Fear lies in the eyes of the beholder-Robust evidence for reduced gaze dispersion upon avoidable threat.
autonomic
electrodermal
eye tracking
gaze dispersion
heart rate
orienting
Journal
Psychophysiology
ISSN: 1540-5958
Titre abrégé: Psychophysiology
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 0142657
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Jan 2024
Jan 2024
Historique:
revised:
28
07
2023
received:
21
03
2023
accepted:
28
07
2023
medline:
5
12
2023
pubmed:
21
8
2023
entrez:
21
8
2023
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
A rapid detection and processing of relevant information in our environment is crucial for survival. The human eyes are drawn to social or threatening stimuli as they may carry essential information on how to behave appropriately in a given context. Recent studies further showed a centralization of gaze that reminded of freezing behaviors in rodents. Probably constituting a component of an adaptive defense mode, centralized eye movements predicted the speed of motor actions. Here we conducted two experiments to examine if and how these presumably survival-relevant gaze patterns interact. Subjects viewed images including social, that is, faces (Experiment 1, N = 50) or threatening stimuli, that is, snakes or spiders (Experiment 2, N = 50) while awaiting an inevitable (shock), no (safety), or an avoidable shock (flight) they could escape from by a fast button press. The social and threatening cues within the scenes differed in their distance from the image center and we acquired eye-tracking and autonomic physiological data. Although we observed an initial orienting toward social and threatening stimulus aspects, this exploration pattern vanished towards the end of flight trials when a pronounced centralization of gaze emerged. Replicating previous findings, the amount of this center bias predicted the speed of motor reactions, and we observed a concurrent activation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Taken together, the exploration of potentially relevant cues seems to be part of a reflexive-orienting response regardless of contextual valence. However, centralization of gaze may be a threat-specific action-preparatory response that occurs across a wide range of stimulus contexts.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e14421Informations de copyright
© 2023 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.
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