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Threat and Prediction Modulations of Early Neural Responding to Facial Inputs are not Pre-Attentive

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Philip Chalk¹ (), Derek Arnold², Alan Pegna³; ¹The University of Queensland

Foundational theories of affective and cognitive neuroscience posit that threat and prediction signalling are automatic brain functions. Threat detection is thought to occur pre-attentively, driven by evolutionary mechanisms that prioritize survival, and the predictive coding framework asserts that prediction errors—mismatches between expected and incoming sensory information—can be registered pre-attentively. We conducted a direct test of these ideas and found them wanting. In our study, we examined how spatial attention and task relevance shape the early processing of emotional facial expressions. Thirty participants were shown pairs of bilaterally separated faces (one emotional, one neutral) or Gabor patches (one tilted, one vertical). We used electroencephalography (EEG) and measured event-related potentials (ERPs) that are associated with early visual processing (i.e., P1 and N170). Participants either made judgements about facial expressions, the tilt of Gabor patches, or the location of missing pixels within a central fixation cross. Facial expressions could therefore be task-relevant and spatially attended in the emotion task, task-irrelevant and spatially attended in the Gabor task, and task-irrelevant and spatially unattended in the pixel task. Participants were also informed of the probability at which different facial expressions would appear. We found that event probabilities modulated P1 amplitudes and threat signals modulated N170 amplitudes, but only when facial expressions were relevant to the participants’ contemporary goals. When faces were task-irrelevant – even if spatially attended – these modulations were abolished. Our findings call into question two foundational assumptions of contemporary neuroscience and brain function: that threat and predictive signals are processed pre-attentively.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other