Im Sungjin, Marder Maya A, Imbriano Gabriella, Sussman Tamara J, Mohanty Aprajita
Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ.
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL.
Mindfulness (N Y). 2021 Apr;12(4):959-969. doi: 10.1007/s12671-020-01562-9. Epub 2021 Jan 2.
Threat-related cues and contexts facilitate perceptual decision-making, yet it is unclear whether this threat-driven tuning of perceptual decision-making is modifiable by top-down attentional control. Since state and dispositional mindfulness are linked to improved attentional control, we examined whether these factors assist the use of prior knowledge to detect threatening stimuli.
Participants were randomly assigned to a brief mindfulness-based intervention (N=32) or a physics lecture audio recording (N=31) and then asked to perform a task in which they used threatening and neutral cues to discriminate between threatening and neutral faces.
Results showed that threatening cues led to faster and more sensitive perceptual decision-making, specifically for threatening faces. Furthermore, higher levels of dispositional mindfulness were associated with improved ability to use cues to discriminate between threatening and neutral stimuli in the group that underwent a brief mindfulness induction but not in the control group.
Our findings highlight how top-down attention-related dispositions and strategies can influence our ability to detect threats in our environment.
与威胁相关的线索和情境有助于感知决策，但尚不清楚这种由威胁驱动的感知决策调整是否可通过自上而下的注意力控制来改变。由于状态正念和特质正念与注意力控制的改善有关，我们研究了这些因素是否有助于利用先验知识来检测威胁性刺激。
参与者被随机分配到一个简短的基于正念的干预组（N = 32）或一个物理讲座录音组（N = 31），然后要求他们执行一项任务，在该任务中他们使用威胁性和中性线索来区分威胁性和中性面孔。
结果表明，威胁性线索导致更快、更敏感的感知决策，特别是对于威胁性面孔。此外，在接受简短正念诱导的组中，特质正念水平较高与使用线索区分威胁性和中性刺激的能力提高有关，而在对照组中则不然。
我们的研究结果突出了自上而下与注意力相关的倾向和策略如何影响我们在环境中检测威胁的能力。
