Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK; Sussex Neuroscience, University of Sussex, UK; Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, UK.
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK.
Biol Psychol. 2023 Oct;183:108699. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108699. Epub 2023 Sep 27.
Interoceptive cardiac arousal signals (e.g., from baroreceptor firing at ventricular systole compared to diastole) have been found to enhance perception of fearful versus neutral faces. They have also been found to amplify racially biased misidentification of tools as weapons when preceded by facial images of Black versus White individuals. Since pupil size is strongly coupled to arousal, we tested if experimental manipulation of pupil size influences fear processing in emotional judgement and racial bias tasks involving measurement of cardiac signals. In a sample of 22 non-clinical participants in an emotional intensity judgement task, pupil size did not affect emotional intensity ratings. Nor did it interact with differential effects of cardiac systole versus diastole on intensity judgements of fearful and neutral faces, replicated here. In a sample of 25 non-clinical participants in a weapons identification task, larger pupil size resulted in faster response times and lower accuracy when identifying tools and weapons. However, pupil size did not interact with weapon versus tool identification, race of prime, or cardiac timing. We nevertheless replicated the observed increase in racially biased misidentification of tools as weapons following Black face primes presented at cardiac systole. Together our findings indicate that pupil dilation does not directly influence the processing of fear cues or perceived threat (as in racial bias) yet affects task performance by decreasing response times and accuracy. These findings contrast with the established effect of cardiac arousal signals on threat processing and may help focus interventions to mitigate related decision errors in high-pressure occupations.
内感受性心脏唤醒信号（例如，与心室收缩相比，在舒张期从压力感受器放电）已被发现可增强对恐惧与中性面孔的感知。还发现，当黑人与白人面孔图像出现在前面时，这些信号会放大对工具的种族偏见误认，将其误认为武器。由于瞳孔大小与唤醒密切相关，我们测试了瞳孔大小的实验操纵是否会影响情绪判断和种族偏见任务中的恐惧处理，这些任务涉及到心脏信号的测量。在一项涉及 22 名非临床情绪强度判断任务参与者的样本中，瞳孔大小并不影响情绪强度评分。瞳孔大小也没有与心脏收缩与舒张对恐惧和中性面孔强度判断的差异效应相互作用，这与这里的结果一致。在一项涉及 25 名非临床武器识别任务参与者的样本中，当识别工具和武器时，瞳孔较大会导致反应时间更快，准确性更低。然而，瞳孔大小与武器与工具识别、刺激的种族或心脏计时没有相互作用。尽管如此，我们还是复制了在黑人面孔刺激出现在心脏收缩期时，观察到的工具被错误地认作武器的种族偏见增加的现象。我们的研究结果表明，瞳孔扩张不会直接影响恐惧线索或感知威胁（如种族偏见）的处理，但会通过减少反应时间和准确性来影响任务表现。这些发现与心脏唤醒信号对威胁处理的既定影响形成对比，可能有助于集中干预措施，以减轻高压职业中相关的决策错误。
