Curtin University Homepage
  • Library
  • Help
    • Admin

    espace - Curtin’s institutional repository

    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
    View Item 
    • espace Home
    • espace
    • Curtin Research Publications
    • View Item
    • espace Home
    • espace
    • Curtin Research Publications
    • View Item

    Fear Conditioning to Subliminal Fear Relevant and Non Fear Relevant Stimuli

    200739_132474_Lipp_et_al_14_PLos_ONE.pdf (3.666Mb)
    Access Status
    Open access
    Authors
    Lipp, Ottmar
    Kempnich, C.
    Jee, S.
    Arnold, D.
    Date
    2014
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Lipp, O. and Kempnich, C. and Jee, S. and Arnold, D. 2014. Fear Conditioning to Subliminal Fear Relevant and Non Fear Relevant Stimuli. PLoS ONE. 9 (9): Article ID e99332.
    Source Title
    PLoS ONE
    DOI
    10.1371/journal.pone.0099332
    ISSN
    1932-6203
    School
    School of Psychology
    Remarks

    This article is published under the Open Access publishing model and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Please refer to the licence to obtain terms for any further reuse or distribution of this work.

    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/39540
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    A growing body of evidence suggests that conscious visual awareness is not a prerequisite for human fear learning. For instance, humans can learn to be fearful of subliminal fear relevant images – images depicting stimuli thought to have been fear relevant in our evolutionary context, such as snakes, spiders, and angry human faces. Such stimuli could have a privileged status in relation to manipulations used to suppress usually salient images from awareness, possibly due to the existence of a designated sub-cortical ‘fear module’. Here we assess this proposition, and find it wanting. We use binocular masking to suppress awareness of images of snakes and wallabies (particularly cute, non-threatening marsupials). We find that subliminal presentations of both classes of image can induce differential fear conditioning. These data show that learning, as indexed by fear conditioning, is neither contingent on conscious visual awareness nor on subliminal conditional stimuli being fear relevant.

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • “Prepared” fear or socio-cultural learning? Fear conditioned to guns, snakes, and spiders is eliminated by instructed extinction in a within-participant differential fear conditioning paradigm
      Luck, Camilla ; Patterson, Rachel R.; Lipp, Ottmar (2020)
      Across three experiments, we investigated whether electrodermal responses conditioned to ontogenetic fear-relevant (pointed guns) and phylogenetic fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) would resist instructed extinction ...
    • Enhanced sensitization to animal, interpersonal, and intergroup fear-relevant stimuli (but no evidence for selective one-trial fear learning)
      Lipp, Ottmar; Cronin, S.; Alhadad, S.; Luck, C. (2015)
      Selective sensitization has been proposed as an alternative explanation for enhanced responding to animal fear-relevant stimuli—snakes and spiders—during extinction of Pavlovian fear conditioning. The current study sought ...
    • Better safe than sorry: Simplistic fear-relevant stimuli capture attention
      Forbes, S.; Purkis, H.; Lipp, Ottmar (2011)
      It has been consistently demonstrated that fear-relevant images capture attention preferentially over fear-irrelevant images. Current theory suggests that this faster processing could be mediated by an evolved module that ...
    Advanced search

    Browse

    Communities & CollectionsIssue DateAuthorTitleSubjectDocument TypeThis CollectionIssue DateAuthorTitleSubjectDocument Type

    My Account

    Admin

    Statistics

    Most Popular ItemsStatistics by CountryMost Popular Authors

    Follow Curtin

    • 
    • 
    • 
    • 
    • 

    CRICOS Provider Code: 00301JABN: 99 143 842 569TEQSA: PRV12158

    Copyright | Disclaimer | Privacy statement | Accessibility

    Curtin would like to pay respect to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members of our community by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which the Perth campus is located, the Whadjuk people of the Nyungar Nation; and on our Kalgoorlie campus, the Wongutha people of the North-Eastern Goldfields.