Conscious access to fear-relevant information is mediated by threshold

• Authors: Remigiusz Szczepanowski
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present report proposed a model of access consciousness to fear-relevant information according to which there is a threshold for emotional perception beyond that the subject makes hits with no false alarm. The model was examined by having the participants performed a confidence-ratings masking task with fearful faces. Measures of the thresholds for conscious access were taken by looking at the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves generated from a three-state low- and high-threshold (3-LHT) model by Krantz. Indeed, the analysis of the masking data revealed that the ROCs had threshold-like-nature (a two-limb shape) rather continuous (a curvilinear shape) challenging in this fashion the classical signal-detection view on perceptual processing. Moreover, the threshold ROC curve exhibited the specific y-intercepts relevant to conscious access performance. The study suggests that the threshold can be an intrinsic property of conscious access, mediating emotional contents between perceptual states and consciousness.

Keywords

EN

consciousness; access; threshold model; fear

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 42
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 56-64

Contributors

author

Remigiusz Szczepanowski

• Wroclaw Faculty of Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, 30 Ostrowskiego Street, 53-238 Wroclaw, Poland

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10059-011-0009-7