The effect of anxiety on visual processing under threat

Objective: Emotion is known to affect our perception. Research has shown that fear, in particular, affects our perception by enhancing the processing of coarse low spatial frequency (LSF) information at the cost of detailed high spatial frequency (HSF) information. This biased LSF processing may be mediated by the subcortical or cortical pathway to the amygdala. However, findings on whether the subcortical pathway processes automatically are contradictory, and some studies found a mediation effect of anxiety. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate whether the processing of LSF information is automatic during threat and whether this is moderated by anxiety. Method: We used a high and low load visual working memory (VWM) task while participants performed a visual orientation discrimination task of LSF and HSF gratings, under safe and threat of shock conditions. Anxiety levels were measured with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Results: Using data from a previous...Show moreObjective: Emotion is known to affect our perception. Research has shown that fear, in particular, affects our perception by enhancing the processing of coarse low spatial frequency (LSF) information at the cost of detailed high spatial frequency (HSF) information. This biased LSF processing may be mediated by the subcortical or cortical pathway to the amygdala. However, findings on whether the subcortical pathway processes automatically are contradictory, and some studies found a mediation effect of anxiety. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate whether the processing of LSF information is automatic during threat and whether this is moderated by anxiety. Method: We used a high and low load visual working memory (VWM) task while participants performed a visual orientation discrimination task of LSF and HSF gratings, under safe and threat of shock conditions. Anxiety levels were measured with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Results: Using data from a previous similar experiment, we found a significant interaction effect of spatial frequency by VWM. We found significant main effects of spatial frequency and VWM; there was no main effect of threat condition. Conclusion: Our results indicate that LSF information was perceived more accurately than HSF information, that visual information was perceived more accurately under low than high VWM load and that this was not affected by risk of threat. Due to these results, we were unable to test for automatic processing of LSF stimuli under fear. To investigate this further, as well as to examine whether this is affected by anxiety, more research is needed.Show less

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The effect of anxiety on visual processing under threat