Department of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Emotion. 2012 Dec;12(6):1362-6. doi: 10.1037/a0028415. Epub 2012 May 28.
Previous dot-probe studies indicate that threat-related face cues induce a bias in spatial attention. Independently of spatial attention, a recent psychophysical study suggests that a bilateral fearful face cue improves low spatial-frequency perception (LSF) and impairs high spatial-frequency perception (HSF). Here, we combine these separate lines of research within a single dot-probe paradigm. We found that a bilateral fearful face cue, compared with a bilateral neutral face cue, speeded up responses to LSF targets and slowed down responses to HSF targets. This finding is important, as it shows that emotional cues in dot-probe tasks not only bias where information is preferentially processed (i.e., an attentional bias in spatial location), but also bias what type of information is preferentially processed (i.e., a perceptual bias in spatial frequency).
先前的点探测研究表明，与威胁相关的面部线索会引起空间注意的偏向。最近的一项心理物理学研究表明，双侧恐惧面部线索可以改善低空间频率感知（LSF），并损害高空间频率感知（HSF）。在这里，我们在单个点探测范式中结合了这两个独立的研究方向。我们发现，与双侧中性面部线索相比，双侧恐惧面部线索会加速对 LSF 目标的反应，而减慢对 HSF 目标的反应。这一发现很重要，因为它表明，点探测任务中的情绪线索不仅会影响信息被优先处理的位置（即空间位置上的注意力偏向），还会影响被优先处理的信息类型（即空间频率上的感知偏向）。
