Emotional effects on time-to-contact judgments: arousal, threat, and fear of spiders modulate the effect of pictorial content

Autoren

Esther Brendel
Heiko Hecht
Patricia R DeLucia
Matthias Gamer

DOI

10.1007/s00221-014-3930-0

eISSN

1432-1106

ISSN

0014-4819

Ausgabe der Veröffentlichung

7

Zeitschrift

Experimental Brain Research

Sprache

en

Online publication date

2014

Paginierung

2337 - 2347

Datum der Veröffentlichung

2014

Status

Published

Herausgeber

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Herausgeber URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00221-014-3930-0

Datum der Datenerfassung

2022

Titel

Emotional effects on time-to-contact judgments: arousal, threat, and fear of spiders modulate the effect of pictorial content

Ausgabe der Zeitschrift

232

Data source: Crossref

Abstract

Recently, responses to looming visual stimuli have been shown to depend on the emotional content of the stimulus. A threatening stimulus is judged to arrive sooner compared to a neutral stimulus, possibly buying the organism time to prepare defensive actions. Here, we explored the underlying mechanism. We found that time-to-contact judgments of threatening pictures did not differ from those of highly arousing pleasant pictures (Experiment 1), suggesting that arousal, not fear, modulates the perception of looming. Specific fear modulated the effects of arousal (Experiment 2): Spider-fearful participants' judgments showed a threat advantage effect, while non-fearful participants' judgments were less affected by emotional content. In Experiment 3, arrival times were less overestimated when pictures induced arousal. However, this effect interacted with the valence of the stimulus: For unpleasant stimuli, arousal induced shorter time-to-contact judgments, whereas for pleasant stimuli, an inverted U-shaped relation was found. We propose a general content effect to explain the overestimation with neutral pictures: Pictorial content may draw visual attention to inner contours instead of to the outer edges of the picture. This could delay time-to-contact judgments according to the known size-arrival effect. Our results add to the growing literature examining affective influences on visual perception.

Addresses

Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099, Mainz, Germany, ebrendel@uni-mainz.de.

Autoren

Esther Brendel
Heiko Hecht
Patricia R DeLucia
Matthias Gamer

DOI

10.1007/s00221-014-3930-0

eISSN

1432-1106

Externe Identifier

PubMed Identifier: 24756860

Open access

false

ISSN

0014-4819

Ausgabe der Veröffentlichung

7

Zeitschrift

Experimental brain research

Schlüsselwörter

Animals
Humans
Spiders
Analysis of Variance
Photic Stimulation
Fear
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Judgment
Arousal
Attention
Galvanic Skin Response
Time Factors
Adult
Female
Male
Young Adult

Sprache

eng

Medium

Print-Electronic

Online publication date

2014

Paginierung

2337 - 2347

Datum der Veröffentlichung

2014

Status

Published

Datum der Datenerfassung

2014

Titel

Emotional effects on time-to-contact judgments: arousal, threat, and fear of spiders modulate the effect of pictorial content.

Sub types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Journal Article

Ausgabe der Zeitschrift

232

Data source: Europe PubMed Central

Abstract

Recently, responses to looming visual stimuli have been shown to depend on the emotional content of the stimulus. A threatening stimulus is judged to arrive sooner compared to a neutral stimulus, possibly buying the organism time to prepare defensive actions. Here, we explored the underlying mechanism. We found that time-to-contact judgments of threatening pictures did not differ from those of highly arousing pleasant pictures (Experiment 1), suggesting that arousal, not fear, modulates the perception of looming. Specific fear modulated the effects of arousal (Experiment 2): Spider-fearful participants' judgments showed a threat advantage effect, while non-fearful participants' judgments were less affected by emotional content. In Experiment 3, arrival times were less overestimated when pictures induced arousal. However, this effect interacted with the valence of the stimulus: For unpleasant stimuli, arousal induced shorter time-to-contact judgments, whereas for pleasant stimuli, an inverted U-shaped relation was found. We propose a general content effect to explain the overestimation with neutral pictures: Pictorial content may draw visual attention to inner contours instead of to the outer edges of the picture. This could delay time-to-contact judgments according to the known size-arrival effect. Our results add to the growing literature examining affective influences on visual perception.

Date of acceptance

2014

Autoren

Esther Brendel
Heiko Hecht
Patricia R DeLucia
Matthias Gamer

Autoren-URL

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24756860

DOI

10.1007/s00221-014-3930-0

eISSN

1432-1106

Ausgabe der Veröffentlichung

7

Zeitschrift

Exp Brain Res

Schlüsselwörter

Adult
Analysis of Variance
Animals
Arousal
Attention
Fear
Female
Galvanic Skin Response
Humans
Judgment
Male
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Photic Stimulation
Spiders
Time Factors
Young Adult

Sprache

eng

Country

Germany

Paginierung

2337 - 2347

Datum der Veröffentlichung

2014

Status

Published

Datum, an dem der Datensatz öffentlich gemacht wurde

2015

Titel

Emotional effects on time-to-contact judgments: arousal, threat, and fear of spiders modulate the effect of pictorial content.

Sub types

Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Ausgabe der Zeitschrift

232

Data source: PubMed

Emotional effects on time-to-contact judgments: arousal, threat, and fear of spiders modulate the effect of pictorial content

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