Anxiety modulates the effects of emotion and attention on early vision.
At attended locations emotion and attention interact to benefit contrast sensitivity, a basic visual dimension. Whether there are associated costs at unattended locations is unknown. Furthermore, emotion and attention affect response time, and anxiety modulates these effects. We investigated how trait-anxiety influences the interaction of emotion and attention on contrast sensitivity. On each trial, non-predictive pre-cues (neutral or fearful faces) directed exogenous attention to four contrast-varying, tilted stimuli (Gabor patches). Attention was cued toward the target (valid), a distracter (invalid), or distributed over all locations. Observers discriminated target orientation, and completed self-report measures of anxiety. Effects of fearful expressions were mediated by trait anxiety. Only high-trait-anxious individuals showed decreased target contrast sensitivity after attention was diverted to a distracter by a fearful cue, and anxiety score correlated with degree of impairment across participants. This indicates that increasing anxiety exacerbates threat-related attentional costs to visual perception, hampering processing at non-threat-related locations.
Psychology Department, University of California at Berkeley, 3210 Tolman Hall #1650, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. emmafern@berkeley.edu
Emma
E
Ferneyhough
Min K
MK
Kim
Elizabeth A
EA
Phelps
Marisa
M
Carrasco
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety; D001288:Attention; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D013694:Temperament