What accounts for the rapid detection of threat? Evidence for an advantage in perceptual and behavioral responding from eye movements.

Countless studies have reported that adults detect a variety of threatening stimuli more quickly than positive or neutral stimuli. Despite speculation about what factors drive this bias in detection, very few studies have examined the exact search strategies adults use to detect threatening stimuli in visual search. The current research uses an eye-tracker in a classic visual search paradigm in attempt to elucidate the factors that lead to rapid threat detection. Our results replicate previous work, demonstrating that adults detect threatening targets (snakes and spiders) more quickly and accurately than nonthreatening targets (flowers and mushrooms). Results from the eye-tracker extend these findings, suggesting that the bias for threat in detection tasks is driven by both an advantage in perception, or bottom up processing (faster fixations to threats vs. nonthreats), and an advantage in behavioral responding, or top down processing (faster behavioral responding to threats once a target is first fixated). Together, the results present a more complete picture of the mechanisms that drive rapid threat detection, suggesting that multiple factors can lead to an advantage for threat in visual search.