Abstract
Threatening stimuli have varying effects, including reaction time (RT) increase in working memory tasks. This could reflect disruption of working memory or, alternatively, a reversible state of freezing. In the current series of experiments, reversible slowing due to anticipated threat was studied using the cued Virtual Attack Emotional Sternberg Task (cVAEST). In this task visually neutral cues indicate whether a future virtual attack could or could not occur during the maintenance period of a Sternberg task. Three studies (N = 47, 40, and 40, respectively) were performed by healthy adult participants online. The primary hypothesis was that the cVAEST would evoke anticipatory slowing. Further, the studies aimed to explore details of this novel task, in particular the interval between the cue and probe stimuli and the memory set size. In all studies it was found that threat anticipation slowed RTs on the working memory task. Further, Study 1 (memory set size 3) showed a decrease in RT when the attack occurred over all Cue Stimulus Intervals (CSIs). In Study 2 a minimal memory set of one item was used, under which circumstances RTs following attacks were only faster shortly after cue presentation (CSI 200 and 500 ms), when RTs were high for both threat and safe cues. Study 3 replicated results of Study 2 with more fine-grained time intervals. The results confirm that anticipation of attack stimuli can reversibly slow responses on an independent working memory task. The cVAEST may provide a useful method to study such threat-induced response slowing.
Highlights
Threatening stimuli have varying effects, including reaction time (RT) increase in working memory tasks
The Cue Stimulus Intervals (CSIs) are plotted on the horizontal axis and the lines show the three trial types: safe cues, threat cues when no attack occurred, and threat cues followed by an actual attack
No significant effects were found for accuracy. cVAEST = cued Virtual Attack Emotional Sternberg Task; CSI = Cue Stimulus Interval; RT = reaction time
Summary
Participants were recruited online and received either study credits or a small monetary reward (7 dollars) for complet ing the study, which was performed fully online. Following the maintenance phase or attack, the probe stimulus appeared This consisted of two different numbers, each from 1 to 9, positioned next to each other. Procedure Participants first performed the 100% Attack task version They were asked to specify which of the two cues was never followed by an attack, and which was sometimes followed by an attack. They performed the second task, followed by the same test on cue-threat contingencies They performed the assessment version, followed by the same test. This learning procedure was implemented to increase the number of participants being aware of the cue contingencies, which was used as an inclusion criterion leading to a more consistent sample for analysis ( a proportion of participants are likely to have guessed correctly). The raw data and analysis scripts are available in Supplementary Materials
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