Abstract
The emotion-cognition interaction has been extensively explored by using
threat-related stimuli, such as fearful and angry faces, as well as
threatening animals. It has been suggested that threat signals conveyed
by the complex threatening stimuli are partially attributed to their
geometric structures, such as sharp elements in contour. The present
study was aimed to investigate whether such geometric shapes had similar
influence as threatening stimuli on visual size perception by using
downward-pointing V shapes as primes and measuring the modulation effect
on the classic Ebbinghaus illusion. The results showed that relative to
curved-shape primes, V-shape primes significantly reduced the illusion
strength when the primes were presented with relatively long duration
(150 ms) regardless of their eccentricity (4° or 8° from screen center).
However, when the primes were displayed with short duration (16.7 ms),
significant threat-related modulation effect was only observed with
central instead of peripheral presentation. Moreover, the modulation
effect vanished with excitation of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
via intermittent theta burst stimulation. The findings provide clear
evidence that threat-related geometric shapes can affect visual
perception in a similar way as threatening stimuli, which requires
detail processing of the geometric shapes and relies on top-down
cognitive control from prefrontal cortex.