Towards an Understanding of the Cognitive Mechanisms Involved in Threat Processing and Perception

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Background

Much remains unknown about the cognitive mechanisms and information-processing biases involved in threat detection, or the acquisition and maintenance of threat associations. To complicate the picture, these mechanisms and biases likely differ between various types of threats (e.g., those originating from animals, weapons, social situations, or groups). There has been a recent push to highlight ways of improving methods used in research in this area, which has likewise prompted theoretical revisions. It is therefore important to continue clarifying the cognitive mechanism (e.g., perception, attention, memory, learning) underlying threat processing to develop a better understanding of how they affect social outcomes. For example, very little is known about how social identity, hierarchy, group structure, and other social cues affect our responses in threatening situations. As the social environment impacts our daily psychological functioning, one might suspect it has an important role in threat processing as well.

The goal of this Research Topic is to gather research articles presenting empirical data, and works describing novel or overviewing previous theoretical perspectives that speak to the effects that threat has on any cognitive processes. For example, research on how threat processing uniquely affects perception, attention, memory, attitude and evaluation formation, fear conditioning, decision-making, planning and execution of defensive behaviors, as well as social processes, would all be welcome. A further goal is to shed light on the social/cognitive processes that may play a significant role in the etiology and maintenance of specific fears and phobias. This Research Topic will collect a variety of manuscripts that explore or elucidate the processes and mechanisms affected by threatening stimuli with an overarching goal of contributing to our understanding of the origin, maintenance, expression, and treatment of threat-associations, broadly defined. We welcome contributions that present new results using a wide range of methodologies and theoretical perspectives.

All authors must ensure that all papers fall within the scope of the research topic, with a primary focus on how cognitive processes affect the perception and processing of threats. We encourage authors to enrich their papers by drawing from the fields below. We ask authors to address how their results may help better understand the underlying cognitive processes of threat processing. The potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
1.) Perceptual and attentional biases associated with threats and fears
2.) Memory biases associated with threats and fears
3.) Attitude and evaluation formation toward potential threats
4.) Decision-making in the face of threats
5.) Planning and execution of defensive behaviors (approach-avoidance)
6.) Social cognitive processes associated with threats and fears
7.) Psychophysiology and neural background of fears and phobias
8.) Habituation to threatening or fearful stimuli
9.) acquisition of fears and phobias, associative and non-associative learning, developmental aspects, and individual differences in fears and phobias
10.) Cognitive risk and protective factors
11.) Methods and practices to study fears and phobias in and outside the lab
12.) Clinical, subclinical vs. general population
13.) Applying cognitive methods in practice (intervention, prevention, treatment)

Types of articles: original research, brief report, review, mini review, systematic review, meta-analysis, clinical trial, case report, conceptual analysis

Keywords: attention, memory, bias, fear, anxiety, physiology, eye-tracking, neuroscience, visual, auditory, perception, avoidance, development, risks, vulnerability, acquisition, practice, treatment, threat, attitude

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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