Self-relevant facial threat attracts peripheral attention

Abstract

Threat-relevance theory suggests that gaze direction determines the self-relevance of facial threats. Indeed, angry eye-contact is a more relevant threat compared to its counterpart with averted gaze. Similarly, fearful eye-contact is not a threat to the observer, but averted fearful gaze can signal a relevant threat nearby. Following evidence that amygdala-reactivity to self-relevant threat depends on coarse visual processing, we investigate whether self-relevant threat attracts attention due to processing of low spatial frequency information via peripheral vision. Furthermore, we aim to provide behavioral relevance to this mechanism by investigating whether the psychopathic trait fearless-dominance promotes attention to self-relevant anger. Across three studies (N = 12, 31 and 36), we find that, during visual-search for emotional faces, less gaze-fixations are needed to find facial fear and anger when they are self-relevant. Self-relevance, however, does not promote peripheral identification of fear and anger in a signal-detection experiment. Together, this confirms that self-relevant facial threats indeed attract peripheral-attention. Moreover, image-analysis suggests that this is due to their low spatial-frequency content. Lastly, peripheral-attention to angry eye-contact is indeed more pronounced in relation to the psychopathic trait fearless-dominance, while diminished in relation to the psychopathic trait impulsive-antisociality, which provides preliminary behavioral relevance to this mechanism.

Keywords: Fearless dominance; Image statistics; Impulsive antisociality; Psychopathy; Response modulation theory; Visual search.

Fig. 1

(A) Example of a trial in the visual search task with 7 distractors. (B) Boxplots of raw reaction time data from Study 1. (C) Search-slopes show that self-relevant threats are found more efficiently whereas (D) search-intercepts indicate that fearful targets are more easily identified. Values represent estimated marginal means (EMMs) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Fig. 2

Visual search results Study 2 (left) and Study 3 (right). (A&G) Boxplots of raw reaction time data. (B&H) Search-slopes show that self-relevant threats (anger/direct gaze and fear/averted gaze) are found more efficiently, which is due to (D&J) less fixations needed to reach the target and not because of (E&K) average dwell-times on the distractors. (C&I) Search-intercepts suggest that fearful targets are more easily identified, which is indeed due to (F&L) faster target identification times. Values represent estimated marginal means (EMMs) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Fig. 3

(A) D-prime values for the foveal signal detection task showing that detection sensitivity is higher for fearful compared to angry targets. (B) D-prime values for the peripheral signal detection task showing no differences for emotion and self-relevance. (C-F) Linear relations of psychopathic traits with RT and nF for the main signals of social correction, angry and fearful faces making eye-contact. (C-D) Fearless-dominance predicts greater search-efficiency and peripheral-attention for angry compared to fearful eye-contact, whereas (E-F) impulsive-antisociality predicts the opposite. Anger/direct gaze slopes and their difference with fear/averted gaze are significant across GRID-size conditions, but strongly driven by the trials with the most distractors. Values represent estimated marginal means (EMMs) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Fig. 4

Contrast differences (Fourier magnitude, y-axis) between different image conditions (A: Anger, F: Fearful, a: averted gaze, d: direct gaze) across spatial frequency (cycles per degree [cpd], x-axis). Error bars represent the standard error of the mean. For example, the green line shows the average contrast difference between images of angry faces with direct gaze (Ad) or fearful faces with averted gaze (Fa), and images of angry faces with averted gaze (Aa) or fearful faces with direct gaze (Fd).