Fig. 1.

Sequence of events in a trial and illustration of cue types. In Experiment 1, each trial contained a fearful or neutral face at the center of the screen. Shortly after presentation of this cue, four gratings were flashed—a tilted target and three vertical distractors. Observers performed a two-alternative forced-choice orientation discrimination task (left vs. right) for the target. The trial sequence and task in Experiment 2 were similar, except that the cue preceding the target was either peripheral (attracting covert attention) or distributed (baseline). ISI = interstimulus interval.