Madipakkam Apoorva Rajiv, Rothkirch Marcus, Wilbertz Gregor, Sterzer Philipp
Visual Perception Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany; International Graduate Program Medical Neurosciences, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Luisenstr. 56, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Visual Perception Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Conscious Cogn. 2016 Nov;46:60-70. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.09.016. Epub 2016 Sep 28.
Efficient threat detection from the environment is critical for survival. Accordingly, fear-conditioned stimuli receive prioritized processing and capture overt and covert attention. However, it is unknown whether eye movements are influenced by unconscious fear-conditioned stimuli. We performed a classical fear-conditioning procedure and subsequently recorded participants' eye movements while they were exposed to fear-conditioned stimuli that were rendered invisible using interocular suppression. Chance-level performance in a forced-choice-task demonstrated unawareness of the stimuli. Differential skin conductance responses and a change in participants' fearfulness ratings of the stimuli indicated the effectiveness of conditioning. However, eye movements were not biased towards the fear-conditioned stimulus. Preliminary evidence suggests a relation between the strength of conditioning and the saccadic bias to the fear-conditioned stimulus. Our findings provide no strong evidence for a saccadic bias towards unconscious fear-conditioned stimuli but tentative evidence suggests that such an effect may depend on the strength of the conditioned response.
从环境中有效检测威胁对生存至关重要。因此，恐惧条件刺激会得到优先处理，并吸引显性和隐性注意力。然而，目前尚不清楚眼动是否会受到无意识恐惧条件刺激的影响。我们进行了经典的恐惧条件反射程序，随后在参与者暴露于使用双眼抑制使其不可见的恐惧条件刺激时记录他们的眼动。强制选择任务中的随机水平表现表明参与者对刺激没有意识。不同的皮肤电导反应以及参与者对刺激的恐惧评分变化表明了条件反射的有效性。然而，眼动并没有偏向于恐惧条件刺激。初步证据表明条件反射的强度与对恐惧条件刺激的扫视偏向之间存在关联。我们的研究结果没有为对无意识恐惧条件刺激的扫视偏向提供有力证据，但初步证据表明这种效应可能取决于条件反应的强度。
