Experiment 1 or happy in Experiment 2), or an emotional face among neutral faces. Target detection was faster when the target displayed the same emotion on successive trials. This effect occurred for angry and for happy faces, not for neutral faces. It was completely abolished when faces were inverted instead of upright, suggesting that emotional categories rather than physical feature properties drive emotional priming of pop-out. The implications of the present findings for theoretical accounts of intertrial priming and for the face-in-the-crowd phenomenon are discussed.

ARTICLE UPDATE - The shape of threat: Simple geometric forms evoke rapid and sustained capture of attention.

Larson, Christine L.; Aronoff, Joel; Stearns, Jeffrey J.

Emotion, 7, 526-534

Previous work has indicated that simple geometric shapes underlying facial expressions are capable of conveying emotional meaning. Specifically, a series of studies found that a simple shape, a downward-pointing "V," which is similar to the geometric configuration of the face in angry expressions, is perceived as threatening. A parallel line of research has determined that threatening stimuli more readily capture attention. In five experiments, the authors sought to determine whether this preferential processing was also present for the simple geometric form of a downward-pointing "V." Using a visual search paradigm, across these experiments the authors found that, when embedded in a field of other shapes, downward-pointing V's were detected faster and, in some cases, more accurately than identical shapes pointing upward. These findings indicate that the meaning of threat can be conveyed rapidly with minimal stimulus detail. In addition, in some cases, during trials of homogeneous fields of stimuli, fields of downward-pointing V's led to slower response times, suggesting that this shape's ability to capture attention may also extend to difficulty in disengaging attention as well.

ARTICLE UPDATE - Threat sensitivity as assessed by automatic amygdala response to fearful faces predicts speed of visual search for facial expression.

Ohrmann P, Rauch AV, Bauer J, Kugel H, Arolt V, Heindel W, Suslow T.

Experimental Brain Research, in press

It has been argued that the amygdala represents an integral component of a vigilance system that is primarily involved in the perception of ambiguous stimuli of biological relevance. The present investigation was conducted to examine the relationship between automatic amygdala responsivity to fearful faces which may be interpreted as an index of trait-like threat sensitivity and spatial processing characteristics of facial emotions. During 3T fMRI scanning, pictures of human faces bearing fearful, angry, and happy expressions were presented to 20 healthy volunteers using a backward masking procedure based on neutral facial expressions. Subsequently, a computer-based face-in-the-crowd task using schematic face stimuli was administered. The neural response of the (right) amygdala to masked fearful faces correlated consistently with response speed to negative and neutral faces. Neither amygdala activation during the masked presentation of angry faces nor amygdala activation during the presentation of happy faces was correlated with any of the response latencies in the face-in-the-crowd task. Our results suggest that amygdala responsivity to masked facial expression is differentially related to the general visual search speed for facial expression. Neurobiologically defined threat sensitivity seems to represent an important determinant of visual scanning behaviour.

ARTICLE UPDATE - Automatic attention does not equal automatic fear: Preferential attention without implicit valence.

Purkis HM, Lipp OV.

Emotion, 7, 314-323

Theories of nonassociative fear acquisition hold that humans have an innate predisposition for some fears, such as fear of snakes and spiders. This predisposition may be mediated by an evolved fear module (Ohman & Mineka, 2001) that responds to basic perceptual features of threat stimuli by directing attention preferentially and generating an automatic fear response. Visual search and affective priming tasks were used to examine attentional processing and implicit evaluation of snake and spider pictures in participants with different explicit attitudes; controls (n = 25) and snake and spider experts (n = 23). Attentional processing and explicit evaluation were found to diverge; snakes and spiders were preferentially attended to by all participants; however, they were negative only for controls. Implicit evaluations of dangerous and nondangerous snakes and spiders, which have similar perceptual features, differed for expert participants, but not for controls. The authors suggest that although snakes and spiders are preferentially attended to, negative evaluations are not automatically elicited during this processing.

ARTICLE UPDATE - When Danger Lurks in the Background: Attentional Capture by Animal Fear-Relevant Distractors Is Specific and Selectively Enhanced by

Lipp, Ottmar V.; Waters, Allison M.

Emotion, 7, 192-200.

Across 2 experiments, a new experimental procedure was used to investigate attentional capture by animal fear-relevant stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N = 34), unselected participants were slower to detect a neutral target animal in the presence of a spider than a cockroach distractor and in the presence of a snake than a large lizard distractor. This result confirms that phylogenetically fear-relevant animals capture attention specifically and to a larger extent than do non-fear-relevant animals. In Experiment 2 (N = 86), detection of a neutral target animal was slowed more in the presence of a feared fear-relevant distractor (e.g., a snake for snake-fearful participants) than in presence of a not-feared fear-relevant distractor (e.g., a spider for snake-fearful participants). These results indicate preferential attentional capture that is specific to phylogenetically fear-relevant stimuli and is selectively enhanced in individuals who fear these animals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)