Working memory guidance of visual attention to threat in offenders

Satmarean, Tamara; Milne, Elizabeth; Rowe, Richard · 2022 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261882

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Summary

This study investigates how working memory (WM) templates guide visual attention toward threatening stimuli in individuals with a history of offending, addressing gaps in social-cognitive models of aggression. While aggression and trait anger are linked to attentional biases toward hostile cues, the specific mechanisms by which internal representations held in WM influence this bias remain unclear. The research tests the hypothesis that WM templates act as internal goals that constrain attention allocation, potentially leading to an "anger superiority effect" where cognitive resources are preferentially directed toward angry faces. The researchers employed a dual-task paradigm combining a WM maintenance task and a visual search task with 113 participants who self-reported having served a custodial sentence. Participants memorized a face oval (angry or neutral) serving as a WM template, then searched for a target face in an array of distractors. The target’s emotional valence either matched (congruent) or mismatched (incongruent) the WM template. Reaction times (RTs) were used to infer attentional bias. Participants also completed self-report measures assessing reactive and proactive aggression, trait anger, and hostile attribution bias. Data analysis involved computing trial-level bias scores and conducting hierarchical regressions to determine if aggression and anger predicted WM-modulated attentional biases. Results demonstrated a significant main effect of congruency, with faster RTs for congruent trials compared to incongruent ones, confirming that WM templates guide visual search. Crucially, searches were faster when an angry face was held in WM, regardless of the target’s emotional valence. Regression analyses revealed that higher levels of reactive aggression and trait anger predicted increased WM-modulated attentional bias. Specifically, individuals with higher aggression and anger scores showed a stronger bias toward angry targets when holding an angry face in WM and exhibited slower detection of neutral targets under the same condition. These effects were specific to angry templates and were not observed when neutral faces were held in WM. The findings support the Social-Information Processing model, indicating that internal representations held in working memory bias attention allocation toward threat. The study establishes a direct link between aggressive traits and the cognitive mechanism of WM-guided attention, suggesting that offenders may over-allocate cognitive resources to threatening stimuli due to biased internal goals. This highlights the role of emotion and memory in stabilizing aggressive response biases and suggests that interventions targeting the reduction of these specific cognitive biases could be effective in reducing antisocial behavior.

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• anger road rage