Bruno Verschuere

The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces: A validation study

Although affective facial pictures are widely used in emotion research, standardised affective stimuli sets are rather scarce, and the existing sets have several limitations. We therefore conducted a validation study of 490 pictures of human facial expressions from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database (KDEF). Pictures were evaluated on emotional content and were rated on an intensity and arousal scale. Results indicate that the database contains a valid set of affective facial pictures. Hit rates, intensity, and arousal of the 20 best KDEF pictures for each basic emotion are provided in an appendix.

Does imminent threat capture and hold attention

According to models of attention and emotion, threat captures and holds attention. In behavioral tasks, robust evidence has been found for attentional holding but not for attentional capture by threat. An important explanation for the absence of attentional capture effects is that the visual stimuli used posed no genuine threat. The present study investigated whether visual cues that signal an aversive white noise can elicit attentional capture and holding effects. Cues presented in an attentional task were simultaneously provided with a threat value through an aversive conditioning procedure. Response latencies showed that threatening cues captured and held attention. These results support recent views on attention to threat, proposing that imminent threat captures attention in everyone.

A review of current evidence for the causal impact of attentional bias on fear and anxiety

Prominent cognitive theories postulate that an attentional bias toward threatening information contributes to the etiology, maintenance, or exacerbation of fear and anxiety. In this review, we investigate to what extent these causal claims are supported by sound empirical evidence. Although differences in attentional bias are associated with differences in fear and anxiety, this association does not emerge consistently. Moreover, there is only limited evidence that individual differences in attentional bias are related to individual differences in fear or anxiety. In line with a causal relation, some studies show that attentional bias precedes fear or anxiety in time. However, other studies show that fear and anxiety can precede the onset of attentional bias, suggesting circular or reciprocal causality. Importantly, a recent line of experimental research shows that changes in attentional bias can lead to changes in anxiety. Yet changes in fear and anxiety also lead to changes in attentional bias, which confirms that the relation between attentional bias and fear and anxiety is unlikely to be unidirectional. Finally, a similar causal relation between interpretation bias and anxiety has been documented. In sum, there is evidence in favor of causality, yet a strict unidirectional cause-effect model is unlikely to hold. The relation between attentional bias and fear and anxiety is best described as a bidirectional, maintaining, or mutually reinforcing relation.

Memory detection: theory and application of the concealed information test

Part I. Introduction: Introduction. Science on the rise: birth and development of the Concealed Information Test Christopher J. Patrick 1. Encouraging the use of the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT): what the GKT has to offer law enforcement William G. Iacono Part II. The Laboratory: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of the Concealed Information Test: 2. Detecting concealed information using autonomic measures Matthias Gamer 3. Detecting concealed information in less than a second: response latency-based measures Bruno Verschuere and Jan De Houwer 4. P300 in detecting concealed information J. Peter Rosenfeld 5. Detecting of deception and concealed information using neuroimaging techniques Matthias Gamer 6. New and old covert measures in the Concealed Information Test Eitan Elaad 7. Theory of the Concealed Information Test Bruno Verschuere and Gershon Ben-Shakhar Part III. Field Applications of Concealed Information Detection: Promises and Perils: 8. Limitations of the Concealed Information Test in criminal cases Donald J. Kraphol 9. Validity of the Concealed Information Test in realistic contexts Eitan Elaad 10. Leakage of information to innocent suspects M. T. Bradley, Clair A. Barefoot and Andrea M. Arsenault 11. Countermeasures Gershon Ben-Shakhar 12. Psychopathy and the detection of concealed information Bruno Verschuere 13. Clinical applications of the Concealed Information Test John J. B. Allen 14. Daily application of the Concealed Information Test: Japan Akemi Osugi 15. The Concealed Information Test in the courtroom: legal aspects Gershon Ben-Shakhar and Mordechai Kremnitzer Part IV. Conclusions: 16. Practical guidelines for developing a Concealed Information Test Ewout Meijer, Bruno Verschuere and Gershon Ben-Shakhar Epilogue Gershon Ben-Shakhar, Bruno Verschuere and Ewout Meijer.

