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dc.contributor.authorLipp, Ottmar
dc.contributor.authorKempnich, C.
dc.contributor.authorJee, S.
dc.contributor.authorArnold, D.
dc.date.accessioned2017-01-30T14:34:43Z
dc.date.available2017-01-30T14:34:43Z
dc.date.created2014-09-17T20:00:17Z
dc.date.issued2014
dc.identifier.citationLipp, 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.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/39540
dc.identifier.doi10.1371/journal.pone.0099332
dc.description.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.

dc.publisherPublic Library of Science
dc.titleFear Conditioning to Subliminal Fear Relevant and Non Fear Relevant Stimuli
dc.typeJournal Article
dcterms.source.volume9
dcterms.source.number9
dcterms.source.issn1932-6203
dcterms.source.titlePLoS ONE
curtin.note

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.

curtin.departmentSchool of Psychology
curtin.accessStatusOpen access


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