Fearful faces have a sensory advantage in the competition for awareness

Only a subset of visual signals give rise to a conscious percept. Threat signals, such as fearful faces, are particularly salient to human vision. Research suggests that fearful faces are evaluated without awareness and preferentially promoted to conscious perception. This agrees with evolutionary theories that posit a dedicated pathway specialized in processing threat-relevant signals. We propose an alternative explanation for this "fear advantage." Using psychophysical data from continuous flash suppression (CFS) and masking experiments, we demonstrate that awareness of facial expressions is predicted by effective contrast: the relationship between their Fourier spectrum and the contrast sensitivity function. Fearful faces have higher effective contrast than neutral expressions and this, not threat content, predicts their enhanced access to awareness. Importantly, our findings do not support the existence of a specialized mechanism that promotes threatening stimuli to awareness. Rather, our data suggest that evolutionary or learned adaptations have molded the fearful expression to exploit our general-purpose sensory mechanisms

Do emotional faces capture attention, and does this depend on awareness? Evidence from the visual probe paradigm

The visual probe (VP) paradigm provides evidence that emotional stimuli attract attention. Such effects have been reported even when stimuli are presented outside of awareness. These findings have shaped the idea that humans possess a processing pathway that detects evolutionarily significant signals independently of awareness. Here, we addressed 2 unresolved questions: First, if emotional stimuli attract attention, is this driven by their affective content, or by low-level image properties (e.g., luminance contrast)? Second, does attentional capture occur under conditions of genuine unawareness? We found that observers preferentially allocated attention to emotional faces under aware viewing conditions. However, this effect was best explained by low-level stimulus properties, rather than emotional content. When stimuli were presented outside of awareness (via continuous flash suppression or masking), we found no evidence that attention was directed toward emotional face stimuli. Finally, observer's awareness of the stimuli (assessed by d') predicted attentional cuing. Our data challenge existing literature: First, we cast doubt on the notion of preferential attention to emotional stimuli in the absence of awareness. Second, we question whether effects revealed by the VP paradigm genuinely reflect emotion-sensitive processes, instead suggesting they can be more parsimoniously explained by low-level variability between stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Motion adaptation and attention: A critical review and meta-analysis

The motion aftereffect (MAE) provides a behavioural probe into the mechanisms underlying motion perception, and has been used to study the effects of attention on motion processing. Visual attention can enhance detection and discrimination of selected visual signals. However, the relationship between attention and motion processing remains contentious: not all studies find that attention increases MAEs. Our meta-analysis reveals several factors that explain superficially discrepant findings. Across studies (37 independent samples, 76 effects) motion adaptation was significantly and substantially enhanced by attention (Cohen's d = 1.12, p < .0001). The effect more than doubled when adapting to translating (vs. expanding or rotating) motion. Other factors affecting the attention-MAE relationship included stimulus size, eccentricity and speed. By considering these behavioural analyses alongside neurophysiological work, we conclude that feature-based (rather than spatial, or object-based) attention is the biggest driver of sensory adaptation. Comparisons between naïve and non-naïve observers, different response paradigms, and assessment of 'file-drawer effects' indicate that neither response bias nor publication bias are likely to have significantly inflated the estimated effect of attention

Autonomic arousal and attentional orienting to visual threat are predicted by awareness

The rapid detection and evaluation of threat is of fundamental importance for survival. Theories suggest that this evolutionary pressure has driven functional adaptations in a specialized visual pathway that evaluates threat independently of conscious awareness. This is supported by evidence that threat-relevant stimuli rendered invisible by backward masking can induce physiological fear responses and modulate spatial attention. The validity of these findings has since been questioned by research using stringent, objective measures of awareness. Here, we use a modified continuous flash suppression paradigm to ask whether threatening images induce adaptive changes in autonomic arousal, attention, or perception when presented outside of awareness. In trials where stimuli broke suppression to become visible, threatening stimuli induced a significantly larger skin conductance response than nonthreatening stimuli and attracted spatial attention over scrambled images. However, these effects were eliminated in trials where observers were unaware of the stimuli. In addition, concurrent behavioral data provided no evidence that threatening images gained prioritized access to awareness. Taken together, our data suggest that the evaluation and spatial detection of visual threat are predicted by awareness