Attention to Threat in Anxiety-prone Individuals: Mechanisms Underlying Attentional Bias

Cognitive views on anxiety have proposed that attentional biases towards threatening information in high trait anxious individuals play an important role in the maintenance of anxiety and may even cause the development of clinical anxiety disorders. However, the precise nature of these attentional biases is under debate. In a pictorial version of the dot probe task, two accounts of attention to threat were contrasted and the components of attention involved in orienting to threat were assessed. Overall, the results support the view that all individuals orient to highly threatening pictures, with high trait anxious individuals orienting more strongly to moderately threatening pictures than the low trait anxious individuals. Attentional bias to threat in high trait anxious individuals was caused by attentional disengagement from threat. These results are discussed in relation to cognitive models of attention to threat.

Psychophysiological Analysis (PSPHA): A modular script-based program for analyzing psychophysiological data

In psychophysiological research, complex tailor-made and interactive analyses of biosignals (e.g., skin conductance, heart rate, and respiration) are often required. Moreover, a synchronization between experimental stimuli and psychophysiolgical responses is necessary. In this article, we present Psychophysiological Analysis (PSPHA), a modular script-based program for analyzing biosignals in the time domain. The modules can be integrated in a VBScript, and a wizard allows easy adaption of parameters. PSPHA is a free, interactive, and flexible program for analyzing the data of psychophysiological experiments.

Combining physiological measures in the detection of concealed information

Meta-analytic research has confirmed that skin conductance response (SCR) measures have high validity for the detection of concealed information. Furthermore, cumulating research has provided evidence for the validity of two other autonomic measures: Heart rate (HR) and Respiration Line Length (RLL). In the present report, we compared SCR detection efficiency with HR and RLL, and investigated whether HR and RLL provide incremental validity to electrodermal responses. Analyses were based on data from 7 different samples covering 275 guilty and 53 innocent examinees. Results revealed that the area under the ROC curve was significantly higher for SCR than for HR and RLL. A weighted combination of these measures using a logistic regression model yielded slightly larger validity coefficients than the best single measure. These results proved to be stable across different protocols and various samples.

The Validity of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised in a Community Sample.

Research on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory—Revised (PPI-R) has revealed two factors: Fearless Dominance, and Self-Centered Impulsivity. This study examined the validity of these PPI-R factors in a community sample (N = 675). First, confirmatory factor analyses did not support the two-factor structure. Second, the PPI-R factors showed good convergent and discriminant validity with two other self-report measures of psychopathy, that is, the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory and Levenson’s Self-Report of Psychopathy. Third, PPI-R factors exhibited good external validity in relation to various theoretically relevant correlates. The results indicate that the PPI-R factors have good convergent, discriminant, and external validity, but confirmatory factor analysis raises concerns about the robustness of the two-factor structure.

The ease of lying

Brain imaging studies suggest that truth telling constitutes the default of the human brain and that lying involves intentional suppression of the predominant truth response. By manipulating the truth proportion in the Sheffield lie test, we investigated whether the dominance of the truth response is malleable. Results showed that frequent truth telling made lying more difficult, and that frequent lying made lying easier. These results implicate that (1) the accuracy of lie detection tests may be improved by increasing the dominance of the truth response and that (2) habitual lying makes the lie response more dominant.

Signals for threat modulate attentional capture and holding: Fear-conditioning and extinction during the exogenous cueing task

This experiment investigated whether acquired signals for threat capture and hold visual attention. Cues that were presented in an exogenous attentional cueing task were emotionally modulated using a fear-conditioning paradigm. During acquisition, undergraduate students (55 women, 11 men) learned that one cue (CS+) of the attentional task was a signal for an aversive white noise burst (UCS, 100 dBA) and that another cue (CS−) signalled its nonoccurrence. In a subsequent extinction phase, no UCSs were presented anymore during the cueing task. Results indicated that during acquisition, the CS+ cues strongly captured and held visual attention in comparison with the CS− cues, and that these effects diminished during extinction.