Data from: Negative Targets Specifically Enhanced Conscious and Unconscious Social Attention

A total of 126 participants (78 females) ranging from 18 to 33 years old (M ± SD = 23 ± 2.68) were recruited in the study, with 18 in the three conscious tasks (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) and 24 in the three unconscious tasks (Experiments 4, 5, and 6). A modified central cueing task was adopted in the six experiments (Shi et al., 2010; L. Wang et al., 2020; Yuan et al., 2022). Each trial began with fixation on a central cross (1° ´ 1°) for 1000 ms. In Experiment 1, a BM sequence (6.4° ´ 10.2°) walking leftwards or rightwards without translational moves was presented at the center of the screen for 500 ms. After a 100 ms inter-stimulus interval (ISI) during which only the fixation was displayed, a neutral/ negative/positive target picture (9.5° ´ 7°) was presented as a probe on either the left or right visual field with a horizontal offset of 11° from the fixation for 300 ms. Participants were required to press one of two keys on a standard keyboard with their index fingers to indicate the location of the target (“F” for the left target or “J” for the right target) as quickly and accurately as possible. On the congruent trials, the target picture appeared at the location cued by walking direction of BM, whereas on the incongruent trials, the target picture appeared opposite to the cued location. Experiment 2 adopted the same procedure but replaced the central BM cues with gaze cues (6.4° ´  10.2°). Besides, in accordance with former studies, we used a dynamic gaze cueing task (Yuan et al., 2022). Specifically, a face with direct gaze was first presented for 200 ms. Then, the face averted its gaze towards the left or the right for 300 ms. The procedure of Experiment 3 was identical to that in Experiment 1, but we replaced the BM cues with arrow cues (6.4° ´ 10.2°). In Experiments 4-6, the same central BM, gaze, or arrow cues were used, except that they were presented only in the non-dominant eye. In the dominant eye, a CFS mask (8° ´ 8°) overlaid with moving dots (0.02° ´ 0.02°) was presented at full contrast to effectively mask the dynamic BM stimuli. Besides, the contrasts of the central BM, gaze, or arrow cues were smoothly ramped up from 0 to 20% within a period of 200 ms starting from the beginning of the trial and then remained constant for the rest 300 ms.