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Abstract:
Abstract: The rapid detection of facial expressions of anger
has obvious adaptive value. It therefore seems reasonable to assume
that potentially threatening stimuli (e.g., angry faces) may be
particularly important contenders for the capture of the visual
attention system. The present study used an attentional cueing
paradigm in which facial expressions (angry, happy, neutral) were
used as cues. The goal was to investigate the relations between the
human attentional and affective systems. It was found that angry
faces had no advantage over happy or neutral faces in attracting
visual attention to themselves, even for people who were highly
state-anxious. Thus, negative valence (or threat) did not speed the
orientation of attention towards their location. In contrast, the
presence of negatively valenced cues had a strong impact on the
disengagement of visual attention. When an angry face was presented
in one location and a target was then presented in another
location, high state-anxious individuals took longer to detect the
target relative to when either a happy, or a neutral, face cue was
presented. It is concluded that threat-related stimuli affect
attentional dwell time and the disengagement component of
attention, rather than the shift component. These results suggest
that attentional capture may be immune to higher level cognitive
factors, but that the disengagement component of attention is
influenced by the valence of an exogenous cue.
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