{
  "abstract": "Background: Anticipatory anxiety impairs working memory, but whether it also limits the earliest, high-capacity stage of visual storage is unclear. We asked whether the mere expectation of an aversive electrical stimulus reduces how many items people can report from a briefly flashed display, and whether any loss is spatially uniform. Methods: Eighty-eight healthy adults aged 18-25 years were randomly allocated to a threat-of-shock condition (surface electrodes on the wrist and the instruction that a painful stimulus might be delivered; none was) or a control condition (n = 44 each). Participants viewed a 4 x 3 letter matrix for 400 ms and performed untimed written whole report. Correct recall (0-12), intrusions and the position of each reported letter were scored. Groups were compared with Welch's t test, the Mann-Whitney U test, bootstrapped effect sizes, a binomial generalised linear model and a Bayes factor; spatial effects were tested with generalised estimating equations (GEE) accounting for letters nested within participants. Results: The threat group reported fewer correct letters (3.41 +/- 1.09) than controls (4.70 +/- 1.29); Welch t(83.6) = 5.11, p < .001, Hedges' g = 1.08, 95% CI [0.70, 1.53], BF10 ~ 7,549. Intrusions did not differ (p = .376). Recall declined more steeply from left to right under threat (group x column chi2(3) = 11.24, p = .011), with losses confined to the third and fourth letters of the top row (FDR-corrected q <= .003). Conclusions: Anticipatory threat reduced the amount of information transferred from a brief display into a reportable form without increasing guessing. Intact first items and depleted later items along the habitual reading order indicate a reduced number of items read out of a rapidly decaying visual store, rather than a hemifield-specific bias. The single-trial design and the absence of a manipulation check limit mechanistic inference.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Üsküdar University"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 3,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "B. Akar"
    },
    {
      "name": "M. Aydın Karabas"
    },
    {
      "name": "T. Altıntas"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/38wm0zh0hpxbd.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.11.01.763403",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.01.763403v1.full",
  "id": "38wm0zh0hpxbd",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.01.763403v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "neuroscience"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.01.763403v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-11-01",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/38wm0zh0hpxbd.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-04T12:21:08Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.11.01.763403",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.01.763403v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Anticipatory Threat of Shock Reduces the Number of Items Reported From a Brief Visual Display: Evidence for Capacity Loss Along the Scanning Order",
  "title_text": "Anticipatory Threat of Shock Reduces the Number of Items Reported From a Brief Visual Display: Evidence for Capacity Loss Along the Scanning Order",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-06T00:21:23Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/38wm0zh0hpxbd",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}