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Pervasive avoidance behaviour is a core feature of anxiety disorders. However, little is known about how the availability of avoidance modulates learned threat responding. To assess this question, we recorded avoidance behaviour, electrodermal activity and expectancy ratings in 53 healthy participants during an associative learning paradigm with embedded unavoidable and avoidable trials. When avoidance was available, we observed greater avoidance behaviour for threat versus safety cues, as well as reduced differential skin conductance responses for unavoidable threat versus safety cues. When avoidance was unavailable, as during the extinction phase, we observed sustained differential skin conductance responses for threat versus safety cues. For all phases, we found greater expectancy ratings for threat versus safe cues. Furthermore, greater avoidance behaviour predicted larger differential skin conductance responses to threat versus safety cues during extinction. Overall, the results show that the conditioned response is attenuated during situations where avoidance is available, but it recovers when avoidance is unavailable, subsequently prolonging threat extinction.

Visual stimuli may be selected for priority at different stages within the processing stream, depending on how motivationally relevant they are to the perceiver. Here we examine the extent to which individual differences in motivational relevance of task-irrelevant images (spider, crash, baby, food and neutral) guide eye-movements to a simple “follow the cross” task in 96 participants. We found affective images vs. neutral images to be generally more distracting, as shown by faster first saccade latencies and greater deviation in the final landing position from the target cross. The most arousing images (spider and food), compared to neutral images, showed the largest trajectory deviations of the first saccade. Fear of spiders specifically predicted greater deviation in the final landing position on spider images. These results suggest that attentional biases towards arousing and motivationally relevant stimuli may occur at different processing stages.