A comprehensive look at phobic fear in inhibition of return: Phobia-related spiders as cues and targets

Bound to a spider without its web: Task-type modulates the retrieval of affective information in subsequent responses

Action control theories assume that upon responding to a stimulus response and stimulus features are integrated into a short episodic memory trace; repeating any component spurs on retrieval, affecting subsequent performance. The resulting so-called "binding effects" are reliably observed in discrimination tasks. In contrast, in localization performance, these effects are absent and only inhibition of return (IOR) emerges - a location change benefit. Affective information has been found to modulate binding effects; yet a modulation of IOR has led to mixed results, with many finding no influence at all. In the current study, participants discriminated letters (Experiment 1) or localized dots (Experiment 2) on a touchpad in prime-probe sequences. During the prime display two images - one with fruits and one with a spider - appeared, one of which spatially congruent with the to-be-touched area. In the discrimination task, previously touching a spider compared to a fruit slowed down response repetitions. In contrast, the localization task only showed IOR. This suggests that task-irrelevant valence is integrated with the response and affects subsequent responses due to retrieval. However, this is not ubiquitous but depends on task type. The results shed further light on the impact of affective information on actions.

Spatial Inhibition of Return Affected by Self-Prioritization Effect in Three-Dimensional Space

Spatial inhibition of return (IOR) being affected by the self-prioritization effect (SPE) in a two-dimensional plane has been well documented. However, it remains unknown how the spatial IOR interacts with the SPE in three-dimensional (3D) space. By constructing a virtual 3D environment, Posner's classically two-dimensional cue-target paradigm was applied to a 3D space. Participants first associated labels for themselves, their best friends, and strangers with geometric shapes in a shape-label matching task, then performed Experiment 1 (referential information appeared as the cue label) and Experiment 2 (referential information appeared as the target label) to investigate whether the IOR effect could be influenced by the SPE in 3D space. This study showed that when the cue was temporarily established with a self-referential shape and appeared in far space, the IOR effect was the smallest. When the target was temporarily established with a self-referential shape and appeared in near space, the IOR effect disappeared. This study suggests that the IOR effect was affected by the SPE when attention was oriented or reoriented in 3D space and that the IOR effect disappeared or decreased when affected by the SPE in 3D space.

The priority of goal-relevant information and evolutionarily threatening information in early attention processing:Evidence from behavioral and ERP study

Previous studies have demonstrated that evolutionarily threatening information and goal-relevant information can both capture attention. However, some studies have suggested that goal-relevant information is prioritized over evolutionarily threatening information, while some studies have shown the opposite conclusion. The aim of the present study was to investigate the attention advantage by presenting evolutionarily threatening information and goal-relevant information simultaneously. Three conditions were presented in this study: evolutionarily threatening information + an irrelevant stimulus, goal-relevant information + an irrelevant stimulus, and evolutionarily threatening information + goal-relevant information. The behavioral results showed no attentional bias toward evolutionarily threatening information in the two conditions including evolutionarily threatening information; in the two conditions including goal-relevant information, participants showed attentional bias toward goal-relevant information in both. However, the ERP results showed that in the two conditions including evolutionarily threatening information, a significantly stronger N2pc response was seen for evolutionarily threatening information than for the other types of pictures, and goal-relevant information produced a significantly stronger N2pc response than that for an irrelevant stimulus. The abovementioned results indicated that in the earlier stage of attention, both evolutionarily threatening information and goal-relevant information have attention processing advantages over irrelevant stimuli; furthermore, attention was captured by evolutionarily threatening information faster than it was by goal-relevant information.

Do Emotional Faces Affect Inhibition of Return? An ERP Study

Inhibition of Return (IOR) refers to an individual's slowed localization or discrimination performance for targets that appear in previously cued versus uncued location after a relatively long delay after cue (∼300-500 ms). The current study adopted a cue-target paradigm and used behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to investigate whether IOR would be modulated by emotional faces during an emotion recognition task. For reaction time measure, we found IOR effect and the magnitude of IOR effect were comparable for fearful face target and neutral face target. For ERP measures, valid cues were associated with smaller P1 and larger N1 waveform than that for invalid cues. Fearful faces were associated with a larger N170 than neutral faces. The onset latency of the stimulus-locked lateralised readiness potential (LRP) in the valid cue condition was longer than that in the invalid cue condition, while there was no significant difference on the onset latency of the response-locked LRP between the valid cue and invalid cue condition. These results support the notion that, regardless the emotion component of the stimulus, the inhibitory bias of attention to previous visited location before response contributes to the IOR.

Increased inhibition following negative cues: A possible role for enhanced processing

Based on findings showing that attention is captured by aversive stimuli, previous studies have hypothesized that inhibition of return (IOR) is reduced at spatial locations previously occupied by threat cues. Yet evidence for this view is limited: Only a few studies have demonstrated a reduced degree of IOR following threat cues, while most have not found differences in IOR between aversive and neutral cues. In contrast to previous studies that used the spatial cuing paradigm and for the most part employed mild negative stimuli as cues, we examined the influence of highly aversive, colored and complex pictures of real life situations. As opposed to the stimuli used in previous studies, these pictures are thought to result in enhanced processing as well as in specific enhancement for threat pictures in comparison to neutral ones. Based on evidence indicating that enhanced processing of spatial cues results in increased IOR, we hypothesized that the negative picture cues employed in the present study would yield increased IOR. This hypothesis was confirmed in two experiments. We suggest that the enhancement of IOR following highly threatening cues may be related to efficient spatial orienting of attention in response to stimuli that are important from an evolutionary point of view. The results are discussed in the context of neurocognitive mechanisms that may underlie the modulation of IOR by emotional information.

Threat vs. Threat: Attention to Fear-Related Animals and Threatening Faces

It is generally thought to be adaptive that fear relevant stimuli in the environment can capture and hold our attention; and in psychopathology attentional allocation is thought to be cue-specific. Such hypervigilance toward threatening cues or difficulty to disengage attention from threat has been demonstrated for a variety of stimuli, for example, toward evolutionary prepared animals or toward socially relevant facial expressions. Usually, specific stimuli have been examined in individuals with particular fears (e.g., animals in animal fearful and faces in socially fearful participants). However, different kinds of stimuli are rarely examined in one study. Thus, it is unknown how different categories of threatening stimuli compete for attention and how specific kinds of fears modulate these attentional processes. In this study, we used a free viewing paradigm: pairs of pictures with threat-related content (spiders or angry faces) or neutral content (butterflies or neutral faces) were presented side by side (i.e., spiders and angry faces, angry and neutral faces, spiders and butterflies, butterflies and neutral faces). Eye-movements were recorded while spider fearful, socially anxious, or non-anxious participants viewed the picture pairs. Results generally replicate the finding that unpleasant pictures more effectively capture attention in the beginning of a trial compared to neutral pictures. This effect was more pronounced in spider fearful participants: the higher the fear the quicker they were in looking at spiders. This was not the case for high socially anxious participants and pictures of angry faces. Interestingly, when presented next to each other, there was no preference in initial orientation for either spiders or angry faces. However, neutral faces were looked at more quickly than butterflies. Regarding sustained attention, we found no general preference for unpleasant pictures compared to neutral pictures.