Learning-based rapid disengagement is limited by fear-conditioned stimuli

Previous work showed that people can implicitly learn to disengage rapidly from a distractor when its location is spatially associated with a target through repetition. The current study investigated whether learning-based rapid disengagement from visually salient distractors extends to emotionally salient distractors. Participants performed an additional-singleton task in which a colour singleton distractor appeared on some trials. One distractor colour was fear-conditioned by pairing it with electric shock (CS+), whereas another colour was not (CS−). Participants searched for the target faster when the distractor appeared at the associated than a non-associated location, consistent with the association modulating target selection. Dwell-time analysis revealed that the associated location shortened dwell time for CS− but not CS+ distractors. These findings suggest that learned distractor-target spatial association can facilitate disengagement from visually salient distractors, while fear-conditioned salience continued to hold attention despite a regularity favouring rapid disengagement.