Does fear conditioning via mental imagery influence subsequent attention?

Mental imagery consists in the formation of internal visual representations in the absence of external stimulation. Recent findings indicate that fear conditioning with imagined percepts generalises to the corresponding visual percepts, as measured by skin conductance response and self-reported fear, despite the visual stimulus never being paired with the unconditioned stimulus. The present study aimed to determine whether fear conditioning acquired via mental imagery could affect subsequent attention. Participants first completed a fear conditioning task in which an imagined CS+ (e.g. an imagined red square) was associated with shock and an imagined CS- (e.g. an imagined blue square) was neutral. Subsequently, they engaged in a visual search task for a shape-defined target. In Experiment 1, a singleton distractor was presented in a hue corresponding to either the imagined CS+ or CS-. No conditioning effect was observed at the group level. In Experiment 2, we employed a more sensitive visual search task and found an unexpected bias toward the imagined CS- colour, which might have been perceived as a safety signal. Crucially, in both experiments, the attentional bias toward the imagined CS+ colour was positively correlated with participants' ability to form vivid mental images. Overall, our data suggest that the influence of fear conditioning through mental imagery on subsequent attention depends on individuals' capacity for vivid mental imagery.