Line-Drawn Scenes Provide Sufficient Information for Discrimination of Threat and Mere Negativity.

Kestutis Kveraga,Lisa Feldman Barrett,Reginald B. Adams,Jasmine Boshyan,Nicole Betz

doi:10.1177/2041669518755806

Abstract

Previous work using color photographic scenes has shown that human observers are keenly sensitive to different types of threatening and negative stimuli and reliably classify them by the presence, and spatial and temporal directions of threat. To test whether such distinctions can be extracted from impoverished visual information, we used 500 line drawings made by hand-tracing the original set of photographic scenes. Sixty participants rated the scenes on spatial and temporal dimensions of threat. Based on these ratings, trend analysis revealed five scene categories that were comparable to those identified for the matching color photographic scenes. Another 61 participants were randomly assigned to rate the valence or arousal evoked by the line drawings. The line drawings perceived to be the most negative were also perceived to be the most arousing, replicating the finding for color photographic scenes. We demonstrate here that humans are very sensitive to the spatial and temporal directions of threat even when they must extract this information from simple line drawings, and rate the line drawings very similarly to matched color photographs. The set of 500 hand-traced line-drawing scenes has been made freely available to the research community: http://www.kveragalab.org/threat.html.

Highlights

Our visual system has been honed by the need for survival
The goals of the present study were twofold: (a) to test whether distinctions in affective scene context that allow humans to discriminate different dimensions of threat and negativity can be extracted from very basic, impoverished visual information such as line drawings and (b) to compile a set of open-access images varying in their threat value that differ little in low-level features and are easier to manipulate compared to photographic images to facilitate studies of visual threat perception in neurotypical, as well as clinical, populations
Our findings further demonstrate that young human observers show similar sensitivity for threat information in an image, which they can extract quickly whether they are presented with a color photographic image (Kveraga et al, 2015) or a simple line drawing

Summary

Introduction

From a continuous flood of visual information, our eyes and brain quickly extract meaning and scan for signs of danger, as rapid recognition of threat promotes survival (LeDoux, 2012). Previous studies have shown that stimuli are automatically represented in terms of their affective valence (Barrett, 2006; Duckworth, Bargh, Garcia, & Chaiken, 2002). Dimensional approaches to affective perception that map the valence and arousal of stimuli do not distinguish between unpleasant images that are perceived as aversive and threatening and those that are not (for a review, see Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Barrett & Russell, 1999; Larsen & Diener, 1992; Russell, 1980; Watson & Tellegen, 1985). A recent study has confirmed that human observers exhibit ‘‘morbid curiosity’’ for socially negative, but not threatening, images (Oosterwijk, 2017)

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