The Prevalence, Severity, and Impact of Breast Pain in the General Population

Breast pain has been investigated in clinical populations; however we have yet to understand the prevalence and severity of this condition in the general population to determine whether more should be done to minimize the impact of this condition on women's quality of life. Therefore, this study investigated the prevalence, severity, and impact of breast pain on quality of life and factors associated with breast pain in a normal population sample. 1,659 females (34.1 ± 13.2 years) completed the Breast Pain Questionnaire online, providing information on demographics, duration, frequency, and severity of breast pain, its association with the menstrual cycle, relieving, and aggravating factors and the impact on quality of life. Over half the sample (51.5%) experienced breast pain, with a severity similar to that reported in clinical populations. There was a higher prevalence of breast pain in older participants, larger breasted participants and those who were less fit and active. Of symptomatic participants, 41% and 35% reported breast pain affecting quality of life measures of sex and sleep and 10% of symptomatic participants had sufferer for over half their lives. The results of this study suggest that breast pain is a significant issue within the general population and yet this is the first study to investigate it. It is concluded that this condition warrants increased investigation, awareness, and treatment. The reported relationship between breast pain and fitness/activity levels may offer an alternative treatment in the form of exercise intervention strategies to reduce breast pain

Empathy modulates the temporal structure of social attention

Individuals with low empathy often show reduced attention towards social stimuli. A limitation of this literature is the lack of empirical work that has explicitly characterized how this relationship manifests itself over time. We investigate this issue by analysing data from two large eye-tracking datasets (total n = 176). Via growth-curve analysis, we demonstrate that self-reported empathy (as measured by the empathy quotient—EQ) predicts the temporal evolution of gaze behaviour under conditions where social and non-social stimuli compete for attention. In both datasets, we found that EQ not only predicted a global increase in social attention, but predicted a different temporal profile of social attention. Specifically, we detected a reliable effect of empathy on gaze towards social images after prolonged viewing. An analysis of switch latencies revealed that low-EQ observers switched gaze away from an initially fixated social image more frequently and at earlier latencies than high-EQ observers. Our analyses demonstrate that modelling these temporal components of gaze signals may reveal useful behavioural phenotypes. The explanatory power of this approach may provide enhanced biomarkers for conditions marked by deficits in empathy-related processes

Are visual threats prioritized without awareness? A critical review and meta analysis involving 3 behavioral paradigms and 2696 observers

Given capacity limits, only a subset of stimuli 1 give rise to a conscious percept. Neurocognitive models suggest that humans have evolved mechanisms that operate without awareness and prioritize threatening stimuli over neutral stimuli in subsequent perception. In this meta analysis, we review evidence for this ‘standard hypothesis’ emanating from three widely used, but rather different experimental paradigms that have been used to manipulate awareness. We found a small pooled threat-bias effect in the masked visual probe paradigm, a medium effect in the binocular rivalry paradigm and highly inconsistent effects in the breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm. Substantial heterogeneity was explained by the stimulus type: the only threat stimuli that were robustly prioritized across all three paradigms were fearful faces. Meta regression revealed that anxiety may modulate threat biases, but only under specific presentation conditions. We also found that insufficiently rigorous awareness measures, inadequate control of response biases and low level confounds may undermine claims of genuine unconscious threat processing. Considering the data together, we suggest that uncritical acceptance of the standard hypothesis is premature: current behavioral evidence for threat-sensitive visual processing that operates without awareness is weak

Evaluating the spatial transferability and temporal repeatability of remote sensing-based lake water quality retrieval algorithms at the European scale:a meta-analysis approach

Many studies have shown the considerable potential for the application of remote-sensing-based methods for deriving estimates of lake water quality. However, the reliable application of these methods across time and space is complicated by the diversity of lake types, sensor configuration, and the multitude of different algorithms proposed. This study tested one operational and 46 empirical algorithms sourced from the peer-reviewed literature that have individually shown potential for estimating lake water quality properties in the form of chlorophyll-a (algal biomass) and Secchi disc depth (SDD) (water transparency) in independent studies. Nearly half (19) of the algorithms were unsuitable for use with the remote-sensing data available for this study. The remaining 28 were assessed using the Terra/Aqua satellite archive to identify the best performing algorithms in terms of accuracy and transferability within the period 2001–2004 in four test lakes, namely Vänern, Vättern, Geneva, and Balaton. These lakes represent the broad continuum of large European lake types, varying in terms of eco-region (latitude/longitude and altitude), morphology, mixing regime, and trophic status. All algorithms were tested for each lake separately and combined to assess the degree of their applicability in ecologically different sites. None of the algorithms assessed in this study exhibited promise when all four lakes were combined into a single data set and most algorithms performed poorly even for specific lake types. A chlorophyll-a retrieval algorithm originally developed for eutrophic lakes showed the most promising results (R2 = 0.59) in oligotrophic lakes. Two SDD retrieval algorithms, one originally developed for turbid lakes and the other for lakes with various characteristics, exhibited promising results in relatively less turbid lakes (R2 = 0.62 and 0.76, respectively). The results presented here highlight the complexity associated with remotely sensed lake water quality estimates and the high degree of uncertainty due to various limitations, including the lake water optical properties and the choice of methods