Multimodal task-irrelevant threat information and their effects on visual search tasks

Yildiz, Bahtiyar and Kiss, László Botond and Zsidó, András Norbert (2025) Multimodal task-irrelevant threat information and their effects on visual search tasks. VISUAL COGNITION. ISSN 1350-6285 (In Press)

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Abstract

We investigated the effect of threatening distractors on attentional executive control. While previous visual search studies found that task-irrelevant threatening stimuli are harder to ignore than neutral or other valenced stimuli, they have only used static pictures that do not resemble real-life threat encounters. Therefore, this study extends the scope by using multimodal stimuli (audiovisual, muted videos, pictures), threatening and neutral, as task-irrelevant distractors. Our results showed that participants spent more time searching for the first target number when presented with a threatening compared to a neutral picture, and participants were faster in picture modality compared to both audiovisual and muted video stimuli (regardless of valence). Furthermore, participants completed the task (i.e., found all numbers) faster in the threatening muted video compared to neutral one but threatening audiovisual distractors resulted in worse performance compared to neutral audiovisual ones. We found no significant correlation between participants’ self-reported fear and anxiety levels and the behavioural measures. These results suggest the complex interplay between emotional condition and sensory modality in attentional processes, emphasizing the differential effects of threat across visual and audiovisual contexts.

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