Project Description
The experiment will examine whether a neutral stimulus paired with an aversive event (i.e. shock) during a training phase will capture attention in a subsequent visual search task. Previous work from our lab has indicated that fear conditioned materials do capture attention but, in that experiment, when the fear conditioned stimulus was presented as a task-irrelevant distractor in visual search displays is was physically salient. Here, the objective is to determine whether capture effects are evident even when the critical distractor is not physically salient - i.e., basic perceptual features of this distractor are no different from others; instead, the distractor is distinctive based solely on its learned aversive value.
Another question addressed by this study has to do with the dependence of capture effects on conscious awareness. During the training phase, participants will make button-press responses to indicate whether they anticipate shock. Therefore, we will have trial-by-trial information indicating whether and when participants become aware of the association between a particular item and shock delivery. Capture is expected with or without awareness.
Tasks and Responsibilites
Activities to be performed this summer include testing participants and data analysis. Together, we will calculate group-level inferential statistics on the data that the student collects this summer. They will need approximately 30 participants to complete the study, but it is anticipated that additional participants will be tested and dropped from analyses (e.g., for failure to follow instructions, unreliable acquisition of eye tracking data).
Desired Qualifications
None listed.