Threat-induced prosocial behavior: enhanced exogenous attention to protect others from harm.

As social animals, humans tend to voluntarily engage in pro-social behavior to prevent harm to others. However, to what extent prosocial behavior can be reflected at the level of less voluntary cognitive processes remains unclear. Here, we examined how threat to others modulates exogenous attention.

Emotional modulation of gaze cueing does not depend on a global perceptual processing strategy.

Research on emotional modulation of attention in gaze cueing has resulted in contradictory findings. Some studies found larger gaze cueing effects (GCEs) in response to a fearful gaze cue, whereas others did not. A recent study explained this discrepancy within a cognitive resource account, in which perceptual demands of the task promote a bias toward either a local (discrimination task) or global (localization task) processing strategy.

Unconscious processing of coarse visual information during anticipatory threat.

Rapid detection of threats has been proposed to rely on automatic processing of their coarse visual features. However, it remains unclear whether such a mechanism is restricted to detection of threat cues, or whether it reflects a broader sensitivity to even neutral coarse visual information features during states of threat. We used a backward masking task in which participants discriminated the orientation of subliminally presented low (3 cpd) and high (6 cpd) spatial frequency gratings, under threat (of shock) and safe conditions.

The influence of emotional stimuli on the oculomotor system: A review of the literature.

In the past decade, more and more research has been investigating oculomotor behavior in relation to attentional selection of emotional stimuli. Whereas previous research on covert emotional attention demonstrates contradictory results, research on overt attention clearly shows the influence of emotional stimuli on attentional selection. The current review highlights studies that have used eye-movement behavior as the primary outcome measure in healthy populations and focusses on the evidence that emotional stimuli-in particular, threatening stimuli-affect temporal and spatial dynamics of oculomotor programming.

Right posterior parietal cortex is involved in disengaging from threat: a 1-Hz rTMS study.

The right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is implicated in spatial attention, but its specific role in emotional spatial attention remains unclear. In this study, we combined inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with a fear-conditioning paradigm to test the role of the right PPC in attentional control of task-irrelevant threatening distractors. In a sham-controlled within-subject design, 1-Hz repetitive TMS was applied to the left and right PPC after which participants performed a visual search task with a distractor that was either associated with a loud noise burst (threat) or not (non-threat).

Distracted by danger: Temporal and spatial dynamics of visual selection in the presence of threat.

Threatening stimuli are known to influence attentional and visual processes in order to prioritize selection. For example, previous research showed faster detection of threatening relative to nonthreatening stimuli. This has led to the proposal that threatening stimuli are prioritized automatically via a rapid subcortical route.

Awareness of distractors is necessary to generate a strategy to avoid responding to them: A commentary on Lin and Murray (2015).

Lin and Murray published in the 2015 January Issue of Psychological Science a study that claims to have made the surprising discovery of unconscious effects that are stronger than equivalent conscious effects. Specifically, the authors claim to have uncovered dissociable components of aware and unaware orienting and inhibition in exogenous cueing. They suggest an awareness-dependent location-based inhibition mechanism referred to as a negative attentional aftereffect.

Disentangling attention from action in the emotional spatial cueing task.

In the emotional spatial cueing task, a peripheral cue--either emotional or non-emotional--is presented before target onset. A stronger cue validity effect with an emotional relative to a non-emotional cue (i.e.

Conditioned fear modulates visual selection.

Eye movements reflect the dynamic interplay between top-down- and bottom-up-driven processes. For example, when we voluntarily move our eyes across the visual field, salient visual stimuli in the environment may capture our attention, our eyes, or modulate the trajectory of an eye movement. Previous research has shown that the behavioral relevance of a salient stimulus modulates these processes.

Enhanced visual perception with occipital transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the occipital pole can produce an illusory percept of a light flash (or 'phosphene'), suggesting an excitatory effect. Whereas previous reported effects produced by single-pulse occipital pole TMS are typically disruptive, here we report the first demonstration of a location-specific facilitatory effect on visual perception in humans. Observers performed a spatial cueing orientation discrimination task.

Distribution of attention modulates salience signals in early visual cortex.

Previous research has shown that the extent to which people spread attention across the visual field plays a crucial role in visual selection and the occurrence of bottom-up driven attentional capture. Consistent with previous findings, we show that when attention was diffusely distributed across the visual field while searching for a shape singleton, an irrelevant salient color singleton captured attention. However, while using the very same displays and task, no capture was observed when observers initially focused their attention at the center of the display.

Unconscious attentional orienting to exogenous cues: A review of the literature.

The present paper reviews research that focuses on the dissociation between bottom-up attention and consciousness. In particular, we focus on studies investigating spatial exogenous orienting in the absence of awareness. We discuss studies that use peripheral masked onset cues and studies that use gaze cueing.

Unconscious cueing effects in saccadic eye movements--facilitation and inhibition in temporal and nasal hemifield.

The current study investigated whether subliminal spatial cues can affect the oculomotor system. In addition, we performed the experiment under monocular viewing conditions. By limiting participants to monocular viewing conditions, we can examine behavioral temporal-nasal hemifield asymmetries.

Early and late modulation of saccade deviations by target distractor similarity.

In this study, we investigated the time course of oculomotor competition between bottom-up and top-down selection processes using saccade trajectory deviations as a dependent measure. We used a paradigm in which we manipulated saccade latency by offsetting the fixation point at different time points relative to target onset. In experiment 1, observers made a saccade to a filled colored circle while another irrelevant distractor circle was presented.

Eye cannot see it: the interference of subliminal distractors on saccade metrics.

The present study investigated whether subliminal (unconsciously perceived) visual information influences eye movement metrics, like saccade trajectories and endpoints. Participants made eye movements upwards and downwards while a subliminal distractor was presented in the periphery. Results showed that the subliminal distractor interfered with the execution of an eye movement, although the effects were smaller compared to a control experiment in which the distractor was presented supraliminal.

Capture of the eyes by relevant and irrelevant onsets.

During early visual processing the eyes can be captured by salient visual information in the environment. Whether a salient stimulus captures the eyes in a purely automatic, bottom-up fashion or whether capture is contingent on task demands is still under debate. In the first experiment, we manipulated the relevance of a salient onset distractor.

Faster, more intense! The relation between electrophysiological reflections of attentional orienting, sensory gain control, and speed of responding.

Selective visual attention is thought to facilitate goal-directed behavior by biasing the system in advance to favor certain stimuli over others, resulting in their selective processing. The aim of the present study was to gain more insight into the link between control processes that induce a spatial attention bias, target selection processes and speed of responding. To this end, participants performed a spatial cueing task while their brain activity was recorded using EEG.